ref:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/179174/Live_from_the_Game_Developers_Choice_Online_Awards.php

Special thanks to Sevenstar61 in thread
http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/367031/page/1

for revealing the award link.

Among the most puzzling:

Best New Online Game: Star Wars: The Old Republic (BioWare Austin)

The advisory board:

http://www.gdconline.com/aboutgdc/advisoryboard.html

A significant number of people on the board are either affiliated with EA or once were.  Rich Vogel was recently laid off from EA and dusting off his resume after working on SWTOR (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/174300/SWTORs_executive_producer_leaves_BioWare_amid_layoff_reports.php), and Gordon Walton is responsible for the alpha version of SWTOR's Hero Engine, which he said EA would finish it themselves (http://www.heroengine.com/2011/11/heroengine-meets-starwars/).  Mr. Walton left EA's subdivision BioWare in early 2011 (http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33051/BioWare_Austins_Walton_Leaves_To_Join_Playdom_Austin.php).

Among the other questionable "voting" board members:

Joe McDonagh, studio director at PoPCap Games (owned by EA)  http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/12/confirmed-ea-buys-popcap-games-for-750-million-plus-earn-out/

Euguene Evans, VP & Studio GM of Mythic (owned by EA)  http://www.developconference.com/page.cfm/Action=Visitor/VisitorID=482)

Chris Mayar, former Technical Director at EA  http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,217471/

Min Kim, former Localization Direction at EA  http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Kyung+min/Kim

Robert Zubek, former EA employee  (http://arnetminer.org/person/robert-zubek-319979.html)

[I'll check others if I have time, gave up because 85% of them had an EA affiliation that was publicized]

Others are still affiliated with EA, or were at one time.  It hardly seems fair, even though SWTOR wasn't up to par with expectations, that developers get to vote for themselves to advance their carrers, on a panel that has a significant proportion of EA influence.  Just to give themselves awards.  Journalists ran with this story, but none of which actually looked at the makeup of who was capable of the votes.

What s sham to gamers.

Originally posted by mmoDAD
Maybe they thought it meant, "Most Expensive Development Choice".

That is one thought, I'm not sure if I should cheer or cry.

I added some other names to the post of EA's influence.

Don't think you even needed proof.

Let them stroke their own ego... reality speaks louder

Originally posted by arctarus

Let them stroke their own ego... reality speaks louder

 

While thats true for us the players, unfortunately its not true for the majority of suits running the development of most of these games. Theyre very out of touch witht he playerbase and instead rely on "experts" and things like rewards that tell them "Hey, these games received awards and are very popular. We should do things just like them because it will sell a lot." and we wind up with the same old recycled crap for years instead of any of these companies with the developer talent and large funding doing something original and innovative.

Originally posted by stayontarget
Well what did you expect,  Its not like these developers have a great track record on giving us what we want over the last few years.  The voting by these boobs don't surprise me one bit.

Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review." 

This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it. 

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by stayontarget
Well what did you expect,  Its not like these developers have a great track record on giving us what we want over the last few years.  The voting by these boobs don't surprise me one bit.

Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review." 

 

This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it. 

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by stayontarget
Well what did you expect,  Its not like these developers have a great track record on giving us what we want over the last few years.  The voting by these boobs don't surprise me one bit.

Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review." 

 

This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it. 

 

/facepalm. That is not why the writer was fired. You should get your facts straight before spewing nonsense. Back on topic, agreed the deck was stacked in the voting, but from my viewpoint the clear winner once again would be none of the above. Hasn't been a good MMORPG been made in years from what I am looking for i'm the genre.

That is the reason, actually. They tried to get him to not post his review and instead do a "pros and cons" debate article with another staff member. Except, all the questions and answers were more or less written so that the more common complaints could be stated by the writer, and then torn apart by the other writer. Instead, he just posted his review anyway. 

But the safe story that MMORPG.com went with is "We didn't like how he came into the game so predisposed to give it a bad score, and we didn't like that he bragged about giving it a bad score." 

Here is a kotaku opinion piece on the topic of SWTOR's industry awards:

http://kotaku.com/5950920/pile-of-industry-awards-for-star-wars-the-old-republic-a-sad-reminder-of-the-game-that-might-have-been

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by stayontarget
Well what did you expect,  Its not like these developers have a great track record on giving us what we want over the last few years.  The voting by these boobs don't surprise me one bit.

Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review." 

 

This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it. 

 

/facepalm. That is not why the writer was fired. You should get your facts straight before spewing nonsense. Back on topic, agreed the deck was stacked in the voting, but from my viewpoint the clear winner once again would be none of the above. Hasn't been a good MMORPG been made in years from what I am looking for i'm the genre.

That is the reason, actually. They tried to get him to not post his review and instead do a "pros and cons" debate article with another staff member. Except, all the questions and answers were more or less written so that the more common complaints could be stated by the writer, and then torn apart by the other writer. Instead, he just posted his review anyway. 

But the safe story that MMORPG.com went with is "We didn't like how he came into the game so predisposed to give it a bad score, and we didn't like that he bragged about giving it a bad score." 

Originally posted by smh_alot

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by DavisFlight

Originally posted by stayontarget
Well what did you expect,  Its not like these developers have a great track record on giving us what we want over the last few years.  The voting by these boobs don't surprise me one bit.

Stuff like this is very widespread. EA's pockets are deep and that money trickles to sites like this. "Want review copies or advertisements? Give us a good review." 

 

This very site fired one of their writers because he gave SWTOR a 6 and refused to change it. 

 

/facepalm. That is not why the writer was fired. You should get your facts straight before spewing nonsense. Back on topic, agreed the deck was stacked in the voting, but from my viewpoint the clear winner once again would be none of the above. Hasn't been a good MMORPG been made in years from what I am looking for i'm the genre.

That is the reason, actually. They tried to get him to not post his review and instead do a "pros and cons" debate article with another staff member. Except, all the questions and answers were more or less written so that the more common complaints could be stated by the writer, and then torn apart by the other writer. Instead, he just posted his review anyway. 

But the safe story that MMORPG.com went with is "We didn't like how he came into the game so predisposed to give it a bad score, and we didn't like that he bragged about giving it a bad score." 

 

? That was way, WAY before last month, the time that you created this account of yours, many months ago and iirc among a flood of posts and threads in that time. You're saying that you were keeping that close watch on all the forums of this site for that long and only recently decided to create an account and post this abundantly? Wow.

You should take your own Occam's Razor advice here bud. 

It was kind of big news and spread to several other sites. 

Originally posted by DavisFlight

You should take your own Occam's Razor advice here bud. 

It was kind of big news and spread to several other sites. 

Originally posted by smh_alot

Originally posted by DavisFlight

You should take your own Occam's Razor advice here bud. 

It was kind of big news and spread to several other sites. 

 

Occam's Razor would make me think that someone with such particular knowledge might have hung around on this site for far longer than a mere month, but maybe not under the same account. 

That's pretty much the opposite of what Occam's Razor means.