There won’t be star-studded galas, stretch limousines as far as the eye can see, or glamorous women involved in any capacity but it’s that time of the year in the hobby gaming industry that comes closest to approximating the award season in the film or music business. Most outsiders accustomed to thinking of games strictly in terms of Parker Brothers or Microsoft would likely be pretty surprised to discover that there are such things as board game awards- let alone that some people take them pretty seriously.

Over the past couple of days we’ve seen the announcement of the nominees for the 2008 Spiel Des Jahres, a German industry award that most closely approximates the stature of the Oscars (and all that entails politically and procedurally) and the Origins awards, which is a much more comprehensive and inclusive hobby industry prize voted on by members of GAMA (the Game Manufacturers Association). And in a few days we’ll have the nominees for the prestigious Charles S. Roberts award for excellence in wargaming, an accolade named after the designer who almost single-handedly created the genre and nominated by open ballet by gamers themselves. Before long we’ll also see the list of 2007 games getting the nod from the Deutscher Spielepreis jury (widely considered to be the “gamer’s game” awards) and the selections made by the committee that chooses the International Gamers Awards.

And these are just some of the major ones- there are also various national awards such as France’s As D’or and the Japan Board Game Prize. Then there is the GAMES magazine top 100 and the Mensa Select. And then there’s personal awards meted out by notable and influential individuals such as the estimable Bruno Faidutti (co-designer of games like SHADOWS OVER CAMELOT and WARRIOR KNIGHTS) and obscure awards handed out by tiny hobbyist concerns such as the “Meeple’s Choice” award.

But the Spiel Des Jahres (Game of the Year) is the big one even though it is in many ways the most restricted and narrow-scoped of the lot- it’s primarily targeted at German language “family” games and as a result the more popular and widely played hobby-oriented games are usually excluded due to their complexity levels, themes, availability in Germany, or a combination thereof. A nomination alone can dramatically increase sales of a title in Germany, but a win can result in a title selling half a million copies in that country alone- after the SDJ award is announced and boxes are stickered or printed with the red, laurelled pawn, retail stores that never carry games suddenly have piles of the winner available and often at ridiculously low, loss-leader prices. So in effect, the winning game becomes an overnight sensation. At least for a couple of weeks. Does anybody still play 2003 winner ALHAMBRA?

There have been plenty of great games nominated for the SDJ in past years and many great ones have even won since the award’s inception in 1979. SETTLERS OF CATAN was the 1995 SDJ and CARCASSONNE took the prize in 2001, and those games have become not only established brand names in the retail field but also big successes in electronic gaming formats. Voted on chiefly by German board game critics, designers, and other industry figures, the award is mostly a means to promote and encourage board gaming among families in Germany but it has come to take on a larger significance in the hobby as a barometer of quality and gaming excellence although there are political concerns involved- winning titles are rarely from the same publisher in consecutive years, for example. And of course, smaller publishers almost never win.

Nonetheless many new board gamers, upon learning of the SDJ, make it a goal to collect nominated or winning games and even when I was new to the Eurogaming end of the hobby I thought that pursuing the selected titles would be a good way to find the best games out there. It wasn’t so easy to separate gaming wheat from chaff ten or twelve years ago when you were interested in import games that had very little information available in English. Although this led me to some fun games and some pretty interesting ones along the way, it also led me to some real garbage- such as 1998 winner-in-name-only ELFENLAND or 2000’s truly awful TORRES.

So this year’s nominees are in, and other than the fact that I haven’t played a single one of the games for the first time since I started playing and keeping track of Eurogames in the mid-1990s I have to say that I am across-the-board not interested in what wins it and I think that the award’s relevance has finally been laid to rest. There’s STONE AGE, a caveman game designed by the same folks who gave us ST. PETERSBURG, one of the most heartless, soulless, and completely mechanical games I’ve ever played so it doesn’t exactly come with a great pedigree in my book.

There’s BLOX, an abstract game that looks even less interesting visually than most abstract games. Apparently it involves stacking the titular blox and placing a numbered token on top. I guess the “x” makes it more extreme or something. MARRAKECH is a game about carpet salesmen, so I’m not exactly excited about that one either despite the inclusion of miniature rugs and some sort of manager that looks like a gigantic Fisher Price Little Person. WIE VERHEXT looks like yet another Eurogame attempt to somehow reign in the combinations and variety of collectible card games without the scope, depth, or range of choices. And KELTIS is an unasked-for board game version of Reiner Knizia’s exercise in card-counting tedium LOST CITIES. Knizia is like the Susan Lucci of the SDJ- hugely popular, nominated many times, but never a winner. And here he is again, nominated for a rehash of a previous design.

Now, imagine if you saw the Academy Awards nominations and you neither recognized any of the titles nor cared to find out more about the selections- that’s kind of how this year’s nominations made me feel. Almost complete disinterest altogether. What’s more, I think this year’s SDJ nominations are another indication of a larger trend in the hobby.

I’ve been commenting for years that the European family game and its influence on the larger hobby has been in decline, falling back on recycled themes, recycled mechanics, and recycled gameplay. I believe that the European family game designers and publishers are out of touch with a larger global market of hobby gamers who aren’t interested in the kinds of games, themes, and mechanics that the SDJ traditionally represents. And I think that ultimately the award has at this point almost no credibility as a barometer of quality and distinction in the hobby. Sure, the SDJ increases sales and likely gets games into the hands of a lot of people (at least in Germany) but as an indicator of the best gaming has to offer it’s almost completely useless and meaningless- like a vanity license plate no one gets...or a Grammy award.