2014 "Cardy" awards: PlayingCardAwards.com

[Loop Cuts]

NEWS UPDATE FROM PCA

Hey UC! It's been a little over a week since the first annual Playing Card Awards went live and we have had a lot success! We have over 200 nominations currently and more are coming in every day. We have teamed up with ForAnything.com for a 2 year sponsorship! They will be providing awards for all of our winners and are currently working with us to create a commemorative coin to give away to participants. We are very pleased that so many of you have enjoyed the PCA and we cannot wait to reveal some of the awards and the coin in the coming months!

If you've not nominated your favorite deck yet I strongly urge you to do so. You are literally in complete control and it's up to you to see your favorites make it into the top 25.
http://playingcardawards.com

Don't forget about this weeks participation prize: http://tinyurl.com/p7nav7b

CHEERS!

[Norbie]

I'm really sorry if this is a stupid question ....

If my favourite deck is already nominated then there is no point for me to go to the website an nominated again?

[Mike Ratledge]

I'm really sorry if this is a stupid question ....

If my favourite deck is already nominated then there is no point for me to go to the website an nominated again?

Just the opposite, Norbie! That is exactly backwards, in fact the only way for something to get into the "Top 25" in any (or every) one of categories is to get enough nominations (I suppose you can think of them as being votes in this part of the process - it works exactly the same way, except there's no 'boundary" as to what you can "vote" FOR, so once the nominations period is over - it's those top 25 nomination getters that go head-to-head (to head to head, etc) for the final round, so to speak. During the second half of the process, everyone is vote-voting, simply put: whoever gets the most votes of the 25 in every category is going to be the winner, plain and simple - it's exactly what we intended: a popular vote as opposed to a representation type thing. "Vote early, vote often" as we say here in the south (well, not really - once nomination per category per e-address, and yeah - we know you can't get caught "stuffing the ballot box" if you have two or three (or five/eight/ten) addresses. We did our best to insure it's fair and nobody can really take it over and make it a back-patting contest. That being said we've already seen a lot of people calling on their backers to get over there and nominate them, which is fine. Works as expected, by design.

[montecarlojoe]

Is there a mechanism to prevent vote skewing? What's to stop me spamming form fills nominating my favourite deck?

[Mike Ratledge]

Is there a mechanism to prevent vote skewing? What's to stop me spamming form fills nominating my favourite deck?

We only accept one nomination per category per e-address, other than that there's really not a whole lot we can do, Joe. I suppose my expectations that people will "play fair" is folly, as I am quite certain that at least someone will turn it into a zoo if we allow it. We're doing what we can, and if anyone has ideas as to how to make things more fair, please advise!

[montecarlojoe]

Tricky one. A single form for 5 noms would make things simpler.

An old technique not seen much now was to take credit card details (though not the CV code) and use that to test a unique valid ID. It's MUCH harder to auto generate valid card details than unique emails or IPs.
Not perfect but something to consider.

[Sher]

Even without the CV code, people might freak out anyway about having to enter their credit card details.

[cherrynukacola]

Can I suggest two rounds of voting, one to cull all the nominations into a shortlist and a second to pick a winner from a shortlist? That might limit people's ability to game the system.

[montecarlojoe]

That is exactly what is happening.

[Loop Cuts]

First look at what the PCA awards will look like. We are very excited! This has grown from a small concept that has never been more than online kudos! Now we finally have a way to truly think all the great artists in the industry!

[DukeBoy]

I have a question. If these awards are supposed to be for decks from August of last year to July of this year why is Heretic one of the top five??? I love Lorenzo's work and would love him to win multiple awards but this was not the Plan it is September and he has not even recieved the cards yet.

Lorenzo Gaggiotti August 31 at 10:24am.
Hi All, while we (me and the backers) are waiting for Heretic, I decided to start an alchemic quest, prizes for 3 winners are decks from my private reserve.

Me and Mike spoke today regarding nomination guidelines and we have decided that decks will be eligible for nomination between August 2013-July 2014. This allows a full year of releases to be considered. Thanks!

[Mike Ratledge]

Well, Bobby didn't get it exactly right because we later stated that anything that funded by July 31 (and no limit for "series") was fair.

[ecNate]

Well, Bobby didn't get it exactly right because we later stated that anything that funded by July 31 (and no limit for "series") was fair.

