The Gameplay Awards 2016| See you next year!

[Revall]

Best Gameplay Newspaper: While all publications nominated are renowned for their quality reporting and editing, the winner of "Best Gameplay Newspaper" is... The Miniluv Messenger!
Under the direction of Cormac, The Miniluv Messenger has been a staple publication in the gameplay sphere for the past many years. One significant aspect about this gameplay newspaper is that it is not afraid to touch controversial topics; in fact, The Miniluv Messenger seeks out these topics and releases accurate information about them.

I'm curious to what the final count was here? Public votes had Hell's Bells winning by about 5.

Congrats to the Miniluv Messenger, I guess the two issues in January and the one issue in December made more of an impact than the year round content Hell worked on.

Heh don't mean to sound so bitter, but I never was a good liar.

If that is the case is OP counting like telegram votes or something because that isn't great for transparency.

[The Stalker]

I'm curious to what the final count was here? Public votes had Hell's Bells winning by about 5.

Congrats to the Miniluv Messenger, I guess the two issues in January and the one issue in December made more of an impact than the year round content Hell worked on.

Heh don't mean to sound so bitter, but I never was a good liar.

If that is the case is OP counting like telegram votes or something because that isn't great for transparency.

Yea, there was an option to telegram your vote, but yea it isn't great for transparency. Public votes for GP newspaper are as follows;

Hell's Bells: 18
The Miniluv Messenger: 12
The Free Press News Service: 9
The Rejected Times: 9
New From the Front: 3
H.A.N.N. Solo: 1

I'm just a bit taken aback since HB was winning by a decent margin, and also had way more content than any two others combined.

[Twins of Hearts]

Congrats to all winners! Most of the names and orgs mentioned are cornerstone and critical to raiding and defending.

Cool to see a nice spread too.

[Cormactopia II]

I'm just a bit taken aback since HB was winning by a decent margin, and also had way more content than any two others combined.

I was surprised as well. I appreciate the votes for The Miniluv Messenger, but it only published three times in 2016, at the very beginning and very end of the year. I think that just goes to show that while these kind of awards can be fun, they're really more about what people know and remember, and aren't necessarily reflective of the best gameplayers and gameplay events of the year.

[The Stalker]

I'm just a bit taken aback since HB was winning by a decent margin, and also had way more content than any two others combined.

I was surprised as well. I appreciate the votes for The Miniluv Messenger, but it only published three times in 2016, at the very beginning and very end of the year. I think that just goes to show that while these kind of awards can be fun, they're really more about what people know and remember, and aren't necessarily reflective of the best gameplayers and gameplay events of the year.

What a humble and eloquently put response Cormac, very mature and logically drawn conclusion.

I on the other hand demand a recount! I declare a writers feud between Hell's Bells and The Miniluv Messenger, and place a voodoo curse on you Cormac and all of gameplay who dared to vote against the Mad King! Damn Russian hackers! You'll all rue this day!

*disappears in a puff of black smoke*

[Todd McCloud]

Quite frankly I'm rather shocked my crappy satirical paper managed to tie for third, lol. But yeah, congratulations to the folks who were nominated and the folks who received the most votes.

[Tim-Opolis]

A full tally would be cool, I'd endorse that strongly.

[Flanderlion]

Miniluv Messenger had more action from its articles, even if they weren't as frequent as Hell's Bells.

Also on most influential, that's the one I disagree with the most. No offense to her, but 'Who?' would be my reply if I didn't have a nation in Euro. Both the other front runners have done more this year.

[Pergamon]

Congratulations.

[Tim-Opolis]

Also on most influential, that's the one I disagree with the most. No offense to her, but 'Who?' would be my reply if I didn't have a nation in Euro. Both the other front runners have done more this year.

Brun is the creator of CAIN, I would say that's rather influential in the grand scheme of things. Not knowing a name doesn't mean the name hasn't done a lot.

[Block II]

Congratulations everyone! Let's see what we can make of 2017.

[Flanderlion]

Also on most influential, that's the one I disagree with the most. No offense to her, but 'Who?' would be my reply if I didn't have a nation in Euro. Both the other front runners have done more this year.

