by Nick Capozzoli

The New York Videogame Critics Circle will be presenting its second annual Knickerbocker Award for Best Games Journalism on January 19th, as part of the 6th Annual New York Game Awards.

The Award will be given to one journalist or critic for distinguished contributions to the field during the voting year. The selected journalist will have best demonstrated traditional journalistic values, including–but not limited to–work that illuminates, contextualizes, entertains, exhibits lucid writing, sound reasoning, wit, integrity, et alia.

The Short List of Nominees

Brendan Caldwell

Caldwell’s Ridealong series calls to mind those plucky reporters who, every year, have the task of interviewing a Triple Crown jockey from the back of a moving horse. Hiis prose is jostled and bumped organically as he pursues his subjects across their digital haunts, a stranger in strange virtual lands.

See: Ridealong – Stalking a Wounded Deer with the Hunter

Wesley Yin-Poole

Yin-Poole’s colossal feature on the demise of Lionhead Studios was one of the definitive longreads of the year. That he found time to write it, tucked in between the beats of his high-tempo reportage is perhaps another story itself.

See: Lionhead: The Inside Story

Aevee Bee

Aevee Bee’s writing floats and stings like the proverbial butterfly and, well, bee. The founder of zine darling ZEAL dances and weaves whole paragraphs at the tip of the fingers, before suddenly pivoting and delivering a sentence that floors you.

See: Review: The Overwatch Lore

Joel Goodwin

Since 2010, Goodwin has tinkered away at one of gaming’s best and most discursive blogs, Electron Dance, digging up old Atari reactor simulations after Fukushima, or coining “vaulting the grave” to perfectly encapsulate AAA inanity. More recent forays into video, like The Unbearable Now, bring Goodwin’s unique aptitude for historicizing games a new audience.

See: The Unbearable Now, an Interpretation of The Witness

David Wolinsky

If you detect a sort of zeitgeisty je ne sais quois in Wolinsky’s interviews, just look to the name of their series. Don’t Die is at once elegiac and beseechingly hopeful—making it a perfect read for the year that was 2016.

See: Don’t Die

Chris Franklin

Delightful things happen when Franklin’s inquisitive style of critique meets The Beginner’s Guide, a game that (coincidentally?) happens to remark less-than-favorably on just the sort of work Franklin does. For a lesser critic this might be a source of frustration or confusion, but in Franklin’s hands it becomes an opportunity for playful introspection.

See: The Beginner’s Guide

Claudia Lo

If game criticism has a white whale, it might be that rare piece which is able to use a game’s code as an inroad to critique. Lo hooks it with How Rimworld’s Code Defines Strict Gender Roles, a work of criticism that finds matters of broad social consequence hidden in the ones and zeroes of a game’s anatomy.

See: How Rimworld’s Code Defines Strict Gender Roles

Colin Campbell

Campbell’s veteran hand stewarded a number of important, weighty stories through to wide acclaim in 2016. His in-depth reporting brought scrutiny to the use of the term “mechanical apartheid” in a game’s promotional materials, and informed a signature piece in The Game Industry’s Disposable Workers.

See: The Game Industry’s Disposable Workers

The Rules

The award is being administered in accordance with the following guidelines:

▫ The award is made available to anyone who has created a journalistic work on the topic of video games during the awards year

▫ Eligible works include, but are not necessarily limited to: Features, Editorials, Criticism, News Reports, Reviews, & Previews

▫ Written, audio, illustrative, and video works are eligible

▫ Circle members will be ineligible for the award

▫ Circle members cannot cast a vote for staff at their respective sites

▫ No prize (financial or otherwise) will be associated with the award beyond the New York Game Awards Trophy

▫ No sponsorship will be associated with the award

▫ Circle members are expected to vote solely in accordance with the award’s principles.

Nick Capozolli leads the team of New York Videogame Critics Circle writers who debate, argue, rail boisterously and sometimes spar heatedly over a vast number of potential journalism nominees before settling on those you see above.