Video game journalists are accustomed to giving out annual awards for their favorite games. They're a bit less accustomed to receiving awards for their coverage of such games. Well, perhaps they should start getting used to it, as British publisher Intent Media (best known for trade pubs MCV and Develop) recently announced plans for a Games Media Awards event at London's Soho Revue Bar on October 11.

Frankly, it's a bit surprising that it's taken this long. In the nearly 30 years that organized coverage of the game industry has existed, I can't think of one organized attempt to recognize quality games writing, save for a few throwaway awards at the Spike TV Video Game Awards. If other niche fields like jazz journalism and automotive journalism can have their own awards shows, surely the time has come for game journalism to be recognized as well.

Apparently, at least some members of the games press agree. "We actually found a lot of people in the games media don't feel well recognized by the industry they served," said Stuart Dinsey, Managing Director for Intent Media and the brains behind the awards show. "We felt this was a good way to give them some of that recognition and have a great party for everyone to get together at the same time."

Sun Games Editor Jonathan Weinberg echoed the sentiment. "Games journalism is now becoming as much a key part of the national press and mainstream media as music, film and TV," he said. "The Games Media Awards are a great idea and will rightly recognize the hard work that goes into spreading the gaming message - be it by the specialist press or the more consumer side of the industry."

But as with any great idea, the details matter, and the initial announcement was short on specifics for how this attempt at recognition will work. In a conversation with Media Coverage, Dinsey revealed that awards will be given in twelve categories, to be announced in MCV in the next few weeks. Dinsey said Intent will select about five nominees for each category through a mixture of independent research and discussions with the industry. Publications can lobby for a nomination independently, but Dinsey said this will in no way be a requirement.

The awards will focus on the British press, mostly, but there will likely be a few international categories, Dinsey said. Dinsey also stressed that all forms of games media – from specialist to mainstream, from blogging and podcasts to magazines, newspapers, radio and TV – would be eligible for the awards. "This is about the broad games media, not the specialist games media," he said. "If you just focused on the specialist press, it'd be too small a sector."

As for the all-important judging itself, Dinsey said the exact process was still being tweaked. Dinsey added that he'd like to get votes from "all the leading companies" in the games industry, probably by asking PR representatives to consult with their colleagues and place a vote to represent the company as a whole. Dinsey said the exact makeup of the judging panel will be kept secret until after the voting is done, to prevent any quid pro quo situations from developing. Dinsey said they might consider letting members of the press vote and that the final voting panel would likely be some mixture of industry and press.

But the mere specter of industry voting was enough to give some members of the press pause about the awards. "The games industry are the last people who should be voting for awards in games journalism," said British game freelancer Kieron Gillen. "It's a bit like the prisoners voting for who's their favourite prison guard." Gillen said he worries that the industry voting will make the award one "you wouldn't want to win.... because it's basically shorthand for 'Lapdog of the year award.'"

I'd have to agree. Journalists themselves are in a much better position to judge their peers than are the game makers and publishers that we're supposed to be covering somewhat objectively. Even if there's no chance of explicit coverage-for-votes trading, the danger of industry-picked awards is that they'll end up going only to outlets that give unquestioningly good coverage to everything. Hard hitting critiques and investigative journalism are unlikely to be rewarded by the companies that work so hard to generate positive coverage and keep secrets until they're ready to be announced.

Perhaps formal awards are the wrong way to be going about recognizing good games journalism in the first place. After all, shouldn't the free market be able to determine what makes writing good? Theoretically, the more prestigious and popular an outlet is, the more likely it is to pay a decent page rate and thereby attract the best writers (which in turn attracts more readers, and the circle of circulation continues). Then again, many sites become popular by appealing to the lowest common denominator, generating millions of page views from vapid, self-interested pabulum.

No, more than money, the greatest award a journalist can receive is the positive attentions of his peers and readers, and the Internet provides the ultimate democratic form of recognition in this regard. Every link from a blog or comment from a reader is a form of recognition that's worth more than some artificially constructed award. While the correct credit for a piece can sometimes get lost in the tangle of the web, the most interesting pieces tend to get the attention they deserve through the unorganized system of linking and commenting. "Speaking personally, when someone actually mails me with a comment on something I do and respond genuinely to it, that means a hell of a lot," Gillen said.

Still, an e-mail comment doesn't have quite the official heft of an awards trophy, so the popularity of a games media award show seems inevitable, no matter who's doing the choosing. As Dinsey put it, "Everyone loves the opportunity to win an award." And what's so wrong with that?

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Media Coverage is an opinion column. The opinions expressed in this column are solely the opinions of the columnist and are not necessarily the opinions of GameDaily.com.