The first ever Eve Creator Award nominations were announced earlier and out of 40 nominees my name was missing. I want to be very, very clear here - every single name on that list deserves to be there. Period. And I honestly do congratulate each of them. They are my friends, my partners, my fellow creators and I have a tremendous amount of respect for each of them.
My good friend CrazyKinux - with no prompting from myself - wrote a very impassioned blog post about the results. You can read it here. He was very upset. I love him for that. Thank you my friend. And I appreciate all of the comments and support I've gotten from all corners since the announcement. Thank you. Sincerely.
I wrote a post about these awards early on and expressed some concerns regarding the lack of any creative categories and the oblique nature of the final results. Some creators pushed hard to be nominated, some lobbied hard for their followers to "vote". I did not do that. This was a nomination based event and I already know many people took the time to nominate me. What this means is that a panel of judges (we have no idea who or how many) looked at those nominations and decided that I was not worthy of being among them. That is the part that hurts. I couldn't care less about winning and many of my friends will win, and I will be happy for each of them.
But some mysterious group of people saw my name and decided I wasn't going to be nominated.
In two weeks I'll be, once again, hosting the largest player-run event in all of New Eden - for the 12th or 16th year in a row. The annual Frigate Free For All involves thousands of players and thousands of ships and often breaks records for destruction in our game. This blog you are reading has had over 6 million visitors in the past 16.3 years, since 2010. I'm not going to list more things, it's embarasing.
I tell new content creators two things:
1) Do it because you love Eve and the community, and
2) CCP will let you down eventually. They always do.
The FF4A will continue. My videos will continue. I'll continue writing in these pages about a game and a community I love. And I will continue to haunt the space lanes. And I'll continue to produce art and creative images, music, and more to express myself. No one can stop me.
Onward & Upward.
I wish every nominee the very best of luck. Sincerely.