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Yesterday I reached an agreement with Robert "Bobby" Butler of LoopCuts in Lexington South Carolina to co-sponsor and host the 2014 First Annual "PlayingCardAwards" AKA "Cardies". The hosting site is mine, and I got a "WordPress" theme so he could spend some time making it look right, and Ade Suryana is doing the graphics for us. If the name sounds familiar, it should: he's one of the "Three of Clubs" group that designed the "Aquila" decks for Kardify Projects - Ivan and Tony AKA "Sparkz". The website is obviously just being put together as of this morning, but it will allow people to nominate their favorite deck, and we will take the top 20 nominated decks and have a vote to decide who wins the first annual Cardy - a trophy supplied by LoopCuts to the winning deck artist/designer.

Note that if the deck was designed by someone other than who sold it, it's the artist that wins, not the seller. We kind of threw this together on the spur of the moment, but next year we'll have a more broad group of categories, and hopefully by then we'll have the red & black carpet ready for dignitaries.

I picked "Cardy" or "Cardies" I suppose next year because it sounds kind of like "Tonys", "Oscars" and "Emmys", for example. The website is already up and online but for now just a place-holder. It will be modified to allow for voting using Facebook "likes" as the way it looks we will be ready to have nominations here in a few weeks and a 1-month voting period about one month later, perhaps sooner. Here's the link: 2014 First Annual Playing Card Awards

We're looking for someone to take the lead and host an Instragram account for this, and also maintain a blog on the WordPress site, including making links to the artists and bios for each one of the "top 20" decks (might well be less than 20 since it's decks, not artists being nominated).

And yes - the image will be modified to look right on our black background, it's got transparency turned on so it is "see-through", which just doesn't work well against a black background like we have in our "Lucid Lime" theme here.

Awards for cards sound cool. Send my congrats to Jackson. Maybe we can do a Razzies style award too for people like me.

Brilliant! This could be fun, thanks.

We hope to have the site up and running very soon for nominations. This is a very exciting project for us and UC and cannot wait to present the first images of the award.

Cheers

rjtomlinson1977 wrote:Awards for cards sound cool. Send my congrats to Jackson. Maybe we can do a Razzies style award too for people like me.

I wouldn't be too quick to give Jackson all the awards, there have been a lot of really strong decks that are in the running, plus Jackson lost a bit of his shine with the v.1 Moriarty screw up.

Robert Butler? That's a name that's a blast from the past.....and not in a good way.

sinjin7 wrote:

rjtomlinson1977 wrote:Awards for cards sound cool. Send my congrats to Jackson. Maybe we can do a Razzies style award too for people like me.

I wouldn't be too quick to give Jackson all the awards, there have been a lot of really strong decks that are in the running, plus Jackson lost a bit of his shine with the v.1 Moriarty screw up.

Robert Butler? That's a name that's a blast from the past.....and not in a good way.

True, unless we change things it's going to be a two-part public vote, with the first to nominate DECKS, not artists. Once we have a real feel for the Top 20 (maybe only Top 10-12?) we'll create Facebook "Likes" to track the voting and let that portion of it run for 2-3 weeks or maybe a month, timing hasn't been decided yet. Wait until next year when I roll out the red (and black) carpet!

Very cool! I'll have an awesome deck for next year's. The new face cards are looking great. Easier to read and if anyone enjoys Unicorns in the middle of an orgasm complete with it's eyeballs crawling out of it's head, I think you'll dig it. Or maybe you like Nixon as a zombie in drag. Don't worry brother, gotcha covered and yeah I'm totally into it, that's why I drew it.

Best,
Dan Birch

Just an idea. Due to some projects having multiple decks, if say Jackson's has 3 Holmes decks nominated, only one be allowed. It wouldnt be fair for one artist to have multiple decks, of a series, in the judging. It'd be nice if there were a list that included all artist w/ the decks they've deaigned.

We continue to work on the site while working on some participation prizes.

Cbkimble wrote:Just an idea. Due to some projects having multiple decks, if say Jackson's has 3 Holmes decks nominated, only one be allowed. It wouldnt be fair for one artist to have multiple decks, of a series, in the judging. It'd be nice if there were a list that included all artist w/ the decks they've deaigned.

