The site is up where you can vote for the Audience Award for the Independent Games Festival. There are fifteen games nominated. You haven't heard of most of them. You've played even fewer of them. Simply select a title from the drop down list and enter your email address to validate your vote. Then dip your thumb in blue ink. Because like many places where you have to dip your thumb in blue ink to vote, this election isn't reliable.

In an Audience/Reader/Random-Yahoo-on-the-Street Award, the winner is simply going to be the contestant the most people have heard of. It's a popularity contest. It's a measure of marketing and little else. I'll bet you dollars to donuts the winner of the Audience Award will be PixelJunk Eden, not because it's a good game (which it is), but because it's a full-blown commercial endeavor pushed at users of a major console system. Compare this to the other games you have to actively seek out and download, such as You Have to Burn This Rope (pictured). I haven't played it, but I mention it because it's the one I most keep meaning to play. And not because I really know anything about it, but because it's got such a strange name. Hmm, maybe it has a chance of winning after all.

This sort of thing works fine when you're talking movies or American Idol contestants, because you can safely make assumptions that the people involved have seen what they need to see. Movies and wannabe pop stars don't require a significant investment of time or attention. But when it comes to games, they have a whole separate word for the people who have played all the games and are therefore qualified to pick a winner. That word is "judge".