Why don't we have VN of the Year Awards?

[Sonomi]

Instead of having nominations or listing every visual novel that was created during the year, individuals/groups could submit the game they wish to enter. That's how I've seen this sort of thing handled on other forums.

Wait a sec. Why not just list off every game released in X year?

That's kind of what NaNoRenO is, just on a smaller scale of 1 month. The award would be exactly the same in that case: being part of this group of developers that released something of their own.

I agree with a lot of what PyTom said on this. Welcoming people of all skill levels. So I feel that approach is very much community-oriented. Instead of saying which game was the best Romance or SciFi, we could just list off any games that fall under each genre.

So instead of potential players seeing this one game, they can see a multitude of games that fit their interests.

"Visual Novels of the Year Awards" can then be looked at in a different way.

In terms of admin work, creators might say "we developed a VN this year called InsertTitle and the genre is InsertTag" by submitting their link to a thread or posting to a jam. That way, no one has to search for things and creators who don't want to be listed don't have to be.

You could wind up with LSF'17 Games, LSF'18 Games, and so on with little admin involvement I suppose. The award is being a part of this list with everyone else.

I have to say, there's an amazing level of support for every single one of the threads created for NaNo, regardless of topic or genre. And everyone participating does get something out of it. Not just completing a project, but being a part of a community that created content for this event.

I don't know really... If something like this already exists though, please ignore everything I just said here.

[indoneko]

Instead of yearly award, how about having an online ranking system for EVN (either based on votes or on review)? Perhaps something similar to MyAnimeList's anime rank system - or maybe something different entirely depending on how you want to implement it - but for VNs instead of animes. We can choose to rank only the overall point, or divide it further into more specifics like art & writing (or whatever category we'd decide to use later).

While it's far from being 100% objective (and needs a certain mechanism to prevent abuse), I still believe that many people will find this as something useful. Especially the newbies. Many old games will also get some benefits from this (in contrast to the yearly award system which only includes the newly released game).

Of course Lemmasoft doesn't have to do this.... especially if we don't want thousands of newbies to come here and flood the forum... :3

[OmniGamer]

I disagree with the sentiment that an award would be not welcoming to VN creators. If anything, it's even MORE welcoming.

I am a player. I only occasionally lurk this place only, why? When I look at the Completed Game section, I see hundreds of new VNs. And there are almost always nothing stand out. So guess what, either I check out the ones with most post count, or nothing at all. No I don't click on random post.

So if you are a creator, ask yourself. Do you want all your hardwork, your clever ideas, your efforts, to be completely unnoticeable, just because nobody look at your VNs since it is lost among many games made with barely any efforts into it, while another VN get popular and suck all the attention for some reasons not necessarily related to their quality? Wouldn't that discourage you?

An award or at least a ranking system, will actually give creators who put efforts into their work some hope that one day all that efforts will pay off; and also, a guarantee that at least someone will actually check out your work can comment on them. People who produce low quality VNs for fun and practice know they will not win anyway, so it won't discourage them.

[Scribbles]

Instead of yearly award, how about having an online ranking system for EVN (either based on votes or on review)? Perhaps something similar to MyAnimeList's anime rank system - or maybe something different entirely depending on how you want to implement it - but for VNs instead of animes. We can choose to rank only the overall point, or divide it further into more specifics like art & writing (or whatever category we'd decide to use later).

While it's far from being 100% objective (and needs a certain mechanism to prevent abuse), I still believe that many people will find this as something useful. Especially the newbies. Many old games will also get some benefits from this (in contrast to the yearly award system which only includes the newly released game).

Of course Lemmasoft doesn't have to do this.... especially if we don't want thousands of newbies to come here and flood the forum... :3

I think a ranking system would be pretty cool. They have reviews/ratings on most/all store sites so it wouldn't be too weird. It might even help someone who wants to download free content but not waste time with something that's rated really really low?

reviews would allow for justification so, it's not a low rating just for the sake of it, but b/c X, Y, and Z which would hopefully help the creator to improve.

