![]() | The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's general notability guideline .(March 2021) |
The Ion Award is the largest board game design competition in the United States. It is held annually in Utah at the SaltCON board game convention. [1] [2] [3] The competition started in 2009 for unpublished game designs, with the intent to bring designers and publishers together, [4] and to recognize excellence in game design. [5] The first Ion Awards had the support of national publishers including Eagle-Gryphon Games, Mayday Games, Rio Grande Games, and Out of the Box Publishing, and has continued to get national and international support. [6]
The competition has received game design entries from all over the world. Board game designs that have won the Ion Award or have been selected as finalists have been published every year since its inception. [7] [8] [9]
Each year local [10] and international board game publishers are selected as judges for the competition, including longtime judges Eagle-Gryphon Games, Mayday Games, Gamelyn Games and others. [11] [12]
The competition has two rounds of judging. First all the entering designers submit rules, images, videos, and summaries of their unpublished game designs. Those entries are then reviewed by judges all over the world, and finalists are selected. The 4 finalists in each category [13] are invited to attend the final round of judging at the SaltCON convention, where they present their game design in person to the final judges. After the final judging, the winners are announced at the Awards Ceremony at the convention. [14]
The Ion Award at first featured only a single Best Game winner each year, but since 2011, it has featured both a Light Game category and a Strategy Game category. [15]
Finalists are announced about a month before the live event. Winners are announced a few days after the final judging. [16] [17] [18]
The Spiel des Jahres is an award for board and card games, created in 1978 with the purpose of rewarding family-friendly game design, and promoting excellent games in the German market. It is thought that the existence and popularity of the award was one of the major drivers of the quality of games coming out of Germany, particularly in the 1980s and 1990s. A Spiel des Jahres nomination can increase the typical sales of a game from 500–3,000 copies to around 10,000, and the winner can usually expect to sell as many as 500,000 copies.
Origins Game Fair is an annual gaming convention that was first held in 1975. Since 1996, it has been held in Columbus, Ohio at the Greater Columbus Convention Center. Origins is run by the Game Manufacturers Association (GAMA). Origins was chartered to serve gaming in general, including wargaming and miniatures gaming.
Gen Con is the largest tabletop game convention in North America by both attendance and number of events. It features traditional pen-and-paper, board, and card games, including role-playing games, miniatures wargames, live action role-playing games, collectible card games, and strategy games. Gen Con also features computer games. Attendees engage in a variety of tournament and interactive game sessions. In 2019, Gen Con had nearly 70,000 unique attendees.
Dragon Con is a North American multigenre convention, founded in 1987, which takes place annually over the Labor Day weekend in Atlanta, Georgia. As of 2017, the convention draws attendance of over 80,000, features hundreds of guests, encompasses five hotels in the Peachtree Center neighborhood of downtown Atlanta near Centennial Olympic Park, and runs thousands of hours of programming for fans of science fiction, fantasy, comic books, and other elements of fan culture. It is owned and operated by a private for-profit corporation, with the help of a 1,500-member volunteer staff. Dragon Con has hosted the 1990 Origins Game Fair and the 1995 North American Science Fiction Convention (NASFiC).
The Diana Jones Award is an annual award for "excellence in gaming". The original award was made from a burned book encased in lucite. The award is unusual in two ways: first, it is not an award for a specific class of thing, but can be awarded to a person, product, publication, company, organization, event or trend – anything related to gaming; second, it does not count popularity or commercial success as a sign of "excellence". The award was first presented in 2001.
BoardGameGeek (BGG) is an online forum for board gaming hobbyists and a game database that holds reviews, images and videos for over 125,600 different tabletop games, including European-style board games, wargames, and card games. In addition to the game database, the site allows users to rate games on a 1–10 scale and publishes a ranked list of board games.
The New York Comic Con is an annual New York City fan convention dedicated to Western comics, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, cosplay, toys, movies, and television. It was first held in 2006.
The ENNIE Awards are awards for role-playing game (RPG) products and their creators. The awards were created in 2001 by Russ Morrissey of EN World in partnership with Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D Third Edition News. The ceremony has been hosted at Gen Con in Indianapolis since 2002. Since 2018, EN World is no longer associated with the awards.
