Fun thing since i'm sometimes infantile : I wanted an award for making most maps in a year since im a new comer or something like that... altho just for the memes (same thing in the QC community i want a silly award as the most wholesome QC player since i'm always kind in MP games).
Not looking to achieve nothing or being called out, just trying to smile and imagine stuff, showing on a good side prizes and awards are amazing, mostly symbolic.
now anecdotes out, let me give my serious opinion:
I've been close to both Doom and Quake communities, i've stuck with Quake mostly but i think these are my points in this topic:
- Quake isn't nearly as popular as Doom, this includes custom content, i don't think we have the same volume of maps (not even mixing Slipseer, func_msgboard and Quaddicted) per year if we compare it with Doomworld... altho this is no excuse... just maybe something to take into account.
- While making an award sort of thing would give Quake mapping more traction, people would start treating it as a competition, this would generate either people making bad maps on purpose for "ugly awards" or trying to make maps to achieve the goal rather than to make fun levels.
- A year in review would work... Totally! i think this is preferrable, with mentions even! something that would do good to the community encouraging newcomers, veterans and "in the middle" mappers.
- This would also require organization, remember the type of awards we see like "Game awards" (most notable example) while i think the topic of who are judges and vote system this would also require a some sort of crew behind it... this would require time studying the maps, judges, etc... This is time consuming (i've been judge in niche awards or meme awards in some content creators communities)... and of course this would cause disrage, people calling things unfair, etc... you know The game awards? people always come out discussing why X became game of the year and not X, and of course we will forget that by the next day in the current times we're living, but i think Quake should have it's own thing but a bit more different.
A year in review could work... speciable and notable mentions so no one feels left out or feels better than the other... just to have fun and keep being the amazing talented mappers and creators we are and we will still be without causing discourage.