Awards are in the air. Voting is open for the Ennies, and the Diana Jones awards shortlist has been announced. In large part this has been greeted with enthusiasm, because both slates are filled to bursting with fantastic products. This has been a really wonderful year for gaming and it is telling how many fantastic games did not make any final lists. They were not omitted because of any lack of love or quality, but rather because there are so many good options that even great things end up on the floor. It’s a shame that it happens, but for gaming as a whole it’s a great thing.

Of course, along with that positivity comes along all the other usual culprits. Snippy, passive aggressive dismissal of games. Clique voting that will vote their bloc and ignore everything else. Criticism of judges and voting that assumes that this must be easy, especially if people just did it the _right_ way. I admit, I find it a little maddening. I love these games, and I’d love to discuss them, but this is not discussion. It’s internet poison with a healthy topping of nerdfury, and it wears at the soul.

So, let me ask you a favor. Take a look at the list – any list – and pull down a product from it that you don’t think should be there and crack it open. You don’t have to read it, or look at the pictures or anything else, but I’d like you to look at the credits page. Maybe there’s only one name there, maybe there are dozens – whatever the case, please, don’t just glance at it. Take a minute to actually read each name.

Every one of those people is someone who loves this hobby so much that they have put effort into actually making something for it. If you’ve made something, however big or small, you should understand what that means and respect that effort. More importantly, you should respect that love. Think about that a little and remember those people next time you’re going to talk about these games, because they are the people you’re talking about.

I’m not saying that you need to go easy on the games just to be nice to these people. If there is something you don’t like about a game that you can express in a reasonable fashion (or even a moderately unreasonable one) then by all means do so. But when you do, remember that you are not talking about Story Games or WOTC or The Forge or Scandinavian LARPers or White Wolf or whatever abstraction you might imagine is milling out these games. You’re talking about people.

This may seem like a bunch of touchy-feely nonsense, so let me lay down the three reasons this is the practical thing to do:

1. When you dismiss games in broad swaths, you sound ignorant. Someone who talks about the flaws in Hunter or Dogs in the Vineyard has something to say that could be interesting and fruitful even if I disagree. Someone who dismisses everything “Indie” or from a big publisher just sounds like they have an axe to grind.
2. This is a small hobby, and when you paint with an overbroad brush, you are going to catch a lot of unintended targets in your wake. Perhaps even more problematically, you’re going to get their friends. Most game writers have pretty thick skins out of necessity, but when your shotgun blast, one-size-fits-all criticism hits people they know, especially people who are less used to it, then you have just flagged yourself as a bad guy.
3. By extension, when you remember that games are made up of the passionate work of people, they become vastly more approachable (both the games and the people). For people who have created, failing to respect the work of others is just a kind of asinine hubris, but for people who haven’t, there is often a more understandable kind of confusion. The idea that games are these semi-immaculate texts, impossibly produced by these monolithic consortiums (and a few rogue artistes), is a kind of painfully prevalent one. It can create an impression that someone like Robin Laws, Luke Crane or Mike Mearls* is an inapproachable figure, too cool for the likes of us. That’s utter crap, of course, and the first step in dismissing that illusion is to grasp that these are people, not mysterious book-making wizards or some such nonsense. People you can talk to and have a beer with. Realizing that is the only way you’re ever actually going to have that beer.

Just something I needed to get off my chest. Unrelatedly, I riff about a few of the Diana Jones nominees here, and I heartily encourage others to weigh in as well.

* - The exception is, of course, Jared Sorenson, who is a robot wrapped entirely in harvested human skin. Speak to him only if you wish to end your days upon this earth.