Hello, friends and folks! It’s February, and for us here at Scanline, that means it’s time for the Gimmick Awards! These are our end-of-year awards: our Game of the Year, but also our Anime of the Year, our Worst Trend, and so many other categories. Let’s talk about how that’s gonna work!
So, the main event is the Gimmick Awards themselves. We have a bunch of categories, and we will be posting them regularly over the course of the month. Each category has a list of nominees, and we recorded podcasts of ourselves working through turning that list into one winner and then the runners-up. When we post these, it’ll come in the form of two posts per category- that podcast where we have the discussion, and then a paired write-up for the winner and runners-up.
The rules for the Gimmick Awards change per year, because ultimately rules are only as good as the result they create. This year, the rules we settled on are these:
1) Any work cannot have been nominated in this category in a previous year.
2) We are looking for one winner and two runners-up, though we can flex the number of runners-up if absolutely necessary.
3) The work must have clear relevance to 2023: released in 2023, had a major update in 2023, or been discussed in a Scanline Media work during 2023.
From these, we have discussions ranging from 30 minutes to nearly 2 hours depending on a category, and we hope you’ll enjoy those conversations.
For the rest of the Gimmick Awards, we’ll have end of the year lists from myself (Six), Jen, and Kyrie, possibly Nick, and then some guests as well! We’re not announcing guests in advance because writing this up is real work, and every year some guests end up bowing out because it didn’t work out. We don’t wanna put pressure on them: this is something we do to celebrate 2023, and it’s not a celebration to stress yourself out over something you don’t wanna write anymore.
Lastly, we will have special art for the Gimmick Awards, as in years past. For the 2020, 2021, and 2022 Gimmick Awards, we commissioned different artists to do a take on Scanline-chan (our mascot character) in full award show formal wear. This year…
uhm
I forgor. We have now commissioned an artist, and the art should be done before the end of the month. At that time we’ll put that art over all the Gimmick Awards 2023 posts. But I asked too late, and therefore the art will be late.
Anyway. We’re very excited to show you the stuff we’ve been working on for this for weeks now, and we hope y’all can join us in enjoying the Gimmick Awards, and in celebrating the highlights of 2023. There was a lot that sucked about 2023, but we like to take a moment to celebrate the best parts of it. Here’s to a better 2024.
-Six