Orymus3 / Slicer4Ever - contact me if this is something you want to move forward with. We can make this an official GameDev.net virtual event and use our past experience with contests / judging.

p.s. anyone still remember the 4 Elements Contest?

Glad I'm not the only one who remembers 4E. These WoA competitions do actually remind me a lot of that.

In fact I helped design the logo for 4Elements one year, I seem to recall.

I never actually participated as a contestant but I was totally fascinated watching peoples' games come together over the duration of the contest. Back then everybody used their own home-brew engines and a lot more people aimed to go 3D on their games. The competition lasted a few weeks though, IIRC.

For anyone that doesn't know: The idea was that 4 element themes were announced at the start and contestants had to incorporate them in any way then fancied. (Possibly with a rule saying that at least 3 of 4 elements must feature in the game).

To make judging fairer how about...

allowing every team to be able to judge every game entry, apart from their own, presented to them anonymously (if this is possible), as long as it is proven that they have played all aspects of all entries

...So no team would be disappointed with a full democratic result, Judged anonymously

I've actually been thinking about the competition of late, and do intend to take part if it takes place this year. ^_^

It will take place even if I have to return to reality and shovel this competition into everyone's infile :)

Ah, I'm glad to read it--although I hope that it doesn't require anything quite so drastic!

Orymus3 / Slicer4Ever - contact me if this is something you want to move forward with. We can make this an official GameDev.net virtual event and use our past experience with contests / judging.

p.s. anyone still remember the 4 Elements Contest?

Hah, I remember that! I think that I may even have had an abortive entry in one of the later competitions--although I may be remembering some other competition on this site. ^_^

Secondly, the theme was going to branched out to have more options. a big thing throwing people off was the fact that the theme was too strict to ideas, i do agree with this. I was planning to offer 4 themes this year, and 2 of which must be implemented(basically 5 points for each theme you work into your game). this would likely make the theme simpler, being 1 or 2 words, and likely split between two gameplay, and two graphical themes.

Hmm... That's an interesting idea. For the sake of the judges, it might be a good idea to instruct entrants to specify on their game's opening screen which two elements they're using (or which they want to be scored on if they've chosen more than two, perhaps). Points might be docked for omitting this information.

Thirdly would be how judging is handled, i was toying with the idea that having additional judges is still good, but to only take the top 3 scores in each category. meaning if we have a total of 4 judges on each game, that game will not be pulled down because one judge didn't see it as being as good as the others.

Ooh, I like that--roll four and keep the top three. ^_^ (Presuming that there are enough judges, of course.)

Hum... I do worry about the possibility of a judge being universally excluded as a result of being a harsher judge than the others, however... :/

allowing every team to be able to judge every game entry, apart from their own, presented to them anonymously (if this is possible), as long as it is proven that they have played all aspects of all entries

Hmm... I'm not sure of how well anonymity would work: After all, I recall that community participation has in the past been a part of the competition (and indeed, a scoring point), and contestants have been encouraged to blog about their games. This means that at least some--perhaps even most or all--of the contestants are likely to have some knowledge of some subset of the games, and of who made them.

We started 4E many years ago.. 2004 or 2005 I think. We had several successful years of it before it tapered off a bit. The themes also evolved. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GameDev.net#4_Elements_contest.

The original theme was the 4 elements of fire, water, earth, wind. All four elements had to be incorporated somehow. Lots of creative entries. The second year was the biggest ever with over 50 entries and some amazing games, a few of which went commercial after the contest. Over the years we learned how to handle judging better and generally how to run contests of that scope (6 month development time). The themes also evolved. I remember one theme involving ninjas and pirates, for instance..

Contests are something GameDev.net will be doing again as they offer a lot of value to the community. We'll possibly have a bigger one later this year - which is why I'm proposing something like this contest could be an officially sanctioned/sponsored contest with promotional power and organization beyond the GDNet Lounge. Based on the polling so far it looks like everyone is interested but nobody really wants to organize it and there are concerns about judging - these are things we can handle more directly with an official contest.

I also think it's fine with this being a community-driven contest, but the officially sanctioned option is there.

I remember 4E4 (the 4th one). Never participated, I was too new a programmer in 2005. I remember the contest itself took multiple months, and then judging taking another few months.
We've also had a few 24 hour, 48 hour, and 6 (!) hour contests.

I like that the Week of Awesome is a week long - long enough to do something cool, but not so long that you get too exhausted.

As an aside, I've talked with my artist, and we're definitely on-board as a team.

... 6 (!) hour contests.

H-how?! How do you make anything much worthwhile in six hours? o_0

I like that the Week of Awesome is a week long - long enough to do something cool, but not so long that you get too exhausted.

Likewise--I find one week to be a pretty congenial duration for the competition. In my case, part of that is, I think, that it's long enough to make something cool, but short enough that I don't feel too uncomfortable about taking the time from my current main project.

... 6 (!) hour contests.

H-how?! How do you make anything much worthwhile in six hours? o_0

Nothing 'worthwhile', that's for sure. :D IIRC, we were allowed to do planning in advance, and was basically "make a prototype" in six hours, with no theme. This was back in 2006, so I had only been programming for a year at that point in time. Even so, still wasn't enough time IMO, but it was fun.

IIRC, we were allowed to do planning in advance, and was basically "make a prototype" in six hours, with no theme.

Aah, a basic prototype of a concept already formed, that seems a little more feasible! Fair enough, then.

(For myself, I think that I'm inclined to stick with week-long, self-contained competitions, however. ^^; )

After some more thought, and seeing the interest here, i've decided i'll take up the mantle once again. I'll be putting up the official posting shortly. Thank you all for showing your support!

After some more thought, and seeing the interest here, i've decided i'll take up the mantle once again. I'll be putting up the official posting shortly. Thank you all for showing your support!

Nice one!

FWIW I think you've done a stellar job for the past couple of years.