Re: Voting: I'd agree with a straight popular vote, as well. If you want to keep panel-voting, then I'd agree with the separate-awards idea. This year there were awards for "best whatever" and "honourable mention", maybe next year it could be "best whatever" and "judge's choice"... although if participation is similar, I imagine that you'd probably find they'd go to the same game much of the time.
As to whether the poll should be public or not... it's hard to say. A forum poll where you just need to log in to vote and results are hidden until awards day would be the best accessibility-wise, but you can almost guarantee that someone would create a dozen fake accounts, probably more to troll the forum than to really influence the voting. Can PHPBB require voters have an account which was registered before a paricular date, maybe?
Wintermoon wrote:Categories: more might be better, but I prefer "best of type" categories over "best aspect" categories. Best very short work, best in genre, that kind of thing.
I think I made my views on this clear in the other thread - whatever you split it out by, make sure it's inclusive rather than selective. So:
- If you want to split out by length, for example, then have a "best short work" and a "best not short work".
- If you want to have a "best drama" award, you'd better be prepared to list out all the other genres, including "best comedy" and "best romance" and "best slice-of-life" and so on. And sometimes you might not get any nominees or possibly even any VNs
eligible for one of your many genres, and the award count would bloat, so I'd avoid it, myself. You might try "Best Serious" and "Best Non-Serious", but some people might disagree with which category their game was put in.
MorningStar was definitely intended as a parody, for example, but it also had a dramatic story.
- Personally, I don't see anything wrong with having "best facet" awards, it's obvious from the award name it's not supposed to be so prestiguous as a "best everything" award. Plus, it's a lot easier to divide up into a smaller number of obviously-discrete categories.
- I also agree that it makes sense to keep the number of awards relatively low - say, below ten - because otherwise firstly it'll be a bit ridiculous to be awarding the same game fifteen different awards for slightly different things, and secondly the more categories the more likely the majority of the electorate haven't played all the titles nominated.
I'd be tempted to go for something like:
- Best Long-form VN (say, over an hour in length)
- Best Short-form VN (up to an hour)
- Best Writing and Storytelling
- Best Art and Graphics
- Best Sound and Music
- Best Technical Achievement
Where today's Best Overall would fit mostly into Best Long-Form, Best Drama and Best Comedy would go into Best Writing, Most Innovative would fit into Best Technical Achievement, the way it turned out... Fanservice could fit into Art and Graphics badly, or have its own award... or just be dropped, on the grounds that it's a bit specific (as much as some people might like to see an Oscar for "best tits shown on-screen", it's never going to exist...
.
There are things which that set of categories doesn't cover - such as directing, or game-balance issues in hybrid VNs - but those are things which aren't so easy to pick out amongst the other disciplines for most users, and/or aren't really VN awards anyway.
Wintermoon wrote:
Eligibility: Unlicensed copyrighted material should be banned.
I'd certainly agree for games which rip someone else's art or music to use in their game, for example. But that's not the be-all and end-all of the discussion.
- Should we bar games which infringe on others' trademarks, character designs, etc.? Re-drawing other people's characters without their permission? Arguably if we were doing that,
Real Life should have been barred from this year's.
- Presumably it's OK to include copyrighted/trademarked items
with permission, since otherwise it would be hard to include team efforts or games including freely-distributed backgrounds or music. But there's a psychological difference between using freely-distributed music and - for example, since it's something I'm planning on doing myself - setting your game within an existing, established fictional universe. I have permission from the owner, but it's going to be viewed differently from someone using Deji's paper-doll.
Personally, my opinion is just that awards should simply exclude things which are illegal - it's an easy enough distinction to make, and absolutely divides potential edge-cases.
Wintermoon wrote:
If we ever get an abundance of commercial works that greatly surpass the freeware visual novels in quality, they should get their own awards.
Agreed. Presently, I don't think there are enough commercial works to warrant it, and thus it would probably end up with the few we do see winning categories by default, just because they were the only (or only viable) nominee. Which is silly, and also dilutes the value of the same awards for future years. Equally, unless the authors agree to give away copies to the voting public (unlikely!) then voting will likely be mostly uninformed.
If a large enough number spring up to have decent competition in different fields, then sure - give them a separate set of awards. But I'd suggest that's the kind of award which would be better decided by panel, just to make sure that everyone voting can in good conscience assert that they've played all the titles they're considering.
As for commercial games, while they can be good, the cost prevents many people in the community from trying them. That went counter to the doujin spirit of the awards to me. On the other hand, I can see the argument for a commercial category perhaps. Some people in the community are making original English VNs that are commercial, which isn't a bad thing (I just don't like it quite as much as free, 
(I want my pc back dammit!)
), so a good idea. I'd be happy for commercial games to either be eligible just like the free ones, or alternatively to have their own award; it'd be a bit sad if they were excluded, but also a fair decision in the wider scheme of things.
