> OK, Origins starts 2 weeks from now, so we need to get this list > whittled down. I have edited the page > http://icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=New_in_2009 to show > games already eliminated: by the designers' preference to their > preferred game, or by being 2010 designs, or for being provisional > yeses in the first pass. This leaves us with 9 games. I will try to go over the games in the next few days. A quick, 5-10 minute perusal leads me to believe that I will be evaluating based on the quality of the rules. The games all look fine, but some of them omit or bury some very fundamental things. I do not want somebody going into a game cold and saying, "Huh?" A reaction of "huh?" does not imply "best of the best" to me. But that's what I got on a couple of the games. One thing I take out of that is that we (as a community, not as the evaluation team) might want to consider coming up with a "suggested" rules template that people can use. Game design does not necessarily involve the same skill-set as rules writing, but both are needed for a publishable game. A simple "make sure you include this here" template would go a long way toward improving the perceived quality of games. And that's what we're after, ultimately. A quick, two-minute off the cuff start: Objective/Introduction (include # of players) Equipment (we need some standards for how to specify pyramids) Setup Game play FAQs/Strategy notes (if desired/needed) FWIW, I agree that we shouldn't split the awards into categories. It looks like the idea was abandoned, but I just wanted to say something about it in case someone is tempted to revive it.