Does "Award Winning" Mean Anything To You?

I've noticed many Indie games that won an award of one kind or another use "Award Winning" in their press releases and other marketing.

Just a couple minutes ago I came across such a thing on an Indie game watch list I am subscribed to. And I just closed down email without even reading the message because the subject "Award Winning" tells me absolutely nothing. What a waste of a "headline".

Just wondering about the rest of you folks? When you see "award winning" in a video, email or other form of marketing does it carry any weight with you?

It's meaningless to me. Mainly because "award winning" is so generic (kind of like "awesome game!") and even kind of "cheap" these days when often awards are given out just for showing up.

 

I was thinking about this the other day... most of the awards are done through voting processes. And most of the time a game will beg its fan base to go and vote. So at the end of the day, awards are just quantifiable confirmation bias.

 

I think it does add some credibility to a game. "Award winning" games tend to be a bit higher quality than the average greenlight fare. It naturally only matters when you're looking at very small indie games. Once you get to stuff closer to AA+ it doesn't matter at all.

 

It means zero to me because people give awards out like candy just for turning up. Seen loads of indie games that bore me to tears with millions of awards on the front. Apparently it's supposed to mean something. Half of the awards I've never heard of!

In B4 sour grapes accusations, I've had awards for my stuff.

The best award is when a gamer enjoys your game and thumbs up.

 

The only award that matters to me is the Montgomery Burns Award For Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Excellence.

 

Imagine if there's an award for outstanding Unity game but only on condition that you have splash...

 

It usually means friends gave other friends a pat on the back for being their friends. When you are talking media industry awards.

 

This kind of stuff is automatically blocked by my internal junk information filter.

"7000 out of 10 on ign" "From the makers of our universe" "Life changing experience", etc.

The more awards there are, the more sceptical I'll get.

However.. Art or honest review that looks like itw as written by a real person who actually played a game, or a video that is not a cliche "every trailer ever made" might get me interested.

 

Hah!

 

Some awards count. I've yet to be severely disappointed by a Spiel des Jahres winner.

Awards show one of two things

• The dev cares enough about money to lie about awards
• Someone somewhere liked the game enough to vote for it

 

We call that the "You failed to make $100,000" award.

 

Does GOTY mean anything anymore?

I remember the year Batman Arkham City: GOTY Edition (A game that above all else will be remembered not for it's GOTY status, but instead for having the worst case art in the history of game cases) came out, a bunch of other games claiming to be GOTY came out as well.

GOTY to me is like a professional wrestling world championship, every small town independant wrestling promotion has a WORLD title, which means theres probably a couple hundred World champions in America alone, so does being a world champion mean anything at this point?

Any idiot with a website can declare a game "GAME OF THE YEAR!" so just about any game can claim to be GOTY really for the most part.

 

Yes, it means "Base Game plus DLC for One Low Price". Or at least that's how it was for Fallout 3.

 

It's now an abbreviation for "some DLC included".

 

I had all of my customers vote on which of my games was the best. Then I called myself an award winning developer.

Problem solved.

Really, it is a double-edged failure. Either the ´award´ is so small that it is probably voted on in some obscure and easily cheatable way.... or else the award is so big that only big developers or indies who sleep with the reviewers can get even considered for the award.

 

Please do share -

I believe top 10s from youtubers carry more weight than most award winners.
I really enjoy AngryJoe's top 10 videos each year, though he can only rate so many games because he only rates what he plays and he doesnt play very many small indie titles.
Wish he would.

 

@theANMATOR2b I'll send you a message.

 

Depends on award. Some random blog? No. GDC Awards (or other recognized industry / platform awards). Yep. Heck even nominations for awards are cool if they are things like BAFTAs and such.

 

No amount of awards can get me to buy a game of a type I don't like anyway. I won't get FIFA or PES no matter how many awards of excellent excellence they get, for instance. I also don't like walkabout sims. By "don't like" I mean "want time machines to be a thing so I can stop them from being created".

 

Like @zombiegorilla for me it would also depends on the award and if i'm interested in the type of game. But i do think awards works as a selling point for the general public especially when it comes to persons that doesn't follow the game industry like we do but still buy and play game from time to time.
Every single product out there can get some sort of award, food, TV, wash machine, etc... it's there because it works, someone that has no idea what to buy has more chance to go towards the awarded product even if those awards are also unknown.

