A Minor Nitpick

I'm going to pick on OgreCave.com a little in this post, but I want you to know I heartily recommend the site for gaming news. Not to drive my own readers away, but if you come to this here gameblog for my occasional industry news (I sure hope that's not why you're here) you need to understand something: I get that sort of stuff third-hand from sites like the Ogre Cave.

Now on to my gripe. Our hobby has a lot of websites with awards and pseudo-I'm-pimping-my-fave-products-and-calling-them-awards. Some of these are more credible than others (*cough*Origins suck*cough*). If you've got the kind of page that pushes a particular list of awards-winners, please do me a favor. Link the winners and nominees so I can check out and/or buy the product. I'm kind of embarrassed to even have to point this out, but why go to the trouble of pushing a list of award winners if you're going to make me google all the products? Seriously, WTF? I want to know more about all the shiny products listed in the Ogre's Choice Awards 2006 and I think the Cave wants me to want to know more. Why not make it easy for me to get to that information?

I know I'm singling out the Ogre's Choice Awards when that's unfair. But I expect the people running the Origins to screw everything up, so I don't even need to look at their page to know there are no links. (I just double checked and I'm right. No, I'm not going to link to the page. In case you couldn't read it earlier when I was being coy, the Origins suck.) I think even the awesome Diana Jones Award needs to get on the ball with this problem. Their page could use a lot more nominee links. And the ENnies, which has its shit together far more than most other awards I've seen, could use some more linkage in their archives of past winners. The nominees for this year's ENnies are all linked properly. Kudos for that.

So if you are thinking about having some sort of industry award, please link the nominees and winners. You want your winners to prosper, right? Then make it easy for Joe Surfer to get to them. Joe Surfer probably isn't going to vote (if you have open voting) and he probably won't go to the awards ceremony (if you have one), but he sure as hell is the guy driving any largescale commercial success. Don't make him find the product you're holding up as an example of excellence.