Evil Hat Productions is a company that produces role-playing games and other tabletop games. Chief among them is the free indie RPG, Fate, which has won numerous awards.
Mary Robinette Kowal is an American author and puppeteer. Originally a puppeteer by primary trade after receiving a bachelor's degree in art education, she became art director for science fiction magazines and by 2010 was also authoring her first full-length published novels. The majority of her work is characterized by science fiction themes, such as interplanetary travel; a common element present in many of her novels is historical or alternate history fantasy, such as in her Glamourist Histories and Lady Astronaut books.
The Chicago Comic & Entertainment Expo (C2E2) is a Chicago fan convention dedicated to comics, pop culture, graphic novels, anime, manga, video games, toys, movies, and television. The inaugural event was held April 16–18, 2010 at the McCormick Place in Chicago.
Alodía Almira Arraiza Gosiengfiao-Quimbo is a Filipina cosplayer, model, TV presenter, singer, vlogger, actress and co-founder of Tier One Entertainment. She is also known as Senpai Alodia of the Philippines. As a celebrity endorser, she is one of the ambassadors and VJ for Animax Asia known as the "Ani-mates" and co-host of ABS-CBN's prank show Laugh Out Loud. She has been featured in various magazines, newspapers and TV shows locally and abroad. She appeared on the Filipino FHM 100 Sexiest Women poll, ranking No. 1 in 2009, No. 2 in 2010 and No. 3 in 2012; she posed as the cover girl for that magazine on its July 2013 issue. She was named by DOS Magazine as one of the Most Influential Women in the Philippines.
The UK Lingerie Awards are held annually in the United Kingdom to present awards to key individuals from the British lingerie industry, including designers and retailers. The awards are organised by the lingerie industry magazine Lingerie Insight.
The Indie Game Challenge is an award competition run in conjunction between the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS), GameStop and The Guildhall at Southern Methodist University (SMU) to support independent video game development. Started in 2009, the competition highlights ten to twelve independent games, with winning games receiving monetary rewards in addition to the award. The Indie Game Challenge ceremonies are held during the annual D.I.C.E. Summit, during which the finalists are able to demonstrate their games to the press.
Make Something Unreal, also known as $1,000,000 Make Something Unreal Contest and Make Something Unreal Live, is a series of video game development competitions organised by Epic Games which began in 2004, with subsequent competitions in 2008, 2012, and 2013. The contests aimed to reward developers who created mods using the Unreal game engine.
The 74th World Science Fiction Convention (Worldcon), also known as MidAmeriCon II, was held on 17–21 August 2016 at the Bartle Hall Convention Center in Kansas City, Missouri, United States. The convention's name, by established Worldcon tradition, follows after the first MidAmeriCon, the 34th World Science Fiction Convention, held in Kansas City in 1976.
Emily Care Boss is an indie roleplaying game designer, theorist and publisher. She was a foundational member of The Forge, an early leader in the indie role-playing game movement and is considered the creator of the American Freeform genre of roleplaying games, which combine indie RPG principles and mechanics with Nordic freeform and American chamber live action role-playing techniques. Her game, Under My Skin was winner of the Audience Choice Award at Fastaval 2009. She has been referred to as the "Dean" of the North American school of structured freeform game design.
SaltCON is the largest Board Game Convention in Utah held annually in Layton at the Davis Conference Center with the "aim of bringing people together with games." The event is family friendly, and focuses on hobby and designer board games. Unlike many other conventions, the board game halls are open 24 hours for attendees to play all night long. The event continues to grow in popularity, in large part due to its friendly atmosphere, and volunteer nature. The event had over 1100 attendees in 2016, and continues to grow every year. In 2019 they had over 1900 attendees.
Claire Suzanne Elizabeth Cooney is an American writer of fantasy literature. She is best known for her fantasy poetry and short stories and has won the Rhysling Award for her poem "The Sea King's Second Bride" in 2011 and the World Fantasy Award—Collection for her collection Bone Swans in 2016.
This list of board game awards is an index to articles that describe notable awards given to creators of board games. It also gives articles related to chess and go competitions.