I have a 30 Under 30 take everyone! Lucky you!

I think a substantial portion of the games industry has a really unhealthy relationship with awards in general.

Awards are an *arbitrary* process of an organisation saying "these things / people are cool". They are nothing else.

It's fun to win an award or get on a list, it's fun to see friends win awards, it's validating to see a game you really like win an award. Awards and lists *can* help your career.

Awards and award committees should be diverse, representative and look beyond the obvious.

*None* of that means that awards are very important, that they are objective or that they are make or break for your career. They're celebratory, a bit frivolous, one means to make noise. They're arbitrary.

"Don't feel pressure to make an Under 30's list" is absurd advice because... why should you feel pressure to win awards in any situation? Awards are *arbitrary* and you have absolutely no control over them.

If you look at a list of people winning an award and feel bad about yourself instead of happy for them then you urgently need to look at your own priorities. It's like feeling personally affronted by the fact that it's raining today.

I think we go after awards and lists in games so much because we don't have many other touchstones outside commercial success. An award is one Big Cool Goal you can plausibly achieve without making a lot of money. I genuinely think that's unhealthy.

You can see this in various years with the IGF as well, with people embarrassing themselves with "my game should be in there" style stuff. It's arbitrary...there isn't really a "should".

Some of the people I respect the most in games haven't had big marquee success stories but are good at what they do, manage to make a sustainable career and cause zero collateral damage along the way. That's an enormous lifetime achievement so aim for that.

If you keep going on that path then you might eventually win an award. Oh no that's a bad incentive isn't it. Never mind.

Also don't misinterpret what I'm saying here - awards (which are *arbitrary* - did I say that enough times) are still cool and you should enter your stuff for them! But just be happy if you win and happy for others if you don't win.

Because...

... they are arbitrary.