Diana Jones Award

The Diana Jones Award is an annual award for "excellence in gaming". The award is unusual in two ways: first, it is not an award for a specific class of thing, but can be awarded to a person, product, publication, company, organization, event or trend – anything related to gaming; second, it does not count popularity or commercial success as a sign of "excellence". The award was first presented in 2001.

Nominees are circulated during the year to the committee, which is mostly anonymous but which is known to include Peter Adkison, Matt Forbeck, John Kovalic and James Wallis. The committee is anonymous to protect the voting process from interference, but individual judges are free to reveal themselves. The committee releases a shortlist of three to seven nominees in spring, and the award is presented to the winner at Gen Con in Indianapolis in August.

The Diana Jones trophy was created in the UK offices of TSR in the mid 1980s to commemorate the ending of their license to publish The Adventures of Indiana Jones Role-Playing Game. The trophy itself is a perspex pyramid containing the burnt remains of the last unsold copy of the game; all that is legible of the title is "diana Jones". (There is no relation of the award with fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones.) The trophy was "liberated" and eventually ended up with the Diana Jones committee. The destruction of "one of the least-loved and critically savaged games of all time" was seen an appropriate symbol for an award for excellence in gaming. The trophy also contains a counter that reads "Nazi™" from the game. While the trademark claim was present at Lucasfilm's insistence, it led to rumors that TSR had tried to trademark the term.