Transparency Agenda Daily July 5th 2016 - My weekend vacation & Ennie Awards

Transparency Agenda 84: #Kickstarter, Lucas and Ennie Award Fraud

Going transparent on The Demiplane of Gaming #48: ENnies!

Congrats to all the Ennie nominees and award winners!

LPJ Design just wanted to say Congratulations to all the products were nominated and to those that won the ENnie for 2011.  These are people in our industry doing some of the best RPG products now in the market.  RPGNow has listed the nominees and award winners currently on their site. Take a second and go check them out and help support RPGs and gaming in general. 

Great reviews, No sales...

As someone involved in  publishing, this is the one that always kind of irks me.  You keep hearing about these great games, everyone loves them, they win all these awards and then a few months later, the company closes down or they never release a follow up product to this "new line" of RPG products.  This seems to happen a LOT of places.  The Oscars. The Emmys. The Harvey Awards. The Ennies. Things get great reviews, but not that many people have actually seen it.  Hell even my personal favorite, The Wire, falls under this.  When the quality is high and the people should want to purchase or pay to see or do, they don't.  Are the reviews wrong? Or even better, do reviews actually matter?  Talk to you later...

Paizo solidifies it sell as the “new D&D” with the Ennie Awards…

We all know in our hearts of hearts that Paizo would do well at the Ennie Awards. We all know Paizo would be awarded a few awards. No one knew the Ennie Awards were to become the Paizo Awards. Being a fan supporter and 3PP for Pathfinder it only made me EVEN HAPPIER about supporting Paizo from the start.  Paizo has proved itself as a powerful force in the RPG industry with these awards.  The only “downside” to all of this is the amount of people who will be looking to jump onto the Paizo band wagon, become a 3PP and supporting the line. This might sound odd to many of you coming from me, but you have to remember the 3.0 & 3.5 glut of products that came out and killed a few gaming stores.  I just hope the same thing does not happen again to Paizo.   While normally I am no fan of awards show, I have to say this one might be the one that changes my mind about doing award shows.  Maybe they are worth it.  Who knows maybe I will submit Obsidian Twilight for next year’s Ennies.  I guess we will have to see.  Talk to you later…

I voted in the 2010 Ennie Awards...but...

...does it really matter, since I think all contests are basically rigged?  Talk to you later...

Why the Ennie Awards, Origins Awards and basically ALL AWARDS are a waste of time…

I don’t really care about awards and award events. Ennie Awards. Origins Awards. All of them. It is not my things. To me, awards are basically high school popularity contest. Everyone makes this big deal about them and how important they are. “People” vote on them and a winner is picked. Normally what happens is you see the same old people voting for these awards and the same old people keep winning awards. Once in a while something wins that no one expects should win, but more often the person who is expected to win, wins. In the RPG industry it is even worse, because it is amazing how many of these companies win the Ennie Awards or Origins Awards on ONE product in a product line and then they never put out more products for that product line. In some even crazier cases, the winner is never heard from or seen again. WTF?!?!?!??!? It is like the Best New Artist award in the Grammys.

I understand why people like them and in some cases need them. But for me, WASTE OF TIME!!! Instead of wasting time on seeing if you can get an award, how about making better products? How about you focus on building you fan base or expanding your Tribe as Seth Godin suggested. You think Tony Hsieh of Zappos.com according to the company, the core value is to "deliver 'wow' through service. Talk about an award you give to your customers. Work on getting your customer the best products they can purchase and you will win the best prize of them all: Freedom to run your RPG Hobby company as a full time profitable business. No little award will do that, but a dedicated fan base will. The only award I want is success and I work very hard everyday to win it. How about you? Talk to you later…