I'd say that any and all decks can be nominated, but the shortlisting process should remove the similar decks in this fashion. (Unless thay are very distinct - personally I'd allow both the holmes and moriarty editions as they have different art)

montecarlojoe wrote:

Cbkimble wrote:Just an idea. Due to some projects having multiple decks, if say Jackson's has 3 Holmes decks nominated, only one be allowed. It wouldnt be fair for one artist to have multiple decks, of a series, in the judging. It'd be nice if there were a list that included all artist w/ the decks they've deaigned.

I'd say that any and all decks can be nominated, but the shortlisting process should remove the similar decks in this fashion. (Unless thay are very distinct - personally I'd allow both the holmes and moriarty editions as they have different art)

We're still working out the details, Joe - but that's the plan: basically whittle down the list to the Top 20 nominated decks, and then use Facebook "Likes" to track them on the website. It's pretty much designed to be a public popularity contest - at least this first year's model for it. Next year we're going to do a whole lot more, but we just wanted to get started and do the main category for 2014. The "Cardies" will be more and more detailed, and it's designed to fall in the early summer so as not to interfere with the annual "UC Deck of the Year" contest which already contains some 18 or 19 categories. I"ve already detailed a bit of the "what's new" there elsewhere, but for sake of finding things: new prize pool system: top winner picks from the prize pool anything they want regardless of whether it's what we consider to be the top prize or not, 2nd place finisher picks next, etc. Of course whoever comes in with the lowest non-zero score (as I recall, Kai will have to refresh my memory) gets that last prize. That way if there's something you already have in the top prize tier you can pick something of relatively equal value and they are pretty much grouped top to bottom with the top 5 prizes being of relatively equal value, next 5 "second tier", etc again.

I gave it a bit of thought after the DotY2014 contest, and we had a couple people win things they didn't want (or need) and figured this was the optimal solution. Heck, I'll be giving out $3500 worth of prizes (again) and I don't want anyone who 'wins' to feel like they ended up with the 'booby prize' because they got something they didn't want or didn't need.

What's the rush? 2014 isn't even half over? Wouldn't it make sense to wait until the end of the year, especially if this is supposed to be the first year. Why wouldn't you consider the 2013 decks? Seems really, really strange to label it 2014.

Mike Ratledge wrote: ... and then use Facebook "Likes" to track them on the website.

So I'm assuming without a FB account, you're SOL?? That stinks for me. Unless I can have my fiance vote or "like" or whatever for me.

To have a 2014 awards in the middle of 2014 makes no sense at all. This should be held in Feb


You're moving too fast on everything Mike, it's going to implode

Me and Mike spoke today regarding nomination guidelines and we have decided that decks will be eligible for nomination between August 2013-July 2014. This allows a full year of releases to be considered. We are doing it during this time of year vs Feb. due to the amount of time it takes to prepare and execute a proper award event. We know that many have taken a month tops but we are trying to raise the quality of the event so that it has the opportunity to grow into something we can all truly appreciate in the future.

Thanks!

It still doesn't make sense seeing as we had the UC Best Decks of 2013. We either have to continue on that (doing each calendar year) or make this one only from January to July 2014 to avoid decks being nominated/winning twice.

Loop Cuts wrote:Me and Mike spoke today regarding nomination guidelines and we have decided that decks will be eligible for nomination between August 2013-July 2014. This allows a full year of releases to be considered. We are doing it during this time of year vs Feb. due to the amount of time it takes to prepare and execute a proper award event. We know that many have taken a month tops but we are trying to raise the quality of the event so that it has the opportunity to grow into something we can all truly appreciate in the future.

Thanks!

That makes no sense. Doing it now instead of February gives you a lot less time. Waiting until February would give you more time AND avoid an overlap with the previous event.

Loop Cuts wrote:Me and Mike spoke today regarding nomination guidelines and we have decided that decks will be eligible for nomination between August 2013-July 2014. This allows a full year of releases to be considered. We are doing it during this time of year vs Feb. due to the amount of time it takes to prepare and execute a proper award event. We know that many have taken a month tops but we are trying to raise the quality of the event so that it has the opportunity to grow into something we can all truly appreciate in the future.