 

When I read "award winning" I'm expecting to see something like this next:
https://de.pinterest.com/md114u/award-winning-recipes/
On Imgur it's a running gag to ask about every recipe posted there: "But is it award winning???".

 

only when choosing a bottle of wine...

 

I have "award winning dice thrower" in my web site bio, so...

 

Dunno if awards have a huge impact on sales, but they sure don't hurt resumes.

 

This. So just "award winning" doesn't say a lot, but listing the awards could be pretty impressive if they're noteworthy.

 

Are there any "awards" that could be taken the wrong way?

 

Something along the lines of:

 

Not that I can think of, but there are plenty of negative awards out there. IGN for example lists it's top worst games every year. Though, guess if your game is on that list, you could just say "award winning".

 

The only awards I care for are IGF and Game Developer Choice Awards...

The Apple design awards are cool, but often a few great games come out one year and none of the same quality the next.

 

Nominated twice. Won once. (Our studio won another year as well, but I didn't work on that game.)

 

I have purchased games after they won awards. But this is almost the opposite effect to the OP. I became aware of and interested in the game because it was featured in some award or list I was interested in.

 

Well, after passing 100k you don't have to remove the splash, you only need to buy Pro.

Actually, joking aside, such award would be a great move that will help to move Unity's public perception into "good game engine" territory since to get it you'd have to
a) make a good game and
b) have it display the splash

which would advertise to people that good games are "made with unity" as well.

 

Thinking about it more I guess being a sort of anti-establishment / anti-formal kind of guy... if the award was chosen by the gamers themselves... that might catch my interest. When there is some panel or "expert" or professional reviewer / critic... no their opinion means very little to me. It doesn't matter whether it's books, movies or games when the critics hate the material I generally like it and vice-versa.

For a long time I have checked out movie reviews just because I know if the top critics hate something I will almost certainly really enjoy it. So if I think a movie looks interesting I kind of go in to their reviews in the hope they won't like it.

 

Might consider WoW movie. Looks like the critics are ripping it to shreds!

 

Ha ha. Crazy. See what I mean. I just watched the Warcraft movie last Sunday with friends and we all thought it was excellent. These critics are just... I don't know really... detached from normal people or something.

I seriously think that is a real risk whether it is movies, books, games, music, art whatever. You have people who become "experts" on the subject material breaking it all down trying to classify it into categories and specific pieces that go into the whole and so forth. And they are so focused on that, like academic viewpoints or something (we see it in game design as well whitepapers discussing various things) it just puts them into a whole different frame of mind than normal folks so they can no longer relate to what normal people actually like. That is my theory anyway.

 

Because sometimes the B movies can actually be amusing? Or at least fun to laugh at?

 

Warcraft movie is a massive hit in china, by the way. $156 million in 5 days or something.

Stuff like that may eventually make movie producers target foreign markets first.

 

Why does that not surprise me? Well at least it was successful somewhere.

Edit: Hah. It beat Star Wars VII over there. That's hilarious.

 

Why are you asking me that question?

Spoiler

Alright, I'm kidding.

 

Well Warcraft is the most successful video game movie of all time. Granted that might not be saying a huge amount but still that counts for something. I don't know what these critics want. The movie had a very strong fantasy sword & sorcerer atmosphere in general. It had Orcs. And humans. And elves. And Dwarves. But mainly it was about the Orcs and Humans. Some great battles. Magic. An interesting story. What's not to like? Grab some nachos & cheese or bucket of popcorn and enjoy.

 

Agree - I'm often perplexed when I see a review of a good game that gets a reduced rating based on - "this game has no online multiplayer component".
Some games are just meant to be played as a single player experiences - and - would not be as good if resources were spent on multiplayer functionality.
But game reviewers/critics have to be biased based on there own past reviews, so it's a mixed bag.

 

"And I'm about fed up with Nashville's ass
And their hand-me-a-trophy-awards" - I Could Be Wrong by Tim Wilson
(warning : appropriate cussing)