HOMEPAGE
This page includes both the history of the Ceremony of the Awards and the history of the Award itself.  The Ceremony history is listed first, followed by the Award history.
HISTORY OF THE CEREMONY OF THE AWARDS
The eGame Awards were created based on the idea of Chad on the eGame Central forum.  Before long, Dan thought Chad's idea was a good one, and set out to make sure it became a reality.  Dan contacted Steve in early 2002 and the eGame Awards were born.

The eGame Awards were originally titled the E-Game Oscars, but soon Steve requested the name changed to the eGame Oscars, to help better associate the Awards with eGame Central, which did not use a hyphen between the "E" and "Game."  In addition, the "e" was to be lower case.  Not long after, the name was again changed to the eGame Awards, as the Academy that runs The Academy Awards holds multiple copyrights on the title "Oscar" and we really didn't want to risk getting in any trouble, as we've heard of lawsuits from the academy before. 

After Dan was added to the eGame Central staff as the official awards coordinator, it was agreed upon that the Awards would be held every three months, representing a different season of the year.  The first to take place would be the Spring 2002 Awards. 

The Spring 2002 Awards took place on April 21, 2002 in a chatroom on the eGame Central site.  The awards were hosted by Dan, with other staff members presenting the awards.  10 Awards were given, with the highest being the Best Host and Best Overall Game/Series Award.  Survivor Webcam, which was a relatively unknown game at the time burst onto the scene winning 3 awards.  The Cybermole Project, perhaps the best known game at the time, also won 3 awards.  Survivor X won Best Overall Game/Series, and Dan Baker of Who Will Survive won Best Host.

Soon after the Spring Awards, there was an uprising of dissent against the Awards.  Hosts wanted more involvement, and the eGame Central staff began working on new plans.  They instituted two new categories for the Summer Awards, Best New Game and Best Amazing Race Game.  They also expanded the amount of nominees in each category from 4 to 5.  At the Summer Awards, held on August 4, 2002 in the same comfy theater (aka "Chat room"), Survivor Webcam was back with a vengeance.  It won 4 of 12 awards, including Best Overall Game/Series.  No other game won more than 1 award. 

Between the Summer and Fall Awards, hosts still called for additional involvement.  Dan had been working on new plans for the awards, and installed them for the Fall 2002 Awards.  The plans included the staff dividing up who came up with the primary list for nominations in each category, and then the staff choosing the best 4 games.  After the first 4 nominees were announced in each category, the hosts were allowed to vote for the last nominee in each category.  In addition, both new categories from the Summer Awards (Best New Game and Best AR Game) were abandoned, instead replaced by Best Cast and Best Competitor.  Nomination applications were accepted for Best Cast, Competitor, and Host for the first time, giving the judges a better view at who would win the award. 

The final new plan for the Fall awards was the "YOU VOTE" feature.  The YOU VOTE feature allowed the general host public to submit a ballot, with the overall combined host opinion counting as the equivalent of 1 judge vote.  Hosts welcomed all of the plans with open arms.  On awards night, November 24, 2002, the hosts and viewers alike joined together in the comfy eGame Theater.  Only half way into the show some hosts and viewers began to get rowdy.  The awards were postponed and moved to the new, AOL Theater.  Because of size restrictions in the theater, not all hosts were able to attend, including Steve himself.  Therefore the awards were relocated to the general eGame Host Forum, where announcements were made every 3 minutes with the winner of the next award.  Survivor Webcam once again was the leading Award Winner, winning 2, including Best Overall Game/Series.  The Mole Hill, a newcomer to eGame Central also received 2 awards.  Dan Baker, who recently announced his retirement from hosting, once again won Best Host.

At the Winter 2003 Awards the format of the awards stayed the same.  The awards were held on February 16th, 2003.  The only major change was that the awards moved to a new theater where the crowds could be controlled better.  Highlights of the show included "Joan River's" red-carpet arrival show prior to the actual show as well as the after party put on by her following the awards.  Other highlights included the announcing of The Real World Dallas as the winner of Best Mole game, prompting the original creator of the joke, the host of EE and BBSD to climb up on to the set behind the presenters and stay there until security finally got him down and back in his seat.  The Mole Hill was the big winner of the night, taking home 3 awards including Best Mole Game, Best Website Design, and Best Overall Game.  The SCS series was the only other winner of multiple awards, taking home two: Best Host and Best Survivor Game.

A NEW CHAPTER BEGINS:

In the early Spring of 2003 Steve (eGame Central creator) shocked most of the online gaming world by announcing the closing of eGame Central. This brought much chaos to the hosts and players who were loyal to it's listing and community. Something obviously had to be done and so the hosts of many great reality games teamed up and answered the call by creating... e-Squared Gaming. Thanks in much part to Chad (a member of the eGame Central staff before it's closing) who lead the way towards its creation, Aaron who designed the new site under incredible pressure, Zeb who designed all graphics and continued the Host Spotlight feature, and finally Simone who started updating the listings and began the moderating activity at the messageboard. The new name implies not only a new beginning, but a remembrance of where we came from. With that the eGame Awards WILL keep their old name, but will be owned and operated by the staffmembers of the e-Squared Gaming. This change seemed only natural since e-Squared Gaming was a call not for replacement of what Steve created at eGame, but as a place where we could all return to continue our love for playing and hosting online realiity games. We at e-Squared Gaming can only hope to one day reach the excellence Steve demonstrated at eGame Central, but we are determined and excited to reach that goal.

