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

[JBShields]

This is a question topic just for fun. Why don't we have "player choice" awards for Visual Novels? Nobody else does.

If it's done, maybe by year and by category? What categories would be good?

[trooper6]

If you want one, you should organize one.

[Mammon]

I believe there was something like that in the earliest days of Renpy. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4740 Found this and there's probably more. But these days there's probably too many projects for them all to be judged.

[Smaymay]

Sounds like a great idea

[Caveat Lector]

VNs Now has something similar to what you suggest, but has more multiple categories. I see no reason why we can't have something similar ourselves!

[trooper6]

As Mammon pointed out, we DID have something similar, for many years. But then it died. Why? Lots of reasons. It being a LOT of work for the organizers. Not getting enough people participating in the nomination process. Lots of things. If you want to revive the Lemmy's it would behoove your to look through the thread Mammon posted and ponder how you would address the issues that led to the death of the old Lemmy's and also if you are ready to do all of the work and if you have a plan to make the process sustainable and how you'll avoid burnout.

[Zelan]

This is actually something that I've thought about before, believe it or not, but besides the sheer amount of work that would go into organizing it, there's also the question of how VNs will be entered, nominated, and rewarded, what the categories will be, etc. And you never know what kind of drama might go down as a result.

[indoneko]

A local forum (from where I came) have actually done this, and they even giving prizes (with using money from the forum's admin's own pocket!). And they're much smaller compared to Lemmasoft.

I guess that if we want to revive the annual awards, then someone has to actually take the lead here. Preferably someone who's been here long enough to know the forum's behavior...

[JBShields]

If you want one, you should organize one.

If there was one, wouldn't want to overstep.

[JBShields]

I believe there was something like that in the earliest days of Renpy. viewtopic.php?f=13&t=4740 Found this and there's probably more. But these days there's probably too many projects for them all to be judged.

GLAD you found that! Yikes! The sheer drama of that thread. People started out excited, then got hurt. The idea of a "competition" doesn't appeal to all. I see it more as group recognition, but oh well.

If one was to be done:

The problem is the polls needed for this--not what would go there. It'd need a cloud-type anonymous poll for more than 100 users. That's the problem. 100 is the highest I can find without having to pay. Why cloud? It's either a cloud or list poll needed so the top 5-10 nominated choices could then later be voted on by the community.


Too bad! Based on that thread, I thought they were going well with the right ideas for categories:

all VN non-repry games welcome, no using "borrowed" art for nominees, skills instead of genres. No cash award. Just a laurel.

separate commercial/non-commercial categories, short vs. long vns, Categories by writing, [gameplay (such as gameplay and other coding elements], art (sprites; background separate), music, maybe voice-acting...

[Donmai]

And they're much smaller compared to Lemmasoft.

In my humble opinion, this kind of thing can only work right in smaller communities. It worked here for some time when Lemmasoft was smaller than it is today (I'm not saying we now have a colossal community). Potentially it can break a community apart instead of bring it together.
BTW you can "watch" the 2008 ceremony here: http://lemmasoft.net/lemmys/results2008_0.html

[Ghost #9]

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.

[Mammon]

If you want to make an award show, maybe you could instead start smaller and make a NaNoRenO award show? With the NaNo submissions, unlike all the VN's that came out this year, there are people who'll play them all. You'll get experience with hosting one of these, have much less categories to worry about, getting people to help you, and you actually have a list of all games.

Only if you still want to do it, of course. From your reaction to my link it seemed that you might've decided against game awards entirely?

[andalusian]

the IF (interactive fiction*) community has a yearly contest called ifcomp, it has a fun system for prizes: rules, prizes for past years. might be worth copying.

but as others have said in this thread, ranking can damage the community. ifcomp is popular and gets more entries every year, but has certainly damaged the IF community.

there are 2 "wars" in the IF community:

1.
people who align with games that embody the values of the american social justice movement
vs
people who see it as an unwelcome intrusion and vote against any games that even remotely look like it

2.
people who align with games that has experimental narrative, but no puzzles or any real difficulty
vs
people who align with games that has a complex world model, complex puzzles and that demands skill and intelligence from the player, but has simple or traditional narrative

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.




* interactive fiction means games that look like this:

or this:

[PyTom]

In general, I don't want to have an awards show with the name of the community on it.

I like the idea that LSF is welcoming to creators of all skill levels. I like the fact that we have people who make incredibly disparate games helping each other out - you can get someone making a kinky adult game helping out someone who's trying to make a game commenting on political discrimination. And I think that's because we focus on the things that unite us - sarcastically, the fact that VN development is hard - rather than trying to come up with who is the best.

I think there's a place in the community for awards. Some sort of "Academy of Visual Novel Arts" could be a great idea. But I don't think that any awards scheme would be representative of who's on the forum at this point - so I think it should really be an outside thing.