Brun is the creator of CAIN, I would say that's rather influential in the grand scheme of things. Not knowing a name doesn't mean the name hasn't done a lot.

Guess we have different opinions on the importance of CAIN, but doesn't matter and we're not turning this thread into another thread about it.

Congratulations to all winners, and tough luck to the runner ups.

[Sedgistan]

Thanks for running the awards.

[Cormactopia II]

Also on most influential, that's the one I disagree with the most. No offense to her, but 'Who?' would be my reply if I didn't have a nation in Euro. Both the other front runners have done more this year.

In my case -- to push this humility thing to its limit -- bold, loud, and controversial shouldn't be mistaken for influential. What I accomplished last year I accomplished with my wits, brute force, no small degree of luck, and most importantly, the help of a small core group of people without whom I would have failed. I didn't accomplish anything by making the masses like me or what I was doing, or convincing them to support me or my cause. There was nothing influential about me in 2016; I was probably one of the more broadly disliked figures in gameplay, few outside Osiris rallied to the cause that defined my year in gameplay, and any success I had came in spite of that.

Brunhilde was unquestionably, in my mind, the most influential gameplayer of 2016, with Yuno in a close second. Being influential is about the power of persuasion, not about the power to get a lot of attention and cause a lot of commotion -- two things I do admittedly excel at doing.

[LollerLand]

Congratulations to the winners!

[Revall]

What a humble and eloquently put response Cormac, very mature and logically drawn conclusion.

I on the other hand demand a recount! I declare a writers feud between Hell's Bells and The Miniluv Messenger, and place a voodoo curse on you Cormac and all of gameplay who dared to vote against the Mad King! Damn Russian hackers! You'll all rue this day!

*disappears in a puff of black smoke*

Hells Bells is pretty great in terms of regularity and content but Miniuv Messenger is influential in Gameplay so I suppose there is a train of thought that sure it comes out thrice a year maybe but when it does it generally drops a bombshell or two that sticks in everyone's mind and who the author is doesn't hurt in that regard.

Also on most influential, that's the one I disagree with the most. No offense to her, but 'Who?' would be my reply if I didn't have a nation in Euro. Both the other front runners have done more this year.

Brun is the creator of CAIN, I would say that's rather influential in the grand scheme of things. Not knowing a name doesn't mean the name hasn't done a lot.

I'd have to agree with Flander CAIN is a thing but its not a huge thing.

[Ikania]

How the hell did Cormac's spin box win an award? If you want to be a halfway respectable media organization, start by having more than one writer.

And I'm pretty disappointed about Knot too. I don't see any value in rewarding pettiness.

[Brunhizzle]

I'd have to agree with Flander CAIN is a thing but its not a huge thing.

Say what you will about its operation, but CAIN has led to one of the largest military operations ever while succeeding in pushing through the third offensive liberation in the history of NS. The conference brought in representatives from thirty six different regions (matching the number of booths from last year's World Fair) while succeeding in bringing in over 20 signatories, many of which are among the largest regions in the NS world, to make it the largest functioning coalition in existence and perhaps history.

Even with its faults, to say that it's not a "huge thing" is, frankly, ridiculous.

[Ever-Wandering Souls]

If that is the case is OP counting like telegram votes or something because that isn't great for transparency.

Yea, there was an option to telegram your vote, but yea it isn't great for transparency. Public votes for GP newspaper are as follows;

Hell's Bells: 18
The Miniluv Messenger: 12
The Free Press News Service: 9
The Rejected Times: 9
New From the Front: 3
H.A.N.N. Solo: 1

I'm just a bit taken aback since HB was winning by a decent margin, and also had way more content than any two others combined.

Several categories have wild swings like that. Take best raider. A quick paper tally of public votes shows:

Yuno and I tied at 24
Knot at 6
NSA at 4
Scar and DK at 3
Mek/Zao at 1

Knot won, so that means he overcame an 18-point public deficit to do so. Has to have been a decent tg turnout.

[The Gameplay Awards 2016]

On DOS players:

You voted for them.

On Influence:

It is up to you to decide what it means to be influential or even best, player or newspaper or otherwise.

On Dark Horses:

Turnout was fantastic this year compared to last year, as we mentioned. A lot of the final action came down to telegrams, because public ones were counted first. Voting distribution graphs are also on the shortlist to do for next year, so we can truly see how voters vote.

