"The Real Game Awards" requires pay to vote, does this look legit or like a scam?
(www.therealgameawards.com)
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It's meant to be a way to deter mass vote drops, like voter id.
To be honest, I don't see a way around it as if you don't do that, you're either at the mercy of sponsors like the current game awards or you end up with gamemcgameface winning game of the year
Essentially so. It is a practical solution to the problem of vote botting. But the pay to vote implementation makes it impossible to tell from the outside if the intent is a fair award show, or just a grift to make some quick money. You have to base it on how much you trust the integrity of the show runners.
So in this particular case, the ridiculous price to vote ($1 is enough to verify ID through CC registration address and cover admin costs) and the fact I have never heard of these guys before makes the probability it's a scam way too high for me to consider supporting.
If you wanna do something like this right, you have to build a reputation as someone with integrity and history in the gaming community first, and if they can't be bothered to do that it's probably because they're just a grifter.
[Edit] finally dug through the about us section long enough to find out he's an old ScrewAttack contributor. So I have, in fact, heard of this guy before at least.
I'm pretty sure Craig's sidescrollers videos get posted here occasionally too. I would be pretty surprised if he was scamming.
That's fair enough, I have only incidental knowledge of sidescrollers through razorfist, not enough to trust them implicitly but that's personal choice for everyone.
I would say that someone being politically aligned with me doesn't preclude them from being dishonest or greedy, so I still have to maintain some healthy skepticism
I don't blame you for being skeptical. The reason I don't think he is scamming is because it would blow up everything else he does on youtube and whatnot. It would be a pretty small payout to destroy his credibility that he depends on for his "day job". He doesn't strike me as that short sighted.
The awards may end up being a shitshow because he doesn't know what he is doing, but it wouldn't be intentional.
If anything it's less scammy than "The Game Awards" or almost any other GameJourno (or any-Journo) stuff. It's up front, pay and get a vote.
I don't even know who were talking about, but has that ever stopped any other YouTuber?
He is a games journalist from way back when they actually cared about games. He has been around forever. He is pretty vocal about being on our side. He has been shitting on Kotaku, Ubisoft, SBI etc. consistently.
I am usually the one around here with the heavy skepticism, but this is one case where I will go against the flow. From what I have seen, Craig is way more ourguy than people like Sargon.
I'm joking and not trying to cast any doubt on this guy individually. Just poking fun at the constant stream of examples of YouTubers doing self-sabotaging shit to make a couple quick bucks.
Don't forget -- there's an equally good chance of "Hitler did nothing wrong" winning.
So, "The Real" Game Awards are P2W?
You just can't write this stuff.
How's that any different from the current game awards? The only difference I see is that the cost to influence the outcome is low enough to be accessible by normal people.
I just started watching Side Scrollers not that long ago and I don’t really think it’s a scam. Craig explains why he is doing it. If you pay you can nominate and vote for the games. It’s like other people have said it’s to avoid people coming in and mass voting for something so a game like Dustborn wins GOTY and on the other end prevents having corporate sponsors brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
I personally couldn’t care about the entire concept of award shows. I play games when I get around to them and I don’t care about what’s the current thing to play. However, there is enough wrong with Keighley’s show that at least it’s something. Like apparently this year they hid who is actually the nominating and voting for the games. Now if you believe this other show is a scam or not is up to you but I think Craig is trying in good faith whether it succeeds or not.
All awards are scams
yes and yes.
30/year isn't that much different than patreon or subscriptions
Assuming it's not an out-and-out scam, it's using the same logic as any proof-of-work cryptocurrency. In theory no attacker is going to make the necessary investment to subvert the awards knowing that doing so will destroy the credibility of the awards and make their investment worthless, but for some people destroying this upstart would be its own reward and be worth some amount of money.