Lot's of speculation and hate flying around here, so I figured I'd drop in a set the record straight on a few things.
But first off, some introductions... my name's Landon Beall, and I was actually a member of this past year's AVA Team. :) Specifically, I was involved as the webmaster and oversaw the various technical implementations that were used during nominations and voting.
The way the AVA's work is that only people who work in Audio Drama are able to vote (meaning we're more or less like the SAG Awards). This criteria would include everyone on the production team for We're Alive (i.e. all of the actors, mixers, directors, writers, graphic artists, webmasters, PR team, ect.), and
everyone else working in the same or similar production roles at other free audio drama and/or production group on the net. The overall idea being, that those in the audio drama community are able to vote for what they consider the best.
Now, does that mean there was any rigging or cheating? As one of the individuals in charge of monitoring voting patterns, I can definitively say there was not.
That said, one thing we
*did* see was one small production group who only voted for their productions (and little else). In other words? This small group
attempted to rig the vote. This did manage to impact one voting
category, though the effects of their greed did not affect the outcome of the winner so we left things alone. But to clarify, this one incident does not constitute any rigging on our part; merely a selfish attitude among the individuals who participated in said attempt to rig the vote.
I can't speak for Gwen as I don't work with Gypsy Audio (I work with Pendant, in case anyone was wondering), but Gypsy only won in one category. And that was with next to none of their own members voting for their own shows (Again, I can confirm this since I monitored voting).
Additionally, you make an unwarranted jab at "...these people have(ing) to act the way they do." Nominations were open to everyone (fans included), meaning We're Alive was nominated because someone felt it needed to be. Also, the same goes for why it wasn't nominated in more categories... because someone felt it didn't need to be. And once more, the same goes for why it did not win in the finals: because enough voters thought another show was better.
We tried our best to keep these awards fair and honest. There was no rigging, no insider politics, and no horseshit. So, if you're wondering why We're Alive didn't win, chock it up to more folks from your production team (and voters coming from
others) not voting for it (Also, for the record, I can confirm that very few people from the We're Alive team voted in the AVA's).
Some good news though: If it makes folks feel better about the AVA's, I
can confirm that We're Alive came in second place in all but one category it was nominated for. Meaning you guys
still did well. That's something to be extremely proud about. :)
If anyone has any questions of comments about anything I just said, please let me know! I'm more than happy to answer them: negative or positive. :)