See you next year!

quickedit: looking back through Excel, tight categories included "Most Influential Gameplayer", "Best Raider", "Best Up-and-Coming Raider", "Best Invader Organization", "Gameplay Thread of the Year", "Best Gameplay Newspaper", and "Biggest Meltdown of the Year".

[Roavin]

Congratulations to the winners. Also, thank you to the mysterious person running this, both for the effort and for the explanations given for each winner, which are informative and well thought-out.

That being said, I can't help but mention that the winners of the awards shouldn't be held as the actually best people in their awards. We humans (... we are humans, right?) are very susceptible to a bunch of fascinating psychological effects, especially recency bias and the familiarity principle, and therefore results like these are always off.

Especially the familiarity principle applies here. Just from the defender side, I can name a bunch of people who deserve recognition and didn't even get nominated, like United States of Vietnam, Funkadelia, Olevsky, or Ravania Ultra; not to mention people like Altmoras who did get nominated but would have likely deserved more votes (but didn't since he wasn't flounting his face all across GP circles like I was). I'm sure the same applies to the raider side. Familiarity principle applies here so I can't think of that many examples, but nobody mentioned the deadly triggers that Vapid Vasentius sets, for example.

Furthermore, I think there were alot of people that could have been nominated had the nomination ticket itself not been seen as a sort of vote already, but rather as a chance by later nominators to nominate people that may not have been nominated yet and deserving of one. A sort of committee that tried to evaluate things objectively and based on merit would likely have come up with different winners for several categories (including the category I won).

All in all, this was fun to see and witness, and I do think the winners are deserving of some sort of recognition, but I hope people realize that these awards are basically like a WatchMojo video - very fun to watch and informative, but the results themselves are just a mere byproduct of the entertainment value.

---

Speaking of entertainment...

lol @ raiders voting for SPSF instead of TGW out of salt. SPSF is great and I'm quite proud of where we are, but still.
lol @ defenders voting for TGW as best raider organization out of spite. Yeah, that includes myself.
lol @ Larry not even voting on anything even remotely defender-y. Yeah, you're raider-pure edgy, we get it.
lol @ The Invaders lobbying their members reeeeally hard to go vote (and I know for certain they did - people tell me stuff). I'm sure that had absolutely nothing to do with the results, considering that for the Best Invader category, there's an 18 vote gap between Yuno/Souls and Larry in the public vote, or considering that for the Gameplay Thread of the Year category, there's a 22 vote gap between CAIN and The Invaders (which wasn't even in second place) but the results state it was a tight race between those two threads. Yeah. Nothing weird about that at all.

... and probably a bunch of other things that News with Booze will hilariously (and deservedly) satirize tomorrow. \o/

[Revall]

I'd have to agree with Flander CAIN is a thing but its not a huge thing.

Even with its faults, to say that it's not a "huge thing" is, frankly, ridiculous.

Difference of opinion what CAIN will amount to is still very much in question but that doesn't detract from your work, organization and Noble intentions in spearheading it

Despite the success of invasion on The NSIA, with over eighty updaters showing up, the CAIN has gradually devolved into the very things it sought to cover up in uniting against Nazism -- factional differences and personal antagonism -- with many of its leaders expressing dismay and disillusionment over the organization. While it's future may be uncertain, it certainly does not bring the shining spotlight of gameplay away from Brunhilde.

[Sygian II]

How the hell did Cormac's spin box win an award? If you want to be a halfway respectable media organization, start by having more than one writer.

Yet you voted for a newspaper that is run, written, edited, and published all by the same person?

Don't let your personal grudges make you look petty.

... and probably a bunch of other things that News with Booze will hilariously (and deservedly) satirize tomorrow. \o/

Entirely.

[Ikania]

Yes, and you'll notice that Todd doesn't even pretend to be halfway serious or legit. At all.

[Pierconium]

Congratulations to the winners.

While it was nice to be nominated and to receive some votes, I can't help but be a bit disappointed in myself. I've always preferred my influence to be within the shadows. If it is being seen then I must be doing at least part of it wrong. Carelessness in old age I guess.