The Awards Problem

Posted by Rampant Coyote on April 6, 2015

At the Academy Awards in 2014, two of the voters for the film that one Best Picture admitted later that they’d never actually watched the film. They thought they’d have been “disturbed” by it, but voted for it anyway because of its presumed “social relevance.” I suspect that this happens a lot, but it was the first time (to my knowledge) that this was publicly admitted.

Winning a major Oscar can really boost a film’s financial success, so there’s an awful lot of behind-the-scenes campaigning, scheduling, and so forth to snag one of these awards, especially if it’s not a typical formulaic crowd-pleasing ‘blockbuster.’ But if this sort of thing actually happens a lot, it really brings into question the quality of the awards. It doesn’t matter about the quality of the film, only the behind-the-scenes award campaigning.

This weekend, the Hugo Awards – which historically has been a pretty influential and prestigious award for science fiction and fantasy – announced their nominations to something of an upset. The bottom line is that while there was always the kind of ‘behind the scenes’ campaigning by an inner circle with their own preferences (and political and social agenda), another group has taken this sort of “legal, but gauche” campaigning out into the public. This resulted in a record-breaking number of members and voters but a major “invasion by barbarians” reaction from the long-standing old guard. Both sides have their own views of what “fair” means, but the “invasion” (called the “Sad Puppies” campaign) was a direct result of these competing visions – what was fair to one group seemed completely unfair to the other. We’ll see how things shake out in the long run.

Extrapolating from Gaming

Now, I kind of embarrass myself talking to some friends about this who REALLY know their SF & F – some on both sides of the argument. And I’ve got friends in the movie business who know the industry a lot better than me, making me entirely unqualified to argue with them over what’s going on in that community. I’m just jaded enough that it takes more than a formulaic summer blockbuster or a by-the-numbers pot-boiler to get me excited, I can’t have the same level of vocabulary or experience as these friends. What is still new and exciting to me is old hat to them.

I do know a thing or two about games, though. Not a lot (it seems the more I know, the more I realize how little I know), but at least an above-average familiarity. And I do see some of the same problems appearing in the games biz. This concerns me. But it also brings to mind questions about the purpose of the awards and of the judges for these awards.

Pressures

When an award achieves a certain level of popularity, it can affect overall sales. This makes sense. Having an “independent” and somewhat trusted validation of the quality of a work elevates it above the usual marketing hype. But once there is some real monetary gain associated with an award… well, it’s no longer just recognition. In some ways, it becomes a sponsorship, or a grant. There’s a lot more competing pressures going on about how to award the prize.

For example, there’s the pressure to give the award to the most deserving. For example, of you have Creation A and B of nearly equal quality, but Creation A is already a success with plenty of media attention, but Creation B is relatively unknown, Creation B would definitely benefit far more from receiving the award, there’s going to be some subjective weighting to Creation B’s advantage.

Then there’s of course the social pressure of these overt or more subtle campaigns. If you hear a lot of your peers suggest that Creation A is somehow landmark and important, awesome, and that all the smart / good / perceptive critics are impressed by it, and you are faced with comparing A and B together and they are both in the same ballpark quality-wise, there’s a lot of pressure to vote for A. After all, you are smart, good, and perceptive, right? You don’t want anyone to perceive you otherwise. Even if you don’t “get” why Creation A is so excellent, you may be influenced to vote that way anyway just because that’s where all the other independent thinkers are voting, and they must know something you don’t.

The flip side of this is simply the popularity factor. Somewhat counter-balancing the desire to award the most needy, there’s a tendency to go with the familiar.

Then there’s the comfort / time factor. This is especially notable with games. Bottom line – the judges and voters have limited time, and it’s been made abundantly clear that most judges don’t play all the games in the major awards. This weights the small, tiny games that get to their point (and may basically be “done”) within the fifteen minutes. But as noted above with the Academy Awards, some judges may shy away from the more challenging fare and base their vote on the campaign buzz instead.

Then there’s simply the fact that the folks who are involved enough to participate as voters / judges may simply be so jaded that they need some novelty to catch their interest. Well-crafted twists on an old, familiar theme level them cold. So whereas something like The Avengers may thrill the mass-market audience and be considered by the vast majority of the best movie of the year, the critics have all felt that they’ve seen it before (and seen it better) in previous offerings.

What is “Fair?”

While you’d hope that all these factors (and tons more that I didn’t mention) balance out into some reasonably approximation of “fairness.” I do believe that in at least the major awards I mentioned above and some major industry awards in games, the majority of judges / voters really do try to toe the line or at least make the most ethical / fair decision that they can. But it also means that the calls for reform and improvement will frequently be justified. There’s no way to make these things perfect, but there may be times where the purpose or approach of a particular set of awards ought to be called into question and re-evaluated, and maybe the process should get overhauled to better fit reality. That, or maybe the barbarians gathering at the gate will crash the party and force the issue.

And maybe there’s a point where new awards need to get set up and promoted. For example, I point to Craig Stern’s discussion about the bias against role-playing games in the IGF awards (and probably the same could be said for Indiecade). By “bias,” I mean results, not necessarily the judges’ subjectivity. But the whole way the judging process is structured works against long-form games. I don’t see any easy way to “fix” that.

And fundamentally, that’s the challenge that we face in these industries where we do want to show public recognition for people doing really cool stuff. If it was easy, there’d be little value to it.

Filed Under: Biz, Books, Movies - Comments: 6 Comments to Read



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