In a perfect world, no one person would run our project — an award show for 4chan’s /v/. But, in order to make sure the project is complete, someone has to know what tasks must be assigned and completed. This brief article will explain how the Vidya Gaem Awards (/v/GAs) is organized and how it is managed.
The Vidya Gaem Awards is a community-based award show from 4chan’s /v/ — Video Games board. The amount of staff that work on it range from 20 to 40 individuals. Its leadership team has changed over the years, but generally it is coordinated by an organization leader called the “Director”. The Director makes the management calls and has the final say when there is no consensus. The Director is assisted by one or two Producers, sometimes a project manager, and there are additional department leads which manage Voice Acting, Video, Footage, Writing, and Outreach.
All /v/GA staff are volunteers, and leadership positions have always been the result of promotions within the organization. The project does not accept donations, and it does not recieve any outside funding or generate any money for its creators. All costs to run the show (such as in the form of server hosting or 4chan ads) are incurred by the members of the project. Not only do we “Do It For Free”, we purposefully run the project at a loss.
Although our award show is a project made by and for the 4chan community, 4chan.org moderators and staff do not work on the Vidya Gaem Awards. Editorial function (like what we say in an award speech or what awards get shown) is also independent from 4chan staff. We rely on the public to source award nominees, and limit our audience to 4chan in our voting process through a filter. Additionally, our codebase is open source and anybody is welcome to review and contribute to it.
Our staff represent various areas of the gaming industry, and include both consumers to game developers. We permit our staff to remain anonymous if they desire, though internally we rely on their pseudonym to know what role they’re assigned, and they must disclose any conflict of interest.
The /v/GA team can nominate and vote in the awards, but their vote does not weigh more than any public voter.
How can a 4chan project be as credible than a mainstream award show?
When you hear “community-based 4chan project”, it’s certainly understandable that it would be difficult to ascribe credibility. Our award show serves a niche audience, and our categories are more subjective than a traditional award show’s. The short answer is we are more than a poll.
The long answer is that our award show is comprised of thousands of nominations from just as many users. Our staff uses these nominations as the bedrock for the categories, and they write short “flavor text” for these individual nominees. Votes are processed through a filter that detects non-4chan votes and lists their origin by platform. Finally, our annual visual presentation takes a majority of these categories and our hosts explain why the winner deserve its award.
Like our conventional award show competitors, our production cycle takes several months and requires the involvement of writers, video editors, voice actors, leadership, and our preshow music team.
Who can sign up?
The Vidya Gaem Awards begins a recruitment drive early into its production, but not too early as to give people without things to do. When we open recruitment, we ask a series of questions and request a sample of past work to make sure we’re effectively utilizing a given applicant’s talents and skills. Because we are a project from the 4chan community, all applicants must be from 4chan to join our project.
There is no expectation or requirement to remain in the project once our award ceremony is held, but many stay with the /v/GA team for several years. Our culture is to constantly learn more from the community, take in from the board’s choices, and ultimately make good content for everyone to enjoy. The added bonus is getting to meet with like-minded individuals who also are passionate about gaming, and an opportunity to openly criticize industry practices, while continuing to reward the good.
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Disclosure: I am the current Head of Outreach and the former Executive Producer of the Vidya Gaem Awards (2013 — 2015, 2017).
