okay I'ma be frankly clear here; competition CAN be a good thing when its healthy, but right now that is not where ganza competition seems to lie, and it doesn't matter if you're participating or not.  you can't just write off the stress from that as just "don't participate???" because quite frankly "don't participate" doesn't mean it doesn't exist and on the macro community level, the stress and salt from ganza fallout is virtually unavoidable whether you participate in it or not.  because your friends are probably participating in it or people you even interact with participate it and it colors their viewpoints and posts in threads like these and elsewhere.



so, no, stress and burnout isn't a "you" problem when it comes to these things.  stress and burnout is an everyone problem.  I virtually ignored the ganza this year after being nominated and I still talked to people who were involved in it and voting on it and whatever and, surprise! it still dragged them down, which by virtue of being a good friend soured my mood and essentially made not participating null and void in terms of a stress perspective.  no matter if you participate or not, ganza has been propped up as a central part of the creative community for so long that even IF you ignore it, it still affects the community at large going forward and its exhausting.  and on that note I wouldn't be shocked if the downturn ninjax pointed out in general nominations had something to do with people just being tired of the ganza on the whole.



anyway at the end of the day competition isn't a good thing when it comes to creative ventures and it just creates unneeded stress and salt with how the ganza is currently structured.  something *like* the ganza should absolutely exist, an end of yearish celebration of everything people put together, and friendly competition in other circumstances is healthy and good.  like NBL for instance is usually pretty friendly competition; a lot of the high end players take things very seriously (I've spent more time with the damage calculator than I care to admit) but at the end of the day its friendly competition and while we have our extremely salty moments (I've thrown more pairs of headsets than I care to admit) at the end of the day it still feels like a strong united community and, unlike the nuzforums ganza, it feels like it matters to some degree and it feels like we're in it TOGETHER with the competition aspect to various degrees, to the point that a lot of us will spend extensive amount of times helping rival teams build for other matches.



that's not ganza, or at least ganza as it stands, right this particular moment.  the competition aspect of it seems almost wholly detached from virtually everything else the creatives do in any given year.  we write, we read, we comment and we're supportive of each other and then we just have this thing that's meant to be a celebration of all of this that's, instead of something collaborative and lifts people up, functionally boils down to a popularity contest for medals that people stop caring about a week or so after the votes are in and the ganza results are released, and from my perspective the only thing anyone ever gets from winning ganza as it stands is salt from the people that lost or don't like them.