Thread by @twoscooters

Whenever I am incredibly frustrated with the state of the video game industry, it’s so comforting to know that tabletop is right there to remind me how much worse it could be

For friends who don’t pay attention to this kind of inside baseball: a prestigious tabletop award was given… to the concept of “Black Excellence,” with a handful of “honorees” named. All of whom are cool people who, to be perfectly honest, deserve their own individual award.

These “honorees” are not award-winners, and cannot style themselves as such. This is interesting for a couple of reasons, chief of which is this:

I’ve been out of the tabletop world for a long time, but last I heard, the award committee was made up of previous award winners.

A lot of ppl (including some honorees) are frustrated with these stellar designers being recognized not for specific work, but as almost an apology for the award’s previous whiteness.

As a systems designer, my only question is: do these honorees get to join the award committee?

Because doing this as a decisive change to radically increase the diversity of decision-makers about this prestigious award is one thing.

Doing this as a throwaway gesture while maintaining the (total? near total?) whiteness of the gatekeepers is completely different.

I’ve struggled with whether to weigh in on this, because tabletop isn’t my thing and because I am an unabashed fan of many of the honorees, and I don’t want to diminish this for them!

But the problem is a systemic problem, and it demands a systemic solution.