Fighting Game Streamer of the Year Nominations Cause a Stir

It's that time of the year again. The award ceremonies for every possible aspect of human of life are starting to pop up, and in another case of collective amnesia, we all forget that these events typically serve as marketing tools or self-aggrandizing spectacles. 

One of the common side effects of this amnesia comes through in the form of criticizing the nominations or the nomination process, as is the case with the "fighting game streamer of the year" category at the latest Streamer Awards.

This year's nominees include Sajam, Brawlpro, Eskay, and Lilypichu. By all means, all entirely qualified as people who spent a significant amount of time streaming fighting games this year.

However, if you know FGC, you know that when they see this nomination category, they expect to see people who are deeply rooted in the fighting game culture, people who are considered to be inside the group.

What they don't consider is that the nominees are apparently chosen entirely through the voting process. All of these streamers have relatively large and active audiences that actively voted for them or were asked to vote, leading to the only natural result.

Is this the best way to determine nominees? Well, if this is meant to be a popularity contest, certainly. If it's meant to be a celebration of people who achieved or contributed something meaningful, then absolutely not. Someone who can rally enough people to vote is not always the best person.

The more important question here is, does this matter? How much weight do you personally give to Streamer Awards, or even something like The Game Awards? What changes if something does or doesn't win? Are the nominees or the process of picking them the actual issue?

These incredibly large platforms can certainly be valuable and important, they can be a force of good, but that is never the purpose. In the process of questioning the nominations and insulting the showrunners or people who got picked, you might be missing the bigger root cause of why these things always cause such an outrage.

Award ceremony, in most cases, a combination of a marketing event and a popularity contest. The winners and who gets picked don't matter as long as it generally makes enough sense. What matters is that for one point in the year, a lot of eyes are drawn to the same point. That's extremely valuable to anyone who wants to sell or promote things, and the organizers are well aware of this.

Your attention is valuable, so you should treat it as such. Consider what's worth paying attention to, or basing your criticism on more underlying issues that should be solved before something is worth looking at.