Lack of diversity in tabletop’s biggest award isn’t that hard to judge
Director says “daunting” obligation received a single BIPOC candidate for 2025, who withdrew their application
Awards shows have a tendency to highlight the cancers within an industry, isolating serious issues that have been left to metastasize through neglect and inattention. That doesn’t mean people haven’t been shouting about them, but the industry can, by and large, carry on without feeling the need to pull a cultural fire alarm.
Then, along comes an event like the ENNIE Awards that draws the eyeballs of indie designers and large publishers alike to pay close attention to who is nominated, who got snubbed, and who exactly made all of these decisions. Eventually someone spotted the candidates for 2025’s potential judges, the list of people who decide winners in every category alongside throwing laurels at their own Judge’s Spotlight title. Running alongside the congratulations and commiserations was a question, asked from the corners of mouths on aggrieved faces: why are these judges all so white?
Out of the 11 candidates, three are women and none of the names are BIPOC industry professionals. It’s a pretty damning cross-section in 2024, made all the more embarrassing by two non-white candidates among this year’s slate of judges. Awards are fun, gratifying but ultimately meaningless endeavors, and I stand by that assessment. But back-patting endeavors still deserve equal representation, especially within a hobby that has spent the last two decades reckoning with, and desperately shaking off, its culturally insular past.
