Now that 2016 is upon us, it’s time to look to the future of our awards. Over the next few months, we’re going to be making some big announcements regarding how our group will be growing. We’ll be detailing the changes that we’re making to finally incorporate the remaining award projects that existed before we formed the Atlantic Award Group. We are excited to talk about one of the developments right now.
As of today, our awards will be organized into three sections. Global: Our projects that are open to the whole world and are not limited by any geographical restrictions. Regional: Awards that are limited to a specific area due to sponsorship stipulations; and the now the newest member, Industry.
We are pleased to introduce the Atlantic Industry Awards (AIA) powered by the Atlantic Award Group. These awards will focus on specific industries and look to award the extraordinary people, businesses and projects within specific sectors. To begin this extensive roll-out, we are introducing AIA:Gaming. As the name suggests, the award will focus on recognizing the incredible work done within the video gaming industry.
Since new years, we’ve been working tirelessly to form relationships with some of the most knowledgeable people in the business. We’re going to be selecting a panel of a dozen or so professionals to assist us in the selection process. So how will AIA awards work exactly? Well, they will be very similar to our Atlantic Awards. They will be nominated by the public, and selected by a panel, but in this case the panel will be selected based on their experience in that specific industry.
The big question comes down to categories. The AAG is well known for it’s free thinking. Since day one, even before we merged to create this group, our awards were un-categorized, so what now?
We feel strongly about keeping categories out of awards. That’s why, even making the decision to introduce specific industry based awards was something we had to offer serious thought too. We decided that if we were to introduce awards focused on certain areas, then we had to abide by our free thinking award model. With that in mind, all of the AIA’s will be without boundaries, just like everything else. We won’t have to select the ‘the best of this’ and ‘the best of that’ but more focus on what is extraordinary and what should be recognized.
For example with gaming awards in general, it’s typical to have categories such as “Best shooter” or “Best RPG”, but we don’t want to look at our awards like that. That’s not to say we won’t want to recognize the best RPG but we don’t want to limit ourselves, nor do we want to force ourselves to present more than we want too. With this unique model, we can recognize the person who helped make the product, the product itself, or the company responsible for that product. The possibilities are endless.
We’ll be introducing more awards as part of the AIA in the months to follow as we discuss sponsorship opportunities with many of the wonderful companies we work with, but rest assured, we will never allow our sponsors to influence or determine who receives our awards. Our awards are ours alone to present and the companies we work with are happy to support the work that we do without pushing their own opinions or agendas upon us.
Full information on AIA:Gaming will be available later this month.
We hope to launch several other AIA projects by the end of 2016.