Kinda sad to witness the AIAS coming under fire again for glaring omissions in their 2007 nominations list.

While I like Joseph Olin (nice/cool guy whom I had a great time with at the conference in Portugal last year), I just can’t keep quiet on his whole “pay to play” defense.

If we look at the Oscars as a model, the nomination eligibility and submission rules never mention a fee. The Oscars do require membership for individual film industry professionals to participate in the nomination and voting process. But, nominations and voting can be of any eligible movie. And, let me reiterate that film eligibility does not require payment or membership on the part of the studio.

So, it is the members, as individuals who are given the collective ability to determine, of all the eligible films, which achievements are worthy of recognition. It is NOT the studios paying to get their movies onto some initial list for consideration…

(Though, of course, there’s the whole practice of paying for promotions, etc, to get a film noticed by the members. That’s a whole other story…)

In the case of the Choice Awards, we too have a pay to play model. That is, we require individuals to be members to participate in the nomination/voting process. But, they are allowed to nominate any game they believe worthy. After all the numbers are tallied, we simply send out emails saying, Congrats! You’ve been nominated!