Not Dead Yet

Sorry it's taking so long to continue The Apples Project - life is getting in the way of my hobby.

Stay tuned - there are 9 more categories to go! (Well, 6 waiting to be tabulated, 3 needing to be cleaned up for nominations, and about 6 more I'm debating about whether & how to do. Which actually adds up to 15, so everyone can figure out why I wasn't a math major.)

Merry Christmas

The Apples Project will be going on a short break (about a week or so) to celebrate Christmas - but don't worry! We'll be back with new categories to argue about real soon!

Don't Panic!

Hey, I may have listed the folks who make up the Apples Picking crew - but that does NOT mean that we're finished yet! There's lots more Apple-y goodness to come: sports, racing, politics, economics, gateway games, and much much more!

Apologies

Having some technical/life difficulties right now, which is slowing down the process of posting the Apples Project results.

Go play some games & come back in a day or two. :-)

How To Read The Results

In each category, we'll list 5 (or more) games which were voted the best games in that particular grouping. (There might be more than 5 games if there was a tie for the 5th spot.) These games will be listed in alphabetical order. The cover of the game with the most votes will "decorate" the entry.

Then, if a game missed the top 5 by only one vote, we'll list it as "just missed" so you can see how close it was to being "in the money."

Finally, the other nominated games will be listed in alphabetical order. In the rare event of a nominated game receiving no votes, I will note that as well.

I'll also post the top 5 from 2002 (if we had that particular category in 2002) for comparison purposes.

As well, I'll note any preferences that the Apple Pickers had when we lumped games together for voting purposes. (For example: which version of Ticket to Ride they like best...)

I will not be listing vote totals for any of the categories - it just gets too messy & hard to read. I may list a particular vote total if a particular game garners an amazingly high vote total.

Two Weeks + A Few Days

Here's the latest update on the Apples Project:

• We've almost completed the nomination process for 24 different categories - from the "best games of Klaus Teuber" to the "best action/dexterity games" to the "most innovative games."
• We're 24 hours away from voting results in our first category - the aforementioned Klaus "I designed Settlers of Catan and could comfortably live off of the royalties for the rest of my life" Teuber. Those will be posted right here at The Apples Project Blog - tell your friends & gaming buddies to fire up the RSS feed and join in the fun!
• We've taken a bit of a hiatus due to the Labor Day holiday weekend here in the states... we're just getting started again today with the next round of voting.

I've had questions about who's on the Apple Picking Crew this time around - the short answer is that nearly everybody from the 2002 crew is back (with a few sad exceptions) and we've added another 20+ folks to the team.

Pithy Quote of the Day, courtesy of Craig Berg:

Wow! I put a lot of thought into that list. I'm like a genius...only not as smart!

One Week Under Our Belts

I know those of you playing along at home can't experience this, but the crew of Apple Pickers is hard at work narrowing down the games in the nomination process. We've gone through 10 designers (splitting the prodigious works of Reiner Knizia & Wolfgang Kramer into "light" and "heavy" categories).

And we've just started work on the categories based on theme & mechanics.

Actual voting will begin late this week... with the first results to appear here on September 10th.

Pithy quote of the day, courtesy of Nick Danger:

Obviously, I'm not a huge Teuber fan.
Although I do enjoy potatoes.

Ha! I kill me.

I Don't Want To Process Anything Bought or Sold...

The process for the 2006 Apples Project will work as follows:

• Step One - Starting this month (August), participants are receiving one e-mail per day (4-5 per week), each with 3 categories for nominating. Each Apple Picker can nominate up to 7 games in each category. Nominations will be open for 10 days.
  
• Step Two - Once I've had a chance to compile the nominations, final voting will begin. The top ten nominees will be included, plus the eleventh place game IF it is only one point away from making the top ten. This time, participants will choose their top 5 games in each category. Again, there will be a ten day time limit.
  
• Step Three - With the final results tabulated, I'll publish them here on the Apples Project blog for your discussion/irritation/whatever.

Making It Official

It's been four years since I compiled & published The Apples Project. It's time for...

The Son of Apples Project

Of course, that name is way too long & unwieldly, so we'll just call it The Apples Project 2006 and be done with it.

Anyway, this is the official annoucement - the nomination process has begun for Apples 2006.

Friday, I'll let everyone in on the details of how this is going to work.

Time Flies When You're Playing Games

Four years ago, I got a wild hair - and I created The Apples Project. Here's what I said about it back then.

Awards are fine. The Games Magazine "Games 100" and the little red Spiel des Jahres pawn have both convinced me to buy games I've grown to love & adore. I'm a big fan of the Deutscher Spiele Pries and the Gamer's Choice Awards. [Note: these are now called the International Gamers Awards.]

And then there are the awards we love to hate... the Origins awards, where a couple of years back Stephensons Rocket (a game about developing the British rail system in the 1800's) was put in the science fiction category - or the Mensa Mind Game awards, which are awarded after a marathon weekend of play... with most of the people making the decisions only getting one shot at playing each game.[Another note: both of these awards are somewhat improved... but still not terribly helpful.]

The problem with the majority of the awards, however, is simpler than that. Most awards attempt to compare apples to oranges, pitting family games & strategy games released in the same 12 months against each other. It's downright futile to compare a party game with a two-player abstract... but year after year, that's the way lots of awards are given.

Enough is enough. I have little power to change the structure of the awards, their nomination process, and I've only got one vote. But I've got a website, and I managed to gather a group of like-minded gamer/experts to help me create...

The Apples Project!

That's right... The Apples Project. An attempt to compare apples to apples... by nominating & voting on games in categories rather than by chronological years.

And with that, I began posting the results on my website, Game Central Station. (In fact, you can go look at them right now.)

So why is all this ancient history so darned important? Tune in Wednesday to find out!