Mission Statement and Rules
Origins Awards
The Game Manufacturers Association
Purpose Statement
The purpose of the Origins Awards (OAs) is to reward excellence in game design in order to increase publicity and sales for the nominees, the winners, Origins, and social games in general.
Selecting the Award Nominees
Award Colleges
The Origins Awards sets products into colleges for the purpose of judging like products with like products. These colleges are specific enough to gather similar products together, but general enough so that each college contains a good number of games and is pertinent to the public. (A list of colleges in after the next section.)
Award Categories
Colleges are separated into categories to further place like games in competition with each other. Again these categories are specific enough to gather similar games together, but general enough so that each category contains a good number of games and is pertinent to the public. Juries for each college may create new or remove categories during the judging process if necessary. A category must have at least 10 products competing in it in a given year. (A list of usual categories within colleges is below.)
Colleges with their Usual Categories
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• Historical College — Best Historical Game or Expansion; Best Historical Miniature Line
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Collectible/Trading
• Non-Collectable Card Game — Best Non-Collectable Card Game or Expansion
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Submission of Eligible Candidates
Any publisher, designer, or member of a jury can submit any eligible product for consideration during the course of a year or before the published deadline. If a manufacturer/publisher submits a product or products into a category, then no other product(s) that fit(s) said category from that manufacturer/publisher are considered. If (an)other product(s) published by such a manufacturer/publisher is/are submitted (by a designer or jury member), the product will not be judged. Jury members and designers may submit any products from any manufacturer/publisher that does submit on their own.
Submissions for the award year open on January 1st of a given award year and close on January 31st of the following year. The Awards are given out at Origins in that following year. It is highly recommended that you submit your product(s) as early as possible to give the juries time to judge the product(s).
Origins Award eligibility timeframe is based on the “official release" of a product, which is essentially when the item was placed for sale to the general public. Defining “placed for sale to the general public” is up to the jury, but here are some general guidelines that they use:
1. Primary market release date: This is the key deciding point. When did the product enter the retail market?
2. Copyright date: This can be, but is not necessarily the deciding factor.
(Some products are released years before and years after their copyright date.)
3.
Not a “pre-release”: Was their a promotional pre-release of the product?
4. Not a micro-release: OA eligibility standards allow retail sales of "less than 300" copies of the product over no more than three years before the entry date is acceptable if never before submitted.
5. Re-release: If a product is a new release of an older product version, the new version must have been changed over 50 percent from the old version (including artwork, packaging, and design—design is given the most weight) as determined by the jury.
6. Extenuating Circumstances: If a product was released but had some verifiable and justifiable unfair obstruction (such as Hurricane Katrina, or 9-11, etc.) affecting the released to the market and/or entry into the Origins Awards, exceptions can be granted.
Submission Process
Origins Award submissions must include all
of the following information and items:
• Intended Product Category [categories are listed below]
• The name of the individual and/or company making the submission (with contact
information)
• The name of the product
• The name of the manufacturer/publisher (with contact information)
• 7 copies of the product (or samples in
the case of complete miniature lines) – one for each juror and one for the
Academy Library*.
• A CD with
- 300 DPI images of the product, the
product title/logo, and the company’s logo (for awards posters, etc.)
- The name(s) of the key creative(s) (limited to five) involved in the product.
- A 100 words (or less) description of the
product
- A “product review article” with photos (optional)
Note 1: If any of the above is e-mailed to the staff, then it does not need to be included in the mailed package/on a CD.
Note 2: If the product is published electronically, download passwords (or whatever is appropriate) can be e-mailed to the staff for dissemination to the jurors; or CDs with the product on them may be sent in.
Note 3: We understand that a designer or jury member may not have access to all of the above when submitting. Please help us by making your best effort.
Please mail materials to:
GAMA Attn: Origins Awards
280 N. High
Columbus, OH 43215
*Winning products are placed in the library. Other product is donated to the hard-working volunteers at Origins Game Fair.