HUH?

http://playingcardawards.com/nomination-guidelines/

Qualification: any deck or item, excluding the “Best Deck Series” category (crowdfunding campaign for that category) that was delivered between 1-August-2013 and 31-July-2014. Best Deck Series date is extended due to the release of decks stretching over many years.

It's your award program, but I really wonder what else might have been never submitted because the official guidelines STILL don't have that change. More importantly how's it going to look if the winner of an award NEVER gets delivered or ends up being horrible quality (don't think that will be the case with Heretic, but it is a risk)? Sounds like you are exposing yourself to potential issues, I would suggest making this more clear and enforcing DELIVERED in the future.

[Mike Ratledge]

Well, Bobby didn't get it exactly right because we later stated that anything that funded by July 31 (and no limit for "series") was fair.

HUH?

http://playingcardawards.com/nomination-guidelines/

Qualification: any deck or item, excluding the “Best Deck Series” category (crowdfunding campaign for that category) that was delivered between 1-August-2013 and 31-July-2014. Best Deck Series date is extended due to the release of decks stretching over many years.

It's your award program, but I really wonder what else might have been never submitted because the official guidelines STILL don't have that change. More importantly how's it going to look if the winner of an award NEVER gets delivered or ends up being horrible quality (don't think that will be the case with Heretic, but it is a risk)? Sounds like you are exposing yourself to potential issues, I would suggest making this more clear and enforcing DELIVERED in the future.

You're right, Nate. I was thinking about the "best crowdfunded" award only, that's where we we at first decided it could be funded by July 31st - and then backtracked because of exactly what you said: it might never get delivered if we allowed that.

[montecarlojoe]

Agree with ecNate here - much as I love Lorenzo and everything he's done so far - Heretic shouldn't really be eligible till next year...

[Mike Ratledge]

Agree with ecNate here - much as I love Lorenzo and everything he's done so far - Heretic shouldn't really be eligible till next year...

Yep, I've already reviewed the other categories and disqualified Heretic until next year. People obviously aren't going to forget - it was a "Top 5" in 4 out of 5 categories.

[montecarlojoe]

Oh it deserves it! But not yet

[montecarlojoe]

I saw the new top 5 now includes Seasons... Again utterly deserving, but wasn't it a 2012 deck?
(happy to be wrong - I've only been in the game 15 months lol)

[volantangel]

I saw the new top 5 now includes Seasons... Again utterly deserving, but wasn't it a 2012 deck?
(happy to be wrong - I've only been in the game 15 months lol)

I think you saw the wrong "award", that was for the best deck series (no idea what the criteria for that category was tho). The best deck which replaced heretic is zenith.

[ecNate]

I saw the new top 5 now includes Seasons... Again utterly deserving, but wasn't it a 2012 deck?
(happy to be wrong - I've only been in the game 15 months lol)

I think you saw the wrong "award", that was for the best deck series (no idea what the criteria for that category was tho). The best deck which replaced heretic is zenith.

Qualification: any deck or item, excluding the “Best Deck Series” category (crowdfunding campaign for that category) that was delivered between 1-August-2013 and 31-July-2014. Best Deck Series date is extended due to the release of decks stretching over many years

As you can see, per the criteria that was/is posted that's legit, it would be eligible for the series category. Although that wording could have been better and should be updated in the future. I thought the intent was to allow for past printings in an active series since this was the first year. Although it's still awkward, I would suggest the following next year:

Qualification: any deck or item from any creator, printer or funding method (traditional retail distribution, direct sales, crowdfunding, etc), provided it meets the following criteria:
Must have been released (DELIVERED for crowdfunding platforms) between 1-August-2014 and 31-July-2015. The Best Deck Series category by nature of having decks in the series stretching multiple years may have decks in the series outside of this date range, but it MUST have had a deck in the series released/delivered within this date range. <prior winners clause?>

You'll eventually need to consider how to handle prior winners. In the case of the deck series I could see the same series being nominated and winning multiple years, but only if it had an iteration during the eligibility period. A deck that falls on the cut off dates could potentially be argued in/out if it was say announced for shipping on July 30, but the first known "in hands" date is Aug 1, as a result there may need to be a clause there, but possibly just handled on case by case basis if needed.

[montecarlojoe]

The modification to the criteria is pretty much essential - it makes no sense to me to give an award where no decks were released in the period the awards are meant for...

By those criteria (by which I mean there are none) any deck with more than one version published at any time in history could win the award every year for the rest of time.