Wow, tough choices.
I rank RftG a little better than ItYotD (which still gets the best acronym, EVAR), but like ND more than Phonecia. I think a tie is fine!

The FFG offerings are not even close despite my high hopes for both.  I’ve not given up on ToI, but after two playings of Starcraft, mine is up for trade.

Scott, you appear to have good company in your opinion of Starcraft, as Mike Siggins, in his comments on the original article, seemed to take a dim view of the game.  I actually haven’t had the chance to play it yet, although I hope to soon.  The rules do look quite interesting.  But given the reception it has received from folks like you, I may wind up being disappointed.

Gentlemen, there is nothing quite like an opinion by committee.

Larry, I think Starcraft is a great concept, but the secret victory conditions ruin the game for me (and most of my group).  I think they are too easy to meet, therefore, it’s almost impossible to guard against all of them for each opponent. 
The game might be improved if they weren’t secret (so you knew what to guard against) or if they were toughened up a bit or just removed.  But at three plus hours, we’ve not bothered experimenting.  There are just too many good games out there already!

Starcraft doesn’t have Secret Victory conditions, so I don’t know what to tell you Scott. The ‘cheat sheets’ in the game even tell you what everyones victory condition is.

I’m also not sure what “you are in good company in your opinion...” is meant to imply. If you have already played the game you have enough information at your disposal to form your own opinion of it. Why should other’s opinions form part of your taste.

Finally, I don’t understand why designers were nominated for designs Larry hasn’t even played. Changing your opinion on designs you haven’t experienced is bizzare in the extreme, frankly if you haven’t played it then those designers shouldn’t have been in the running in the first place - you do a disservice to those designers, the designers they were up against, and your audience by doing so.

Frank, my opinions have nothing to do with the “awards” (there ARE no awards, of course, just a designation that I like to confer each year).  I try to base them on the way I think the gaming community views the designs.  Therefore, I lean on things like Geek ratings, comments on the Internet, and performance in the annual gaming awards.  The articles aren’t meant to be taken seriously; it’s just a fun thing that I’ve done the last few years and which I’ve extended back to the late fifties.  But as much as I can, I keep my opinions about the games out of the process, so there’s no reason games I haven’t played shouldn’t be considered; in fact, eliminating such games would be the disservice.

Larry, when complaining about only 15 votes from all the geeks, please take into account that if asking people to thumb the designer they thought within a geeklist, thumbs will be counted for your profile. It is often considered as a cheap way to get “thumbs up” (expressing you have done or written something good) when doing polls that way (asking for thumbs). Instead please use the new poll feature Aldie has implemented for exactly that purpose. I am sure that more geeks will express their opinion that way as even the most doubtful will not hesitate anymore.

This feels more like a popularity contest than an award for “best designer.”

Dan, it wasn’t a complaint, it was an acknowledgement that 15 points of view are far from statistically significant.  I was actually quite pleased that as many as 15 folks took the time to state their preferences for such an arbitrary and unimportant “contest”.  The complaints about “harvesting thumbs” that are sometimes heard are some of the dumbest things mentioned on the Geek (and that’s saying something), but you’re right, some people feel that way.  My list was created well before the poll feature was implemented; if I had done it today, naturally I would have used it.

And Philip, that’s like complaining that the presidential election is just a “popularity contest”.  I mean, that’s the whole idea!  The alternative is for me to declare who *I* think was the best designer last year, according to the games that *I* like, and that would be of interest to approximately one person (and *I* might not even care!).  I try to spread it out over as large a group as I can, including Geek raters, gaming award groups, gaming commentators and reviewers, and so on.  That way, I can give credit to a game like Phoenicia, which has just an okay rating, but which are highly regarded and often played in some quarters.  I guess I could give the award to the designer of a few unpopular games, but I don’t really see the value of that.

Again, this is just meant to be a silly little fun designation that isn’t to be taken too seriously.  I only came up with the concept because no one else seemed to talk about it and given how many designers these days release multiple games a year, it has some meaning.  But I don’t pretend it’s anything other than a somewhat arbitrary choice based on my reading of what the gaming community (an ill-defined term, based primarily on my exposure) feels about the previous year’s games.  If you’re not having fun with it, it really isn’t worth worrying about.

My point is that the decision was changed based on the popularity of games. I won’t argue that Race for the Galaxy is fun, but going back on your original article because of game ratings feels very odd to me.

Presidential elections, on the other hand, are a money contest more than anything else.

There seems to be a basic misunderstanding in how I make my picks for the DotY.  If you’ll look at my original article, Philip, you’ll see that I leaned very heavily on the game’s ratings.  With so many of the games coming out late and few of them eligible for last year’s award season, there was little else to go on.  All that I’ve done with this update is make the same decision using more current information.

I’ll try this again:  my decision of who to pick for Designer of the Year has nothing to do with what I think of the games.  It has everything to do with how I think the gaming community views the games.

This all sounds very “access hollywood” to me.

Larry, thanks for the clarification. That leads me to a question, though: Ignoring the community, who do _you_ think is Designer of the Year?

It’s definitely between Feld and Lehmann for me as well, Philip.  Agricola and Brass are great, but I like Phoenicia just as much, so the addition of Race puts Lehmann ahead of Rosenberg and Wallace, who have nothing else on their resume.  Even though I admire Race and I’m warming to it a little bit more (I actually won a couple of games last week!), I have nothing close to the love for it that many of my peers do.  So since I rate Notre Dame right behind the top three and Dragon not far behind it, I think I’d go with Feld.  But it’s pretty close and nowhere near as strong a choice as in year’s past.  For example, last year Vlaada Chavtil designed one of my all-time favorite games in Through the Ages and added another interesting game in Graenaland, beating out Knizia (Medici vs. Strozzi, Blue Moon City, Times Square, Great Wall of China) for my personal choice--I’d say both of them had better years for me than either Feld or Lehmann did this year.