d-Infinity has announced that it is launching its own awards program as a means of recognizing the accomplishments of small and medium-sized game companies. The d-Infinity Independent Game Awards (d-IIGA) are also designed to allow participants to compete among themselves rather than against vastly larger companies that have undue advantages in terms of resources, sheer numbers of titles released annually, and public visibility.

d-IIGA is open to any company that produces games or game accessories and which is neither publicly traded nor a subsidiary of a larger corporation that is publicly traded.

Companies can submit as many different eligible products as they want.

To be eligible for submission, a product must correspond to one of the six main d-IIGA categories and have been released during the previous calendar year. For the first annual awards, companies can submit any products they released during the previous two calendar years. A company can, however, decide to submit only one item total and, in the event that it opts to do so, that single item can be from any previous year. 

Companies can submit supplements they produced for use with core games owned by third-party companies even if those third-party companies are themselves not eligible to participate in the d-IIGA (e.g., supplements published under the d20 Open Game License submitted by eligible companies would be acceptable, even though they are published for use with a rules system owned by Wizards of the Coast, which is too large to participate in the independent game awards program).

Deadline for d-IIGA submissions is February 29, 2016, for the 2016 awards. Judges will be allowed to work with items as they come in, however, so as to make the process of ranking them more manageable once the cutoff date is reached, so companies are encouraged to begin submitting their products right away. 

d-IIGA participants must pick from one of six categories for each item they submit, as listed below, based on its type. Categories are Role-Playing Games, Board Games, Miniatures Rules, Supplements, Card Games, and Accessories. 

Products will be evaluated by a panel of five judges. One will be affiliated with the host convention Comicpalooza in 2016, three will be recognized members of the game industry, and one will be the public at large, which will be accomplished by allowing individuals to vote online and an average score for every item that was voted on by the public derived.

A company will not be permitted to submit anything for the d-IIGA in a particular year if one of the judges is a principal of that company or has worked for it anytime during the calendar year from which submissions are being drawn or anytime since then. 

d-Infinity will post online a list of all products submitted to the awards program as they are received. 

Five metallic awards will be granted in each category, with the submission receiving the highest number of points becoming a Platinum winner and those with descending numbers of points receiving Gold, Electrum, Silver, and Copper awards. 

Judges for the first year, 2016, will be Comicpalooza Director of Gaming Joe Charles, Michael O. Varhola of Skirmisher Publishing LLC, Ross Watson of Evil Beagle Games, and Kevin Nunn of Mechanisms and Machinations — and, of course, the public at large! 

Winners of the d-IIGA will be announced at an awards ceremony held at the host convention. At Comicpalooza 2016 the awards ceremony will take place on the evening of Saturday, June 18, at 7 p.m. in the George R. Brown Convention Center. As winners are announced, company representatives or designated proxies will come forward to accept their awards. 

Read more about the d-Infinity Independent Game Awards, including more detail on submissions, on the d-IIGA webpage.