Thinking about just my own experience, there’s been some brilliant games out this year. And I’ve played some brilliant older games for the first time as well.
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A MESSAGE FROM THE GODS
Hey! Yeah, I’d totally be up for getting you folks involved in the Pearple’s Choice stuff - I’ll admit I’ve been too busy to have MANY ideas, so please do feel free to insert as many oars as you’d like!
Matt
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Well, here’s my full list of proposed categories, with notes on eligibility:
- Best game of 2020 (must have a BGG publication year of 2020)
- Best [type] game of 2020, where [type] is each of:
- Abstract Strategy
- Children’s
- Customizable
- Family
- Party
- Soloable
- Strategy
- Thematic
- War
(BGG pub year is 2020, and [type] must appear in the top two types on the game’s BGG page, except for Soloable; in that case either official or fan player count must include 1.)
- Best game artwork (BGG pub year is 2020)
- Best expansion (BGG pub year is 2020; can be an expandalone but must be combinable with another game)
- Erik Tengblad award for best game from an earlier year I only played for the first time in 2020 (BGG pub year is earlier than 2020)
- Best game review (first published in 2020)
- Special 2020 award: Best socially distanced game (any game is eligible)
- Special 2020 award #2: Game you’re anticipating but haven’t had a chance to get enough players over yet (any game is eligible)
If I were organising this I would use the Hugo rules: in each category, each user gets up to 5 nominations. These are tallied to produce a top 6, on which people then make a ranked vote. I’m happy to do the back-end stuff for that, and indeed explain it; I can bore for England on voting systems.
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How about a special 2020 COVID-19 Clause Category: Most Anticipated game of 2020 that you haven’t played yet because you’re not allowed to have that many people over?
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I’d like a category for games that were only published in my country in 2020 because… no just kidding. I can get all the new games here, I was just surprised at my lack of 2020 published games when I thought I was totally only playing the latest hotness. I appear to have a lag of about 1 year 
I like the idea of Hugo rules. I just doubt that I’ll be able to nominate more than a couple games to some categories (just like I do with the Hugos). So are we going to have time to try and play the nominees after nominations are done?
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I have no idea of schedule. A month of nominations, then a month of voting, would take us over Christmas when it’ll be hard to get new games quickly…
I was thinking how many of those new games are available on all those online sites… especially this year. Many more publishers have tried to get their games into either BGA, TTS mods or Tabletopia.
If we wait for me to get all the nominees played, we risk the very real chance of the sun entering it’s red giant phase prior to concluding the vote.
As usual, I will be a proponent of waiting until Q2 of 2021 prior to judging all games “released” in 2020 due to global release schedules as well as time to find opportunities and opponents for games.
That said, I know there typically is a wave of “best of (year)” starting in December and tailing off towards March. And, if the decision is made to go that route, I’d like to see “Best of 2019” and, perhaps more exhausting, “Best [category] game of 2019”.
But, then again, I’d also be happy with “Best game published between (year - 10) and (year - 6)”, e.g. “Best Game of 2010-2014” And perhaps other ranges as well.
But, at the end of the day… awards and votes like these are really about the new hotness which is something I try to avoid.
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De Hondt?
Actually, some sort of ranked voting would make it interesting because of the relatively few number of voters.
As we’re doing this, does The Crew count as a 2020 release? I believe officially it was 2019, but I don’t think it was widely available until April or so this year.
BGG is sometimes not even accurate unless you happen to grab a particular game at a convention (not so much an issue this year for obvious reasons). I think, perhaps, broadening the nominations to any game from 2020 or 2019 as long as at least one of the localized versions on BGG shows a release date of 2020?
That’s not to say “any localized version first released in 2020 should be considered”. But they could be. The problem, then, is that localized versions that lagged behind German and/or English will struggle to compete for votes.
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I would be in favor of letting games that got translated in 2020 be eligible… i have quite a few games that I only got this year in German. not that I would nominate Tapestry for anything but „best collection of plastic houses“ but there are more. The Crew was definitely 2019 in Germany…
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The argument for “BGG date = year of eligibility” is simply that it’s easy to verify. The disadvantage is that it’s sometimes “wrong” (fsvo), and while I heard people talking about The Crew last year it certainly seems that it’s had a lot more attention (in English) this year. So one might say “if it’s not eligible on BGG date, explain in your nomination why it’s eligible anyway”.
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As long as there’s an appeal process, I’m fine with “BGG date = year of eligibility” as the 80/20 rule.
Please note there was no pearples choice in 2019.
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That’s true. We should, perhaps, do a catch up “Best of 2019” with a subset of categories?
Back on the subject of categories: any interest in a Best Reprint of 2020? (well, perhaps “best revised edition released in 2020” but that doesn’t roll of the tongue quite as well) e.g. The King is Dead 2nd Edition
OK, rough plan with 4-week intervals:
- Keep working out details now
- Open nominations on 16 November
- Close nominations on 14 December, open voting ASAP thereafter
- Close voting on 11 January
Feel free to say why this is bad and we should do it another way. 
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Looks good, although I doubt we’ll need a month for voting. It would be good to post the nomination process on the site and on discord to drive some traffic here.
A best of 2019 brings The King’s Dilemma into the mix, which has to be a good thing.
If there are 5 nominees, maybe give one 3 points, one 2 points and one a single point?
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I don’t do Disqus or Discord, but I hope someone (@RossM?) may be willing to do this.
Does it make more sense to do “best of 2019” and “best of 2020”, or to merge the two years? It’s quite a few things to nominate and vote for already; my inclination is to merge.
The Hugo system has been poked at quite hard and seems to work well. My feeling is that the time to order your choices is during the actual voting.
(The voting is instant-runoff, so basically: rank your choices. First-place votes are counted. If one item has a majority, it wins. Otherwise, whichever has least is eliminated, and the ballots which put that item first are notched up one level to be added to the tally of the other items. Continue until there’s a winner.)
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