The Weirdness of the Origins Award Nominees

By Firestone

On Thursday we were excited to bring you the newly released list of nominees for the Origins Awards. But as I looked over the list, I couldn't help but wonder what in the world they were thinking...

Let's start with Best Board Game. We have understandable nominees, such as Kingdom Builder, Lords of Waterdeep, and Mage Knight. Then there's Hot Rod Creeps from Cryptozoic Entertainment. "That's weird," I thought. "I've never even heard of that game. Maybe it just flew under the radar." So I went to the Geek and saw that it had flown under everyone's radar. The game has only 57 ratings. It's ranked 3656. Why would that game make the short list of best of the year? And speaking of year: Kingdom Builder and Mage Knight are both from 2011. So are these the best games of...recent years?

And then we have Best Gaming Accessory, which includes things like Dungeon Tiles, miniatures, cool dice, and...The Wizard's Tower from Castle Panic? What?! It's not an accessory; it's an expansion. The Tower isn't even a...thing! It's a deck of cards. And it came out in 2011!

And there seem to be an inordinate number of Cryptozoic games. I'm not saying they're not good games, but where are games from some of the other publishers—like Rio Grande and Z-Man and Fantasy Flight? Does Origins only nominate games that were sent to them by the publishers? That seems like a crazy way to determine the best games of the year. Or of recent years...