Announcing The BoardGameGeek Awards!



The BoardGameGeek Awards will be given annually to the best new games of the year, as selected by you, the users.

The "Geekies" will be given in the following categories:

- Best Gamers' Game
- Best Family Game
- Best Wargame
- Best 2-player Game (non-wargame)
- Best Light/Party Game
- Best Kids' Game

Here are the specifics:

In order to avoid voter fraud, we have adopted the following restrictions. Voting is restricted to either supporting users (having a supporter badge from any year is sufficient) or voters who pay a one-time 20 GeekGold fee. Anyone caught stuffing the ballot box will have their votes removed and will be banned from the site.

There will be two steps to selecting the winners.

First, there will be a nomination phase. For the first year, any game from 2005 or 2006 is eligible for nomination. In subsequent years, the award will be for games new since the last awards. Don't worry - there will be enough overlap that no games will fall through the cracks between years. Each eligible voter can nominate up to 15 games in each of the 5 categories. The 15 games with the most nominations in each category will become the nominees for the final voting. You are not restricted to the list of suggested nominees - feel free to write-in a game by entering its number directly.

The nomination page is here: www.boardgamegeek.com/geekawards.php?action=nominate

The final voting will resolved using the Ranked Pairs method. You can read more about it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranked_pairs

For those who don't want to read the specifics of the system, users will rank the games in each category from 1 to 15, (with a 0 for no opinion), and, through some mathemagical computations, we will select the winner.

The nomination phase will run for one month (8/31), and the final voting for one more month (9/30). The awards will be announced at BoardGameGeek.CON.

You are welcome to campaign, discuss voting and nominations, etc, as much as you like, but please restrict your on-site discussions to the BoardGameGeek Awards folder.

Oh, and while I've designed a 100x100 button to advertise the awards, it has been suggested that maybe one of our users can do an even better job. There is a pile of geekgold in it for anyone who designs an award for the site that I like so much more than mine that I decide to use it.

Let the awards begin!

www.boardgamegeek.com/geekawards.php

Update: Last minute addition - added the family games category.

Games originally published in other languages, but which were only widely available in english in 2005 or 2006 are perfectly eligible.

Kudos and congratulations on putting together this award. I've been a proponent of this for a long time. I can't wait to see how the community comes together for this. If you need any help along the way -- I'd love to help.

Cool! Looking forward to seeing which games make the cut!

This is a great idea!

Great idea, but how was the "list of games" determined on the nomination page?

Reason I ask. At the very top I see a few 18xx games (eg. 1829 Mainline, 1849, 18Scan), yet there are additional games also dated 2005/2006 - 18FL, 18GL, 18Mex, etc. Furthermore, 1849 has a date of 1998 on the Geek.

I know we can write in alternate games, but doesn't list bias towards a few games to the omission of others? And if the list is wrong (1849?), why use the list?

I'm excited!

Great idea!

And a really neat interface.

I'm assuming that's a list of all games with 2005 or 2006 as a release date.

One question:

Do we have to "save" our nominations somehow, or is it automatic?

A game can currently be nominated for all five categories, which seems odd. There are some games that struggle to be categorized - like Twilight Struggle, is it wargame or not? Should it be possible to nominate a game in more than one category? This award is a fantastic idea, by the way!

Woooooohoooooo!



And now the Questions!

I pay 20 GG. What happens next? Do I have to nominate straight away? Or can I look at the list; wait a couple of days and come back again to nominate?

I nominate 5 games. Can I come back later and add a 6th?

I don't see 1849 on the list.

I used games with the published year of 2005-2006 and owned by at least 20 people.

Awesome! And nice choice of rating system!

You can nominate and remove up until the deadline - then all nominees will be frozen.

Now, you know that will never happen...

I didn't add a lot of restrictions - the wisdom of crowds will prevail.

Nice!

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that this will end with a bunch of people complaining that their choices didn't win. Seriously, it could happen!

cool

awesome. this will be the award I predict.

Without a doubt.

I've often thought BGG should have awards of it's own. I look forward to seeing the results. Of course wait until Pimp The Backhanding wins best kids game.

That's the whole point of handing out awards. Geeks need something to argue about vociferously.

Let the controversies and complaints begin!

This should be entertaining.

Well it's about time.

And there it is: another excuse for me to buy more games...

What will happen after BGG.CON? Will these awards get promotion? Will publishers use it on their winning games?

I doubt it. It's like the People's Choice Awards vs. The Academy Awards vs. an award determined by a panel of experts (say, top film critics). For MY money, I'll take the opinion of a sizeable (i.e. not just two or three guys picking) panel of experts over larger groups.

Still, though, I think it's a worthwhile exercise and should be an interesting award. I'm a little concerned for the same reasons I would be about the People's Choice or Academy awards: It's not likely that the voters have played all of the games, so the results might not be entirely, um, valid for lack of a better word. "No voting" will help, and I hope people don't rank games that they haven't played.

I am not trying to be a wet blanket here. I'm genuinely excited for these awards! At the very very least, it'll be an interesting experience, and at best it'll be a voice for those interested in the hobby.

WHOA!

The interface deserves !