Judge voting for the ENnies is on!

http://www.enworld.org/judgevoting/

This is the most important step in terms of shaping next year’s Ennie Awards. Folks whose profiles (last I checked) strongly interested me are:

- Jeramy Ware (his ennies judge blog at http://enniejudge.blogspot.com/ is stellar)
- Chris Gath
- Zachary Houghton

… but there may be more (I intend to look over their profiles again and look for signs of small press or indie friendliness in their gaming experiences). I also think the women deserve a boost in the voting; I’d like to see the panel as diverse as possible on that front, so rounding that out with Elizabeth and Gertie may be the way to go.  Five judges, total, get in — so certainly rank as fits your conscience, even offering up #6 and so forth choices if you see a lot of folks you like — but please consider keeping the above names in your top five!

Does anyone have some favorite judges they’ve got an eye on? Let’s share our discoveries. There’s a lot to read in the profiles, and I believe it’s only this week that votes can be cast.

The Ennies votes are approaching 10,000 in number of votes made.  Has the Summer Revolution’s voice been heard?  August will tell the tale.  But we’re not there yet!  You’ve still got a few days to make sure you and all your friends have voted.  Go vote!

So, thanks to everyone who’s voted for Spirit of the Century so far as a part of the Ennies, whether or not it was part of the Summer Revolution.

Now that I’m back from DexCon, there’s just one week left in the Ennies voting … and they’re up to 6000 votes. My brain’s fried by the con, but I’m trying to think about some questions. I’d love your thoughts!

Mainly I’m wondering:

- How many of our fans are numbered among those 6000?
- What could we do to reach more voters and get some backing for SOTC (and, ideally, our “indie allies” on the Summer Revolution list)?
- How underdoggy are we? Did we come off too “pro” somehow in our campaigning to get that underdog push? (I haven’t seen as extensive of a spread of the Summer Revolution idea as I had hoped…)

Thoughts?

This is an exciting year for “indies at the ennies”, but it’s going to stop cold at being just about the nominations rather than the awards unless our “fan push” gets some serious support in there.

Moreover, this is the point at which I want to say, anyone can vote on the Ennies. It’s an open process. So even if you’re only a fan of, say, Spirit of the Century, or Burning Empires, or Dictionary of Mu, and don’t have any feelings about anything else, getting in there and voting on just those one or two categories where you do have an opinion is going to be far better than voting on none at all. If that’s what’s been holding you back, now’s the time to hit the voting site and vote on whatever you’re willing to vote on.

We just got word of this over on Story-Games (thanks, Buzz!):

This is on the ENWorld site right now:
Notice: Due to an error in the ballot form for the ENnies it was necessary to add a missing entry and reset the ballot forms. If you voted before 1:10 PM EDT you will need to vote again. Our apologies for the inconvenience.

I know this means that I need to vote again. Make sure that you vote again too, if you were one of our “early adopters”!

Master RPG.net reviewer Christopher Richeson has posted up a nice collection of review links to the games on the indie ennie ballot, over on his LiveJournal. If you want to make sure you know something about these games before voting, definitely check out what Chris has to say!

http://cwricheson.livejournal.com/24154.html

The Mission

Small-press, creator-owned, independent games win when their fans speak up and let their voices be heard, and the Ennie Awards this year have an unprecedented number of indie titles up for nominations in a variety of categories. That means that now is the time to speak!

Word of mouth only works when people are talking. So here’s what the Summer Revolution is asking of you. Become a Summer Hero by posting about the indie games that are up for nomination and why they need folks to get the vote out. If you see any games at all on our Summer Ballot that you know and love, we need your help! Post about the Summer Revolution on your site. Send folks to the Ennie Awards site to place their votes on behalf of these great small press games.

Together, we can speak with one voice and be heard. The Ennies have done a great job this year reaching out to us as a community, giving us a chance to stand and be heard. Let’s work together to reach back and put these creator owned games on the map!

Voting Starts on July 16th and lasts only two weeks. Anyone can vote!

The Message

Link to the Summer Revolution in your email signature! Also, copy the following HTML code (click inside the box, choose Edit->”Select All”, and control-C to copy it) and use it on your own blog:

<table border="1"> <tr> <td> <p align="left"><strong>I am a summer hero!</strong> And you can be too!</p> <p align="left"><a href="/"><img src="https://www.summer-revolution.com/hero_smaller.gif" alt="Summer Hero!" title="Summer Hero!" border="0" height="309" width="440"></a></p> <p align="left">The 2007 Ennies votes are happening, and the small press games that are up for awards need your help. If you’re a fan of <b>Spirit of the Century, Burning Empires, Lacuna, Dictionary of Mu, Dawning Star: Helios Rising, Faery’s Tale, or Hollow Earth Expedition</b>, this is a chance for you to stand up like me and make a difference. The voting is happening starting July 16th over at the Ennie Awards site and lasts only two weeks. There’s no better time to cast your vote than today!</p> <p> You find a sample ballot here: <a href="/">Grab a Sample Ballot</a> <p> And you can place your votes here during the voting period starting on July 16th: <a href="http://www.ennieawards.com/voting.html">The Ennie Awards Voting Site</a> <p align="left">Together we can be heard. Become a Summer Hero. Cast your vote, and let other people know how to become heroes themselves!</p> </td> </tr> </table><p align="center"><a href="/">Find out how to put this message in your own blog!</a><p>

It looks like this:

Your support is greatly appreciated. On behalf of all the small press nominated games, we thank you for your support. We couldn’t have gotten here without you. Together, you can help us run the last mile.

Greetings, heroes!

I’ve been looking into how the Ennies voting is done, and here’s the quick skinny: they do it in an “instant run-off” style, where you rank the ones you’d like to see win, and in what order, so if your first choice isn’t tied for the win, it’ll go to your second, your third, etc…

So with that in mind, I’m going to share my ballot with you here, complete with voting rankings for each of the awards. Regardless of how you decide to vote personally, you’d be doing the indie scene a great service by giving each of the nominees I’m listing here some “backing” as you rank your votes in each category.

Last year at least the Ennies gave out both a silver and a gold ennie in an umber of categories. This means that second place choices matter! And when it comes to indie games, they succeed or fail on the strength of their word of mouth. Help give indie games a voice by including them in your vote.

But enough of that rah-rah campaigning — here’s my ballot.