Crit Awards no longer at Gen Con 2024

The Crit Awards honner the people who make Tabletop Roleplaying Games (TTRPG) awesome. The awards include real play, publisher of games, podcaters and people who advance the TTRP community. The Crit Awards have been given out at Gen Con last year. This year this will not be the case. The Crit Awards fols have decided to pull out of Gen Con and possibly host its own virtual event.

Why did the Crit Awards decide to do this? Earlier this summer (June 14th) the Crit Awards issued a statement regarding the eligability for nominations for a Crit Award. The Crit Awards team did not mince words, Zionists are not welcome to get an award. Zionist belive that Judisim is both a religion and a nationality. This extends privledges to people who are apart of the Jewish religion that other ethnic groups do not get. For example Religous Jews can apply for citizenship no matter where they live. This is not offered to any other group. Right wing Zionists are associated with the aparthid state with Isreal and Palastine. I dont intend on giving a complete history lesson but it is good to get the some of the context. I encourage you to seek out information from people who are more informed on this topic.

So what happened? Well there was a lot of backlash to the statement that Crit Awards put out and there was a lot of vitriol on social media directed at Crit Awards. Crit Awards met with Gen Con to figure out a way forward and that resulted in the Crit Awards no longer being apart of the convention. Its unfortunate that Gen Con and Crtit Awards couldn't come to an arrangement that works. Gen Con has been supportive of causes in the past to a point. Gen Con in 2022 put out a statement that they would be looking to move out of Indiana due to a draconian abortion law that was being put into place. They are still there. In 2015 Gen Con put out a statement against laws that would allow discrimination against LGBTQ+ people. There was also an inferance that they could be looking to move to out of Indiana. They are still there.