WE WILL SURVIVE!

Unfortunately amist all of the chaos some players and hosts thought it would not be worth it to continue without eGame Central leading the way so we experienced quite a few well known names and games closing shop and calling it quits. One of the hosts who decided to stop was the creator of the eGame Awards, Dan. We are very sad to see he won't be leading the organization party to continue the tradition, but we are enthusiastic about our new found leaders at e-Squared Gaming. The e-Squared Gaming staffmembers will be striving to keep the integrity of the awards shining by continuing what Dan has started. For the most part we will not deviate in the way Dan organized the eGame Awards. Therefore you didn't see a lot of changes in the Summer 2003 eGame Awards which took place in October.  In addition to all of these changes we unfortunately announced that because of time constraints we didn't count the 5th nomination as a hosts pick. Instead the e-Squared Gaming staff carefully selected that spot for the most deserving and possibly underrated game.

After a lot of hard work on the part of Zeb, Amy and the eSquared Gaming Staff, the Summer 2003 eGame Awards were finally realized on October 19, 2003.  The event was a lot of fun and for the most part included new names to the online gaming world compared to the last assembly in the Winter of 2003.  During the middle part of the ceremony we were all distracted by the 'annoying' person, but after a while he got bored and the rest was history.  This awards assembly will be remembered for its summer block-busters.  There were four games nominated for over four awards each! The biggest one of the bunch was Survivor: The Atacama Desert which was nominated for seven awards!! The games that turned out big winners were Eden Falls Project who took home 4 of the possible 6 awards it was nominated for, and Survivornet Series which won 3 of the possible 6 it was nominated for.  There were quite a few dissapointments for some hosts and players as, Survivor: The Atacama Desert only took home one award of the seven it was nominated for, Survivor on the Net Reality Games took home none of the five it was nominated for, and for the first time in two seasons Survivor Webcam did not win for Best Survivor Game, in fact they didn't win any awards this season.  Dissapointment aside, every game that won was very deserving and should be praised for achieving the highest award in the online reality gaming world, the "E."  Highlights of the awards included Survivornet Series taking the award for Best Overall Game, and Best Survivor Game, Simone of Eden Falls winning Best Host, and SBBTAMR 2 winning its first eGame Award for Best Completed Game.

When it came time for the Winter 2004 eGames, e-Squared Gaming's thriving index was in a continuous state of maintenance following major technical problems with the site.  Because of this, the Winter 2004 eGame Awards were postponed... indefinitely.

After the disappointing cancellation of the previous season's awards, the E-Squared staff was determined to deliver on the Summer 2004 eGames.  The site was reinstated and a steady stream of games were being indexed daily.  Around this time, Zeb decided to step down from his position as awards coordinator because of his increasingly busy schedule.  His position fell to Robert, and he, along with the e-Squared Gaming staff, scrambled significantly to devise a more organized and effective system with which to award games.  The most noteworthy of these changes was the elimination of the Fall eGames, so the ceremony would be strictly bi-annual, and the addition of completed games in the Best Survivor, Big Brother, Mole, & Miscellaneous Game categories; consequently, the Best Completed Game category was removed from the program.  With that, the judging began, and six games/series emerged with four or more nominations (In a rare occurance, two series had more than one game nominated as a result of the skipped awards the season before).  With four nominations were Surviva Disasta, The Counterspy, the combined nominations of the Big Brother J games, and Survivor Tonight: All-Star Edition, which sent the Survivor Tonight Series into the number 3 spot for Most Total Nominations.  The MI2 MOLE Series and Power Points took home the most nominations, 5; four of these being seperate and one being a joint nomination for Best Host (Fiona of Eclipse Productions).  Eden Falls 2: Escape from Reality also scored 3 nominations, propelling the Eden Falls Series as a whole into the tied number 3 spot for most nominations ever.  Despite Big Brother's meddling scheduling for the same night and time as the ceremony, it went off without a hitch, as did Simone's illustrious performance as Master of Ceremonies.  Without a doubt the big winner of the night was Eclipse Productions.  It's nominated games/series, Power Points and both MI2 MOLE games, took home a combined 5 awards, including Best Host and Best Overall Game or Series.
HISTORY OF THE eGAME AWARD "E"
The original eGame Award was made at the launch of the eGame Oscars by Dan.  It featured a golden "E" that was tilted to the left atop a marble pedestal.  The E's tilt reminded many people of the Enron "E" and that is indeed where the inspiration came from.

This model of the Award was used for the Spring and Summer 2002 Awards.

The generic Award is seen at the right.  Notice the "E-Game Oscar" title on the pedastal, this original graphic was created before the name of the Awards was changed from the E-Game Oscars to the eGame Awards.
At the time of the Fall 2002 Awards, Amanda from The Mole Hill offered to create a new, sharper design for the Awards.  She sent along her first sketch, which was immediately chosen by Dan to to become the new Award model.  It also features the tilted E, however it has a sharper golden tint, as well as a black pedastal instead of the old marble.

This model of the Award was used for the Fall 2002 Awards.

The generic Award is seen at the right.  This award is also just about a quarter-half inch taller than the former eGame Award.

At the Winter 2003 awards the design was once again slightly changed.  The base was engraved with orange letters instead of the traditional white.