Thanks!

Really just not making any sense to me whatsoever. We had playing card awards already and I don't think there's anything here that's going to make it "better".

Since we already have the UC Deck of the Year awards, the Cardy awards are redundant and don't make so much sense. Why compete with yourself? The mid-year timing of the Cardy awards make even less sense. I can see this reducing the impact of the UC Deck of the Year contest. Not all new ideas are good ideas. I strongly recommend dropping the Cardys, or delay it to the end of the year and merge it with the UC Deck of the Year contest.

All of your advice is greatly appreciated and has been taken into consideration.

Thanks

Yes, Jay -- and I will continue to do so as long as you keep posting useless drivel from two+ years ago to support your point. It's wasted energy and quite boring at this point, and everybody deserves a break from the nonsense.

The thread is locked, it's not meant to be a debate.

NEWS UPDATE FROM PCA

Hey UC! It's been a little over a week since the first annual Playing Card Awards went live and we have had a lot success! We have over 200 nominations currently and more are coming in every day. We have teamed up with ForAnything.com for a 2 year sponsorship! They will be providing awards for all of our winners and are currently working with us to create a commemorative coin to give away to participants. We are very pleased that so many of you have enjoyed the PCA and we cannot wait to reveal some of the awards and the coin in the coming months!

If you've not nominated your favorite deck yet I strongly urge you to do so. You are literally in complete control and it's up to you to see your favorites make it into the top 25.
http://playingcardawards.com

Don't forget about this weeks participation prize: http://tinyurl.com/p7nav7b

CHEERS!

I'm really sorry if this is a stupid question ....

If my favourite deck is already nominated then there is no point for me to go to the website an nominated again?

Norbie wrote:I'm really sorry if this is a stupid question ....

If my favourite deck is already nominated then there is no point for me to go to the website an nominated again?

Just the opposite, Norbie! That is exactly backwards, in fact the only way for something to get into the "Top 25" in any (or every) one of categories is to get enough nominations (I suppose you can think of them as being votes in this part of the process - it works exactly the same way, except there's no 'boundary" as to what you can "vote" FOR, so once the nominations period is over - it's those top 25 nomination getters that go head-to-head (to head to head, etc) for the final round, so to speak. During the second half of the process, everyone is vote-voting, simply put: whoever gets the most votes of the 25 in every category is going to be the winner, plain and simple - it's exactly what we intended: a popular vote as opposed to a representation type thing. "Vote early, vote often" as we say here in the south (well, not really - once nomination per category per e-address, and yeah - we know you can't get caught "stuffing the ballot box" if you have two or three (or five/eight/ten) addresses. We did our best to insure it's fair and nobody can really take it over and make it a back-patting contest. That being said we've already seen a lot of people calling on their backers to get over there and nominate them, which is fine. Works as expected, by design.

Is there a mechanism to prevent vote skewing? What's to stop me spamming form fills nominating my favourite deck?

montecarlojoe wrote:Is there a mechanism to prevent vote skewing? What's to stop me spamming form fills nominating my favourite deck?

We only accept one nomination per category per e-address, other than that there's really not a whole lot we can do, Joe. I suppose my expectations that people will "play fair" is folly, as I am quite certain that at least someone will turn it into a zoo if we allow it. We're doing what we can, and if anyone has ideas as to how to make things more fair, please advise!

Tricky one. A single form for 5 noms would make things simpler.

An old technique not seen much now was to take credit card details (though not the CV code) and use that to test a unique valid ID. It's MUCH harder to auto generate valid card details than unique emails or IPs.
Not perfect but something to consider.

Even without the CV code, people might freak out anyway about having to enter their credit card details.

Can I suggest two rounds of voting, one to cull all the nominations into a shortlist and a second to pick a winner from a shortlist? That might limit people's ability to game the system.

That is exactly what is happening.

First look at what the PCA awards will look like. We are very excited! This has grown from a small concept that has never been more than online kudos! Now we finally have a way to truly think all the great artists in the industry!