I like that this forum is welcoming to all skill levels, but applying ranking/ratings to *completed* games, perhaps in 2 categories (Free or Paid) would lighten fear of that?

just adding my 2 cents

[Donmai]

Do the annual awards ceremony of your dreams. Create a ranking system as you wish. Everybody is free to do it.
Just don't make it here, and don't try to make it in the name of Lemmasoft.
I believe that's the message in this whole damn thread .

[Kuiper]

This is a little bit off topic, but I feel obliged to mention that VN devs can (and do) submit their games to general (indie) games contests and events. Christine Love's "Ladykiller in a Bind" won the IGF award for Excellence in Narrative last month, and Lucy Blundell's "One Night Stand" was also a nominee in the same category. One of the games I'm working on first got its first recognition a local independent games festival called Freeplay, where it won the "Best Narrative" category."

with ifcomp, people vote for the games according to their camp in these 2 issues, and it can get very heated, because the competition makes the camps directly compete against each other. so ifcomp certainly makes these "wars" worse and breaks the community.

The Hugo awards similarly became unfortunately politicized recently, with some people attempting to form "factions" that engaged in "slate-style" voting, where you have people voting for or against works that they haven't even read just because someone else has persuaded them that a particular work conforms to or is in opposition to the viewpoint that they hold.

I think that ratings and rankings tend to work best when people have an understanding of the judging process behind it, which includes knowing who exactly the judging body is, and my personal take is that I find the "awards" or "ranking" or whatever to be more useful if they are specific. For example, I tend to have less regard for anything based on public voting (such as ranking on a site like MAL or VNDB); public ranking systems can be frustrating when I see that a "controversial" work has a low rating and I'm left wondering if it's because the work is actually lacking in quality, or it's been "vote brigaded" by some group of people who dislike what it represents. For video games broadly, I prefer following the GOTY awards at sites like Giant Bomb where I am familiar with the site's staff, who even post their internal deliberations so that people can listen to the discussions that led to their awards. (In fact, these internal deliberations are more interesting to me than the final ranking of games.) And the "site lists" tend to be less interesting to me than the personal lists of individual site contributors. (I don't particularly care what "Giant Bomb's game of the year" is, but I am interested in finding out what Jeff Gerstmann or Rami Ismail's favorite game was.)

So, with that being said, I'd actually be much more interested in seeing personalized lists from individuals that I follow, rather than some sort of aggregated community ranking that attempts to "quantify" what the best game of the year was. (I'd rather see a bunch of articles saying "Here are my favorite VNs from last year" than "Here is the list ranking the 10 best VNs of the year.") I think it would actually be pretty easy for people to just start posting personalized lists absent the formation of any kind of "committee."

I think one of the things that complicates this is that most of the "voices" in the VN community that I'd be interested in seeing personalized lists from are VN devs themselves, and of course this leads both to issues where people can feel uncomfortable in critiquing their peers. (Also, the VN community is a lot more intimate than other communities, so even non-devs can fall victim to this.) It doesn't seem like the VN community really has "taste makers" in the same way that broader games criticism has. But I think that the community would be better off if people felt empowered to cross that bridge and just start making and sharing those personal lists.

So, with that being said, are there any people who, rather than forming a "committee" or "academy" of sorts, are willing to form a pact and say, "I'll post a personalized 'my favorite VNs of 2017' some time in January of next year?" Because not only does that seem a lot easier and more doable to me, but it also seems like it would be a lot more fun and potentially more useful as an exercise.

[indoneko]

So, with that being said, are there any people who, rather than forming a "committee" or "academy" of sorts, are willing to form a pact and say, "I'll post a personalized 'my favorite VNs of 2017' some time in January of next year?" Because not only does that seem a lot easier and more doable to me, but it also seems like it would be a lot more fun and potentially more useful as an exercise.

Well, since you're the one suggesting this, why don't you lead us with an example?
No need to wait for January 2018. You can start making favorite list of 2016's or older releases...