(I honestly have no idea what forum a topic like this belongs in; whether it's here in Website Topics or over in General Discussion. I took a wild guess.)

Since our last year-end awards celebration thingy, I was thinking about the structure thereof, mainly because it seemed to kind of end in disaster with lots of quarreling over the ultimate winner of Game of the Year and also because, in our discussion thread for the awards at the time, we also seemed to be able to reach almost a consensus that indie games needed their own category, or perhaps more than one category even. Anyway, it all got me thinking about how the annual awards stuff could be restructured in the future such as to both garner more community trust in the fairness of the process while also ensuring more visibility and recognition for games created by smaller development teams. I have a couple ideas that I just wanted to float for everyone's consideration, and they kinda need to go together to work in my mind:

1) We might start using one vote per person instead of weighting staff votes. I know what VGC weights staff votes, which is to try and ensure fairness toward less visible games...but at the same time, being honest, I lost a lot of trust in the weighting system because it really, really seemed like a lot of the staffers were abusing it last time in a perhaps coordinated fashion specifically to deny the clear community vote winner (and we all know what that was, so it needn't be said) the ultimate award by any means possible and this poisoned the well, I think helping to create, or at least exacerbate, the climate of bitterness that we saw in the end. Without staff votes counting disproportionately, there's no question that the title in question would've won at least two more awards and carried Game of the Year by a handy, non-questionable margin and I feel that this would likely conferred a greater sense of legitimacy around it that might have avoided the level of quarreling and bitterness we saw. We ought to make coordinated political campaigns to rig awards like Game of the Year structurally impossible by abandoning our little "super delegate" system, as I think that's the only way to really rebuild trust in the process.

2) Every award might be given to two games instead of one. Like for example, we could have a "Best Indie ____ Game" award and a "Best AAA ____ Game" award for every genre of game, including Game of the Year. (e.g. "Best Indie Game of the Year" and "Best AAA Game of the Year".) And, to avoid this change doubling the number of articles needing to be written, both the indie and AAA awards corresponding to any one genre or category could be revealed in the same article. Like Best Indie Action Game and Best AAA Action Game could be awarded in the same article, for example, and so on and so forth.

In this way, I think we could both re-establish trust while also enhancing the visibility of outstanding games made by smaller, ordinarily less visible developers. I think that would create the maximum amount of overall fairness that can be achieved. What do you (anyone) think of these ideas?

Was there really that much quarreling? Can't remember, although I followed the thread.

I am generally not a big fan of an elite group having more power to decide than the community, but it seems in this case the result is pretty close. Probably as staff is still part of the community. Also we have a purely community decided thingy.

I like your idea for two awards per category, I just see a problem in the definition of Indie and AAA. This will inevitably lead to discussion, but maybe we can agree on something.

Anyways, the genre categories for the games were often odd. That is due to the fact, that VGC don't want one game getting most of the awards. That is something I applaud. But the result of one game only fitting into one genre category made it difficult, as genre often is fluid. How about this: every game can be nominated for each fitting category, but it will be eliminated in all genre categories except the one it gained the most votes. That way not one game dominates all categories, but the community is also the one deciding via it's votes which category is the most fitting.

Jaicee, I appreciate you being thoughtful about ways to improve the process and make the experience better for everyone involved.

However, you first bullet point levels some pretty serious accusations at VGChartz staff. Do you have any proof of this? Because I can say confidently there was no coordinated staff attempt to steer the results in any direction.

We are happy to entertain ways to make this community event more enjoyable, but it doesn't sound like you're arguing in good faith.

I agree that weighted votes are improper for something like this. The only exception I might allow is that the VGC official reviewer of a game, if one exists, could be given three votes or something. The problem there is that it favors games that were reviewed, so it may not work. But, the general idea of staff getting extra voting rights is not cool. If they need special treatment, they should get their own "staff picks" award category. But, the official VGC winners should be those voted on by all community members equally.

As for the Indie/AAA.... Those category names don't work, because there are many A and AA games that are not indies. And, while I don't mind separating them for genres (Best Indie Platformer, Best Major Pub Platformer, for example), I do not think there should be a separare GOTY category for indies. A game is either the GOTY, or it isn't.

so what game was so controversial?

I wasn't intending to argue anything, but rather to propose two ideas for the improvement of our annual awards process: one aiming to further democratize the process and the other seeking to balance the inevitable consequences of that out with a structural guarantee of visibility for games created by smaller developers. I see that we're not going to discuss either here though, so let's just forget I ever posted this thread and move on.

(I remarked about my emergent distrust of the process only in order to suggest that further democratization of the process has merit. That distrust was rooted primarily, but not exclusively, in this post explaining that the overall winner was separated from the runners-up by a margin of 1.5% while also pointing out that the winner was neither the first nor even the second choice of the staff. In consideration of the fact that staff votes are weighted, effectively counting as more than one vote per person, this math suggests that TLOU2 in reality got substantially more votes than the competition and that the weighting of the staff vote is the only reason the contest was close. This had been my primary, circumstantial basis for suspicion, but I had other reasons as well. Regardless though, if you say there was no coordination involved, I believe you. Sorry for being I guess kind of an annoying sore winner; I just really liked TLOU2 and the reaction to it winning, together with the staff positions, has unfortunately left me a little bitter. Anyway, my aim was to highlight the difference that a simpler, more transparent process might make in terms of ensuring trust. Though it appears I've been the only distrustful person in reality. *sighs* Whatever. I'm done with this thread and will not respond to follow-up posts. Bye.)

People had been complaining about TLOU2 rightly or wrongly (dunno, haven't played it, probably won't play it) since before release. Don't think anything the staff did would have prevented that. Not sure how them mentioning how their picks panned out exacerbated it.

Okay, very much against my better judgment, I'm going to break my previous pledge not to respond to follow-up posts by just adding one final point here:

If my proposed changes had been in application for 2020's VGC awards thingy, TLOU2 would have won for AAA Game of the Year by a comfier margin and through a transparent process that I at least suspect might have conferred greater legitimacy to its victory, and also Ori and the Blind Forest would have won a parallel Indie Game of the Year award, matching the staff's pick for the ultimate award. Thus I ask you: under these circumstances, would we not all have been happier with the outcome?

So you complaining, because the game the community voted for won in the end, but you wanted to see bigger margins? Who cares?

A polarising option always has an edge in systems with positive voting (you vote FOR something). Call it the Donald Trump effect. If a lot of people hate a game like TLOU2 and a lot like it, then the haters will not get it down in voting, as they cannot vote *against* it, but all the ones who liked it will be more sure to vote for it, because of all the hate. I personally would've prefered another game to win, alone because Neil Druckman exploited and crunched his workers for the game, while acting all smug about it. Game development certainly needs much better ethics, and for that reason I would've preferred another winner. But the polarization and hate (lots of it for absolutely stupid reasons) made sure it got a lot of awards (not only on this site). But I understand that I cannot dictate the votes of others, so I didn't complain. Now you complain because of ... margins?