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[4E...] should the community stand up?

TheFlyingDutchman · 2008-12-19T17:42:41

Every day I check this forum to see if there is any news on the judging of 4E6 or any news about a new contest. But every day I'm disappointed, still no news. A while ago there were some promises about judging and even prizes I believe. But since then: not a single word. Off course there is the excellent topic by Avatar God which gives the contenders some nice feedback on all their efforts. And that made me think: should the contest be organized completely by the community? Off course, this is risky, I know a lot of forums where contests are organized that eventually are dying slowly because nobody is participating anymore. But on the other hand: the current situation isn't exactly encouraging either. So what are our options? What does a contest need, let me put up a list: Rules Strict deadline 4 Elements Submission system Judging Prizes? The rules could be almost the same as the rules of 4E6, the only thing that has to be changed are the minimum system specs I think. A strict deadline can easily be chosen, again last years contest can be an example, we could choose a deadline sometime in April or May 2009. Then which elements to choose? This gets a bit harder, but I think we could handle this as well. For example we could choose a deadline for sending in suggestions for elements and after that we randomly choose 4 elements from all suggestions. Now the harder parts of the contest: a submission system. Well maybe one of the contenders can put up an ftp server and give every contender an account for uploading his/her creation. Or maybe we could even lend last years submission system. The real hard part: judging I'm thinking about contenders that judge the entries themselves, but this causes some new problems. Most people are probably not able to judge entries for every allowed operating system, so how should this be handled (maybe vm-ware or live cd's can be a partial solution)? And how to make sure that the entries are judged reliable? For judging also a deadline could be set, say: every contender can judge entries till two months after the submission deadline. The advantage is that everybody knows when judging is finished and we are not waiting ages before that last contender finally has send in his judgings. After the judging deadline the judgings that were submitted are averaged and the winners will be known. Some kind of standard form can be created which lists points that have to be judged, so that judgings of different contenders are all comparable. Another advantage is that there will be more judges and thus feedback from more people on your creation. Finally: prizes. This point isn't really important for me, I just want a nice project to work on this year. I don't really care if there are neat prizes or not. We could try to email some corporations and see if they are willing to make some prizes available, off course the chance they are willing to do this, depends also on how well the contest will be set up and the level of the submissions. But again: I don't really care about prizes. The real motivator for me is being part of a group of people which all have the same goal: create that game in a few months time, all using the same elements as a basis. No dependence on a single person/group The thing I really wanted to avoid is the dependence on one person or a specific group of persons. Because this dependence is a weak link in a contest: that person or group might not be able to do whatever he/they has/have to do and the whole contest comes to a halt, just the way it happened with 4E6. So after setting up some rules and deadlines the contest should more or less run itself: of course there must be some kind of submission system ready and someone who calculates the averages of judgings, but I think these are not really big problems. What do you think? Maybe this is just premature, maybe the new contest is already in development and maybe the judging of last year is even almost finished. But I think a change might be necessary to motivate existing and new contenders. The proposed setup depends completely on the community so if nobody cares there won't be a contest. But the good thing is: if enough people care (and I guess that everybody who has enough motivation to complete a game for submission does care), there will be a contest and there will be judging. With the proposed setup you will even know in advance when judging will be completed. So what do you think? Could this proposal be the way to go? Or should we wait for the gamedev crew to announce the judging of 4E6 and the new contest? Could a completely community driven contest be a reality, or will it suffer from problems that occur because people will loose interest or don't care about judging? I'm also hoping for some reactions from the gamedev crew, I am interested in their opinions and their thoughts about the current setup of the 4E contests.

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Started by TheFlyingDutchman September 09, 2008 06:02 AM

42 comments, last by Funkymunky 15 years, 6 months ago

superpig

1,826

October 09, 2008 07:53 AM

I think that things will kick off at the beginning of summer 2009.

Richard "Superpig" Fine - saving pigs from untimely fates - Microsoft DirectX MVP 2006/2007/2008/2009
"Shaders are not meant to do everything. Of course you can try to use it for everything, but it's like playing football using cabbage." - MickeyMouse

Lesan

440

November 10, 2008 02:55 AM

Well, I know I perhaps expect much, but... shouldn't the winners get at least the GDNet+ membership as announced on the contest website? I mean, it should take much time to check 5 checkboxes to give the GDNet+...

I'm looking for programmers and other people for a tactics game!

Lesan

440

December 18, 2008 11:38 AM

I'm really sorry... and I don't read journals or news, so please inform me if I missed something... but could I actually get a response to my question?

BTW I like the new XMas theme.

I'm looking for programmers and other people for a tactics game!

Funkymunky

1,420

December 19, 2008 05:42 PM

Next summer? Ouch. So how about we do like a 48 hour game competition or something, over the holidays?

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[4E...] should the community stand up?

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[4E...] should the community stand up?

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