Well, this is all well and good but it seems unfair put games on par with the movies in this way. As Tom said, not as many people submit them. Plus, this act may garner even MORE annoying calls to increase their visibility in other areas. Will we eventually split the daily awards too? I hope not, It would just allow a bunch of lesser games to garner attention. Don't believe me?
Think about it. First off, It's not just the monthly awards where games are supposedly underrepresented, it is the daily awards too and according to the rules. A game has to have been on front page or get a daily award to be in consideration. Since the start of this month or 13 days there has been
3 recorded daily firsts,
1 daily second,
1 daily third,
3 daily fourths and
3 daily fifths placed games for a total of 11 out of a possible 65 these past 13 days!
People, that's less then one game per day (or to put it another way, less then 1 out of 5) that is eligible for the same number of cash prizes as animations, which have to compete against 4 times this number.
Due to the wonderful archives at Newgrounds it's possible to figure out the absolute ratio as well. There has been
1,740 recorded daily first,
1,304 second,
1307 third,
868 fourth and
871 fifth place winners. For a grand total of 6090 since records were kept.
Out if that large total, there are only
335 recorded daily first,
274 second,
252 third,
141 fourth and
160 fifth place game winners. For a grand total of 1162.
Games don't even break the 1,200 mark which they would need to achieve a simple ratio of 5 to 1 and why should they? With the wonders of the archives we can find out exactly how many games have been submitted in out entire history.
There has been 59,939 submissions recorded submissions gathered in all of Newgrounds history. Only 11,200 have been games. Incredibly, if you divide by 10 these total numbers are almost exactly the same as the amount for the top five representation of toons and games that we just went through above. Why, it even appears that games have gotten slightly more awards then their numbers might suggest.
If you were going solely on numbers.
Conclusion:
Games have ALWAYS been submitted at a ratio somewhat less then 5 to 1 when compared to toons. On top of that they have also won awards at almost the same rate as they have been submitted. Less then 5 to 1 again. As the number of awards won to games submitted it essentially equal. We can now see that Tom's assertion that "movies generally score on a higher curve than games" is not correct. According to these number (if you want to get into decimal points) games actually do a bit better then the movies when it comes to awards won to the total percentage of submissions.
So having less the one game per 5 in the daily five is, in fact, historically accurate and completely fair. It stands to reason that getting just 1 game (at most) in the monthly top 5 on average is also appropriate.. It's in line with what has been the case throughout the history of NG.
Saying this was intended to be a games site or trying to get it back to it's roots is simply not realistic to the reality. Movies always have and shall ever be the dominate force in NG. No matter what kind of incentives or tinkering is done. The free market has spoken. Don't try to nanny us get different results simply to please a vocal minority or to make what people submit more in line with what you personally believe it should be. It is what it is and we should all accept that. That's capitalism at it's finest people and, more and more, I find that I wouldn't have it any other way.
Solution:
Giving the same number of monthly awards to games is grossly unfair and I recommend that if this must go though with this (I really don't think you should. The system as it sands, seems fair). Games should get 1 or 2 awards, perhaps 3... maximum! Having 5, the same as movies, is just not proper and can only lead to an unfair showcasing of inferior flash.
I hope this post makes you think a little. Peace out.