Vanguard Awards
The Vanguard Awards are giving for unique and innovative products that either don’t fit the colleges above or that stand out so much from previous products that they deserve even further acknowledgement. It is rare that a Vanguard Award is given. A Vanguard Awardee is in one of two categories:
Innovative
This is for 1st time-out products, each in a NEW class of it's own, each fitting the description of Pioneering, Revolutionary, Ground-breaking, Avant-garde and Inventive. A good example would be Constructible Card Games such as PoTSM.
Unique
Something NOT NEW, but still in a class by itself.
Anything that is an exception to current categories, and NOT a new thing. Described as distinctive, incomparable, and/or original. Also micro-venue products and any product that could not be considered elsewhere.
Nominations to the Hall Of Fame
The purpose of the Hall of Fame (HoF) is to recognize games, companies, and individuals who have made contributions to game-play, the game industry, and/or the game hobby of great distinction. Academy members may make nominations for significant lifetime achievement of quality, longevity, and positive impact on the Gaming Community or Industry.
To nominate, Academy members may simply do this:
Send by e-mail to ACADEMYCHAIR@GAMA.org and Minion@GAMA.org.
Cite the following:
1. Full Name of nominee:
2. Nominee email address:
3. Nominee phone number:
4. Has Nominee been notified of Nomination and consent?
5. Cite in a ~BRIEF~ description:
.Nominees most noteworthy lifetime achievements
.Nominees longevity of contribution in the gaming community
.Nominee contributions impact on the gaming community
[Bullet format is always best]
Note: We understand that you may not have access to all of the above when submitting. Please help us by making your best effort.
Determining the Nominees
Jury members individually and thoroughly examine the eligible products in their category, and discuss the products’ merits and flaws with their jury peers. Each jury member scores his or her top 10 product choices in order from 1 (least deserving of an award) to 10 (most deserving of an award). Jurors may only vote on products they certify they have examined sufficiently (at least a representational sampling of the product or product line), and must exclude from their scores all other products. For this reason, GAMA strongly encourages each manufacturer/publisher to supply copies of its products to the relevant jurors, including alternates, as early as possible.
The Jury Foreperson totals the scores of all products from the jurors and establishes a list of products with the 10 highest score totals. These products are announced to the retailers as the slated awards for them to vote on at GAMA Trade Show. The actual jury voting sheets are subsequently sent to GAMA’s Executive Director for verification and archival filing. Totals will be published for public to see.
Each GAMA Retail Member in attendance at GTS receives one vote in the nomination voting. Each Member scores its top five product choices in order from 1 (least deserving of an award) to five (most deserving of an award). The GAMA staff totals the scores of all products from the jurors and establishes a list of products with the five highest score totals. These products are announced to the public as the Official Origins Award Nominees for the year and are set to be voted on by attendees at the Origins International Game Expo.
Juries may decide to skip the retail voting process for some categories, such as play-by-mail, if the products in that category are not usually sold through retail outlets. In this case the jury picks the Nominees by choosing their top five rather than their top ten vote-getters.
The Jury
Jury Formation
A jury of knowledgeable people is formed for each product category. The members of each jury are appointed by the GAMA Full Voting Members division, the GAMA Retailers Division, the GAMA Wholesalers Division (with appointments coordinated by the awards committee). Jury members often come from members of the Academy of Adventure Games and Design (AAGAD). Each of the GAMA divisions sends one person to each jury, save for the Full Voting Members, who send three and one alternate. Once the appointments are complete, each category jury elects one from their ranks to be their Jury Foreperson, who serves as the primary jury contact.
If possible, no jury features two or more jurors who work for the same company at the time of their appointment, and the body of jurors comes from diverse backgrounds.
Any person can submit his or her name and credentials to any of the appointing bodies for consideration for serving on a jury. Others may nominate credible people as jurors, but the nominees have the right to decline the nomination. Should fewer than five jurors be willing to serve for an awards college by Origins of the eligible year, then Origins Awards are not be granted that year for the college in question.
These appointments are announced at the GAMA Trade Show for the awards to be held the next year. Contact information for each juror shall be published.
