"Now just hang on there a second," you might say, "I thought you didn't want to put your thumb on the scale of The Awards! I thought you weren't a judge! Is this all some kind of giant conspiracy to just recognize the games you like???"
Well, rude interrupting straw-person, I don't, I'm not, and it isn't. What I'm talking about is categories of games that I think should have a home in The Awards and how to design towards that goal. In particular, I'm talking about two recently-defined (though certainly not actually new) genres of game.
#1: Faggot Games
I'm starting with something potentially controversial and uncomfortable because these are exactly the kinds of games I want to see in The Awards. If you're unfamiliar, Darling Demon Eclipse (the host of The Awards 2024's winner announcement stream) somewhat defined the genre in January:
- Loud queer sexuality, without a desire to make play more comfortable for cishet people and prudes.
- Departure from popular axioms around player and character consent, and broad rejection of the modern safety framework for something more interpersonal and robust.
- A central role for fetish, kink and sexual fantasies. Faggot games aren't always necessarily /about/ these things, but they loop back to them as much as possible.
- A focus on challenging and unexpected visuals. Blend the cozy and the macabre, the outside and the mainstream, in ways they didn't know they even wanted. Keep them guessing.
"Keep them guessing" is a great axiom all by itself for The Awards, but when I say that I want faggot games submitted to The Awards, I specifically mean that I want gross, uncomfortable, horrific games to be submitted, games that push the limits of what you might feel comfortable reading, let alone playing. I don't want stuff like faggot games, I don't want games in the spirit of faggot games, I want actual. Faggot. Games. Made by faggots, for faggots.
The problem, of course, is whether the judges will necessarily agree with me. And they have every right to disagree, of course! This is not The Faggot Awards, after all. (Eclipse already did that. Twice, kind of.) But what I do want is to have judges who won't reject these kinds of games out of hand simply because they might not be 'for' them.
I also do not want to put judges in a position where they feel obligated to engage with something that could cause them distress. Faggot games are challenging; they have sharp edges that could and probably will cut you when handled. What I hope to do is create an environment where when judges find themselves with cuts, they can apply bandages as needed and go back for more - maybe with gloves on this time.
I'm realizing that I, as the Coordinator, am going to need to take a more active role in the judging process. Not in choosing the games, but in communicating with the judges, understanding where they're at with the games, and maybe even actively challenging them to explain or defend some of the opinions they express. This is all a delicate balance to strike, and it runs a greater risk of overreach on my part, but it also means I need to choose judges who can, with both love and irritation, tell me to fuck off and leave them alone when needed.
#2: Expressionist Games
I think it relatively unlikely that anyone in 2025 could have found this post without already being aware of Jay Dragon's Expressionist Games Manifesto, but if by some miracle you have then go ahead and follow that link. I will not wait for you to catch up, so I suggest you read it quickly.
Whatever you think about expressionist games and this manifesto (and I have thoughts about both that are not pertinent to this conversation), they're a fascinating perspective on games and design that opens up some really fruitful artistic visions.
They are also (take it from someone who will soon wrap up playing in a Triangle Agency campaign) deeply frustrating at times.
The big challenge I see here is that expressionist games are polarizing and demanding. The multi-award-winning Triangle Agency clearly doesn't need any help from The Awards to recognize its artistic merit, but the expressionist games to come certainly might. These are games that benefit from deep dives into their dense texts, that want you to sit and think about what they're saying (and what they're leaving out), that might seem difficult to bring to the table or 'too much' to properly process. The timeline of The Awards is not particularly well suited to all of these needs.
Just out of necessity, The Awards does not have the luxury of giving judges all the time they could possibly need. And out of sheer logistics, the judges cannot take all the time they could possibly need - they have lives, after all, and they're giving so much of it to The Awards already. This challenge dovetails with what I grappled with in my previous Design Diary, trying to get as much good shit into contention for The Awards while also keeping the workload hopefully reasonable (or at least manageable).
Part of the answer might just lie in a directive to the judges: if you're really having a hard time figuring out whether something should advance to Round 2, it probably should. Anything that makes you sweat and frown and furrow your brow over whether you like it or whether it's interesting enough is probably worth further discussion.
Final Thoughts
That's the real goal of The Awards in my mind: finding stuff that's worth the time spent discussing it. I've played a lot of really fun games that I don't want to spend much time talking about, and I've played a lot of really bad games that I'd just rather forget about. But the stuff that really sticks in my brain that I want to talk about for hours? I want to show that to everyone and say, "Hey look at this shit. What's going on here, huh?"
So send The Awards your faggot games, your expressionist games, your huddled masses of games yearning to breathe free be played (or at least read). But make sure that they fall within the submission window. Because I haven't said this before, but that window is picking up right where The Awards left off: June 2024. More on that next time!
