Bathroom Monologue: It’s an Honor to be Nominated

Rita looked up from her screen and saw Wethers was in her door. She rubbed her eyes.

The Academy of Games Science had jerked them around ridiculously for the last month, and Wethers was the liaison. It was his job to be told ‘No’ by one party and yelled at by the other. Rita’s job was to yell.

“Tell me you have good news.”

“I have good news.”

“Are you just saying that because I told you to?”

Wethers put up his hands as though to defend himself should the lead developer start throwing Bioshock toys at him.

“They reiterated that they don’t want to nominate foreign developers for an Euro-American award.”

“Which we know…” Rita began.

“Which we know is code for us not paying dues to the union. Yes. They don’t want to set a bad precedent where people who don’t pay win something prestigious.”

Rita rolled her eyes at her Big Daddy statue. “You’ve got to wonder if the Oscars are this bad.”

“I hear Hollywood is much worse. Regardless, after we reiterated everything yet again, they cracked. I have good news.”

“Yes?”

“They will make us a nominee.”

She threw her fists in the air. “Splendid!”

Wethers made fists and purposefully lowered them.

“But we can’t win.”

Rita kept her fists up in the air, but clenched them.

“What do you mean we can’t win? If we’re in, we’re a shoe-in. Bethesda and Bioware didn’t put anything out this year. There’s no new Final Fantasy, and the judges hate that JRPG stuff anyway. What else are they going to give it to? Everything else is crap. It’s why we sold a million copies.”

“I mean they won’t let us win.”

“Won’t let us?”

“They will make us a nominee, but will definitely give the award to someone else. They don’t want that precedent of a non-payer winning.”

“But if we can’t win, we’re not really a nominee.”

“It’s an honor to be nominated.”

“If we can’t win, it’s not a nomination! We have the same chances as all the crappy games they didn’t nominate.”

“But it looks different. We might even be able to use it as advertising on the game box when we issue... uh…”

He’d dug a hole there. Rita pushed him into it. “Our Game of the Year edition? We can’t put out a Game of the Year re-release if we don’t win Game of the Year awards!”

Rita reached for the Big Daddy. Wethers reached outside the door, preparing to flee.

“Okay! I’ll tell them we’re flattered but feel they should consider…”

Her arm reeled back to pitch the toy at him, but he was already gone.