Not going away.

Last year’s inaugural Kunkel Awards didn’t exactly grab the gaming world by the throat.

Many gaming journalists purposefully ignored the Kunkels. They were suspicious of SPJ AirPlay, the 2015 live-streamed debate about the ethics of the gaming press. Onstage were several GamerGate proponents. (GamerGate opponents refused to attend.)

Explains James Fudge, the managing editor of Unwinnable, former ME of the defunct Games Politics, and one of the creators of the Kunkel Awards…

“Last year, a number of colleagues privately expressed discomfort at publicly supporting the first annual Kunkel awards, mostly due to a lack of trust or confidence in SPJ. That distrust – while understandable in the caustic online atmosphere of 2016 – was unfounded and misguided. The Kunkel Awards accomplished what they were designed to do: highlight excellent games journalism.”

Of course, many GamerGate supporters hated the Kunkel Awards, too. That’s because some winners were media outlets they can’t stand – with the dreaded Kotaku dominating the news category.

As one Kunkel commenter angrily typed last year, honoring Kotaku “is like giving John Wayne Gacey a man of the year award for not stabbing someone he passed in the grocery store.” Don’t quite grasp the analogy, but it sounds bad.

Then there were the gamers who called the Kunkel Awards a hot mess and complete shit.

Still, we’re encouraged…

Distrust and loathing are far better than apathy and ignorance.

For all the gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, we still got nearly 300 entries last year.

last year. The original reason for the Kunkel Awards hasn’t changed.

So today, we open nominations for the second time. Tomorrow, we’ll start explaining our two new categories. One of them is sure to be really hated.

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