GAMA Origins Awards nominations revealed

The Game Manufacturer’s Association, better known as GAMA, makes its return this year with a slate of industry and consumer-facing events, including GAMA Expo which took place last month in Louisville, Ky. The occasion marks the 50th anniversary of the trade show, and also the 48th anniversary of the coveted GAMA Origins Awards, given each year at GAMA Origins in June. The peer-reviewed program is being directed this year by GAMA member Alex Schmidt, the chief operating officer at Stonemaier Games. Polygon can exclusively reveal this year’s finalists, all across four main categories.

“We are the trade association for the tabletop games industry,” explained GAMA’s executive director John Stacy in a recent interview with Polygon. “Everything from a creator having an idea to it actually landing on somebody’s table, everything along that value chain our members are involved in.”

For the Origins Awards, games must be nominated by GAMA members, which include individual designers, YouTubers, and social media influencers as well as publishers and distributors. The largest community making recommendations, however, are the owners of independent game stores — friendly local game stores (FLGS) in the vernacular.

“It’s a moving number, but there were approximately (4,000) to 5,000 game stores in the United States [alone], but we have members in 36 countries [including China], and so they could be part of this process as well.”

“It’s a very vital component in our industry hierarchy,” Stacy said. “You have to have that direct connection to consumers. A lot of publishers do sell direct, but they don’t have that in-person, in-your-face kind of contact that independent game stores have, and so there are wonderful conduit for information about what the market really wants. And so we really lay on them to help us make decisions about where we’re going as an association, but also as an industry.”

Also top of mind for Stacy and the GAMA board are the ongoing maneuvers by the Trump administration to enact new tariffs on foreign goods, a tax that could be applied to many tabletop products made overseas — including crowdfunded projects.

“I spent 17 years working in state legislature,” Stacy said. “I was a lobbyist […] before I came working for GAMA. We’re actually working with a coalition of about 200 different nonprofit associations, including the National Retail Federation, the Toy Association, [and] other groups. We’ve been monitoring and working to push back against tariffs for several years now. We had a respite during the last administration, but this new administration came out the gates charging with it.”

This year’s nominees are organized into four categories: board games, miniature games, role-playing games, and so-called “constructible games,” which Stacy said refers primarily to trading card, collectible card, and living card games. The nominees are as follows:

Board games

Co-op/Solo

Gateway

Party

Heavy Strategy

Light Strategy

Constructible

Fixed

Randomized

Miniature games

Miniature Core Product

Miniature

Miniature Paint/Hobby Accessory

Role-playing Games

RPG Core

RPG Supplement

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