Juror-Product Conflicts of Interest Policy
1. Juror conflict is defined as any case where an OA Juror has a real or easily perceived interest in the success of any OA submitted product(s)
Conflict may be:
a. Confliction by affiliation: Juror's real or easily perceived affiliation with a company, a product, the product's proprietors, or against an industry competition's product
b. Confliction by proprietorship: Jurors direct design/production/owning role in a product or against an industry competition's product
2. Declaration: All jurors must declare any potential juror-product conflict of Interest with his own product or an industry competition's to the Academy Chair and fellow jurors in advance of all product discussion or jury voting. Reclusion is not required
3. Transparency: All jurors' nomination votes are submitted and totaled transparent to all fellow jurors and the Academy Chair before the submission-date to the awards committee and open to co-juror dispute for a review period
4. Review: For any disputed conflict issues, each jury member will provide his/her opinion and the awards committee will review and rule on it. Ruling is final
5. The Academy Chair and Jury Foremen will implement these measures with respect and an assumption of integrity for jurors who have both the professional expertise to be a juror, and products submitted for awards
Jury Benefits
For serving on an awards jury, the jurors are granted free communicating membership in GAMA and free supporting membership in the Academy in the year that they serve as jurors. Additionally, the submitted products reviewed by the jurors become the property of said jurors after they have completed their work. (Divisions of GAMA may amend these benefits for their selectees.)
Determining the Award Winners
Origins Voting
In
the tradition of the Charles Roberts awards (the original name of the Origins
Awards), attendees of the Origins International Game Expo vote for the final
award winners. The Origins attendees each score category nominees from 1 (least
deserving) to 5 (most deserving). All scores from all attendees who vote are
totaled, and the nominees are given a final ranking order. The products with
the highest vote totals for each award win the designated Origins Award.
Members of the
The winners are announced to the public at the Origins Awards Ceremony. Percentages of voters are published.
Award Considerations
Defining Categories
In all cases, it is up to the juries to determine which products fit into which categories. Products can only be eligible in one category. Products which can possibly be interpreted as being eligible in more than one category are considered to be in dispute.
In case of a dispute, the Jury Foreman makes the final assignment based upon how the product was marketed. When reasonable, the product shall be placed into the category preferred by the manufacturer/publisher. The manufacturer/publisher may choose to take a product out of the competition if they do not agree with the category chosen. The following is an example of a product definition:
Traditional Card Game College: Best Traditional Card Game or Expansion
The Traditional Card Game or Card Game Expansion Origins Award is to be granted to a game or game expansion that principally features cards and card play. Cards are defined as flat, polygonal objects whose depth is far less than their height or width. They may be composed of paper, plastic, or any other physical substance. The game or game expansion may include other components but cards should be the principal ones in both number and importance. The primary means to achieve the game or game expansion's objective must be the manipulation of the cards, either in a hand or on the playing surface. Managing the play of cards, their interaction with each other, and their interaction with the players or other components must be paramount. Finally, the game or game expansion should not feature a customization component using cards not supplied in the product.
Jury Evaluation Criteria
Each year the Juries will re-evaluate a general list of evaluation criteria for each Award Category, agreeing on what is more or less important and using the following guideline. As subject matter experts, Juries may also decide to let individual jurors determine for themselves what their criteria will be.
The following is an example of attributes of a product (or product line) for consideration (All are inevitably subjective):
Board Game Jury’s Award Criteria List
1. Quality of game play [quality, fun and/or versatility, genre/theme and mechanics match up]
2. Originality, innovation, uniqueness, and creativity
3. Presentation and quality of components
4. Replay value
5. Balance of skill versus luck
6. Ease of setup, clarity of rules, and ability to quickly get into the game
7. Value, or Cost, vs. What You Get (as an extreme, a great $20 game with all pewter figures beats a great $80 all-paper game that you can only use once)
Vanguard Award
At the discretion of the awards committee, one or more Vanguard Awards may also be awarded to exceptionally innovative products. As noted, this award shall primarily be used to recognize excellent products that do not fit well into the standard award categories. Nominations are accepted for Vanguard Awards, but awarding products will be at the committee’s discretion.
Hall Of Fame
Individuals
who have been inducted into the
Voting Transparency
Transparency
The final jury, retail, and attendee voting results, by number or by percentage, is published upon conclusion of the awards.
