2018 MODDING AWARDS - COMMENTARY THREAD (READ THE OP BEFORE POSTING!)

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Hello there fellow TWCenteres, and welcome to the 2018 Modding Awards. Quite a lot of things have been changed this year, so please relax, have your favorite beverage ready, sit back and read with calm!

First and foremost, a due introduction about what happened during the last year: after the partial debacle of the 2017 edition (due to very reduced overall numbers in terms of nominations and votes, see the article about them for more details.) we opened up a Brainstorming thread to collect fresh ideas and suggestions on how to renew/improve the modding awards at TWC. Some time after I personally sent a PM to various well know modders (for the most Opifexes) to ask their opinion about the possibility to open up the Awads to mods not exclusively posted or hosted at TWC and later on we prepared a Public Poll in order to ask to the membership what they would think about this idea.

If you do take your time to read the links above, you'll realize that our ideas have not come out of the blue, but rather that we had tried to group up and unify the various input we received in order to come out with some proposals, taking into account what we could do and what we have available in terms of manpower and resources; remember that many had quite opposite positions and as far as I know no one really have exact the same position or opinion: this should give everybody an idea of how complex the matter is and how difficult it is to find a way/strategy that would please everybody (or even just the majority of the people) involved. The impact of "external" elements, like Steam or the reduced moddability of modern titles, does not help as well and it is mandatory to remember that TWC is a fan site and that what we do, as a Modding Awards Committee, is entirely voluntary and free.

However, this does not mean that we don't care about our beloved modders and their works, and we indeed work every year to produce new material for the awards, such as brand new shiny medals and new categories (or rules), but of course there are limits to what we can do, mostly because of lack of extra hands and extra resources. For instance, this year the Committee has seen its active participants to reduce sensibly (almost half of 2017 edition) and due to this shortage of manpower and reduced number of mods in general, we have decided to switch back to the direct nominations of mods and modders; in other words, rather than providing lists, we will receive directly the nominations in the dedicated thread and will check their eligibility and then put them in the right categories. For the same reasons (shortage of manpower and mods), we have decided to group up some games according to a rational division by Age and characteristics of said games: we do understand that this is not the ideal solution, but to not to be ideal is the general lack of new mods, actually, therefore we had to choose for the lesser evil between providing an actual competition by grouping up the games and hindering the competition itself by not doing so.

Besides, it's important to mention that things are evolving; there's now the Modding Staff that is being in development during the last few months and that will have a saying in the promotion of modding (in general) at TWC and that will probably have a word in the Awards as well (at the least in terms of crossed activity): some of the actual members of the Modding Staff are former Awards Committee members, and they are well aware of the issues and problems related to them and to modding in general.

Lastly, please remember that this is the Commentary Thread for this year's edition of the Awards; while I do understand that refraining from starting again to discuss things only partially related to them (like the aforementioned "Steam issue") and while I really gave up about asking people to avoid doing so in any official way, I still kindly beg you to do your best to do not derail the possible discussion towards points that are not meant to be dealt with here (it would be better to open a thread in the Q&S, if one really wants to discuss those in details). Use this thread for proposing concrete ideas for the next edition(s) and remember that the Committee is always looking for new members, so if you want to apply for a position, just PM me!

Here below is the Committee for this year's edition; feel free to send them an appreciation rep message by using the small green buttons!

Lifthrasir
Steph
makanyane
b0Gia de Bodemloze
Flinn

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