Separately, this is also why I never liked the "Reader Awards" at Adventure Gamers, even (and especially) when I was solely a reader. The readers should be allowed to grade on whatever curve they want, and not have their conclusions awkwardly smushed into the same mold that the reviewers decide on. A reader award should be entirely in the readers' hands, and that means being separate from the site's efforts and the parameters it decides for itself. (And if organizing that seems like too much work, imagine how Jack must feel!)

We once had a readers Top Hundred, organised by one of the then-mods. As expected, we ended up with a mess. Dozens and dozens of games with just one vote. Totally useless.

Random aside, but forgot to mention earlier that Best Setting is probably my favourite category. A well-conceived setting (or settings) adds SO much to any game’s distinct personality and provides the foundation for everything else.

I agree that a game's setting is very interesting; it's very often _the_ fundamental of a story. I think my point is that singling out gaming minutiae like setting for discussion is fun, but deciding which is 'best' is ultimately pointless because we all have very different criteria for 'best' things. At least with a general 'best game' award we are amalgamating all of the criteria and there is therefore a greater chance we'll agree when some of our criteria overlap.

Of course it's still nice as a dev to be given an award I'm sure, but it has little meaning outside of that as far as I can see. Personally, if I'd been looking for a game with a fantastic setting and bought Foolish Mortals on the basis of that award I would ultimately have felt a bit let down because - although I did really enjoy the game - I found the Bayou setting to be cliched, which irked me a bit because my criteria for setting favour originality. Obviously in reality I would have seen the Bayou setting from looking at screenshots before buying it, but hopefully the point stands.

In any case, I don't mean to argue for the sake of it; I just wanted to clarify my point about the ultimate value of the very specific awards.