Nice and thanks again slicer! I have concerns and remarks though.

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.

This might result in one judge having barely to no effect on the outcome, which would feel like a giant waste of time for that person I assume. I'm thinking that as long as every judge can judge every game, averaging shouldn't be much of a problem. That would require some more streamlining that you've currently have announced in the competition thread.

I would first of all require that the game itself should not require an install, it should just be an executable that can you run. The exception to that would be dependencies, if you use XNA for example. This would reduce the amount of things you'd have to install and clean up afterwards and most of us will probably have those dependencies installed already.

Secondly I would create a simple form/spreadsheet where judges can rate statements and a score rolls out. Something along the lines of:

                                      Completely disagree        Neutral       Completely agree
Graphics match the themes
Graphics do not detract from game experience
etc.

I would be willing to create a simple web page for that, shouldn't take long.

I also don't feel much for the quadratic curve in the prize pool. If it were up to me I'd more evenly distribute it and maybe even add 5 additional spots. Everyone is putting in hard work, I think we can give more people the feeling of being a winner without detracting anything from those who end up highest.

What are your thoughts on this?

I'd agree that a 3-5 point scale for judging each dimension would be an improvement. I definitely felt that the 10-25 point scale (depending on category) in previous years caused me to spend a lot of time trying to place entries along the available spectrum of scores.

If each dimension were to be a simple [awful, bad, ok, good, awesome] choice, and then you multiply those by weighting values per dimension at the end to derive the final scores, I think it would be easier and fairer for all.

Nice and thanks again slicer! I have concerns and remarks though.

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.

This might result in one judge having barely to no effect on the outcome, which would feel like a giant waste of time for that person I assume. I'm thinking that as long as every judge can judge every game, averaging shouldn't be much of a problem. That would require some more streamlining that you've currently have announced in the competition thread.

I understand the concern here, however in past years i've never found one judge to be 100% the lowest number. the biggest concern i have for why i'd implement this is because there have been a few cases where some judges would give top marks in one category, but the 4th judge would give them a bad score in that same category the other 3 judges thought were great. Overall i think it's ok to experiment a bit, so if this year showcases that as being a problem, i'm perfectly open to re-evaluating this method.

I would first of all require that the game itself should not require an install, it should just be an executable that can you run. The exception to that would be dependencies, if you use XNA for example. This would reduce the amount of things you'd have to install and clean up afterwards and most of us will probably have those dependencies installed already.

Secondly I would create a simple form/spreadsheet where judges can rate statements and a score rolls out. Something along the lines of:

                                      Completely disagree        Neutral       Completely agree
Graphics match the themes
Graphics do not detract from game experience
etc.

I would be willing to create a simple web page for that, shouldn't take long.

This is an interesting idea, and I do like it's merits, but I also don't want to present some sorta checklist to contestants that they feel they are obligated to meet. Not to say that such a checklist isn't something that can't be useful. let me sit on it some more, or if you'd like to write up an example of what type of questions would be for each category, i'll take a good look at it. thanks for the tip.

I also don't feel much for the quadratic curve in the prize pool. If it were up to me I'd more evenly distribute it and maybe even add 5 additional spots. Everyone is putting in hard work, I think we can give more people the feeling of being a winner without detracting anything from those who end up highest.

What are your thoughts on this?

I think the top 3 places deserve a decent reward for their effort. I don't want this contest to be super competitive, but i also want to provide some sort of incentive for excellent work. On that note i've added a sixth and seventh position to the prize pool. However the larger problem with having such a large number of prizes is that we begin running into alot of tied points the lower on the scale we get, this could be problematic with distributing prizes.

For lazy people like myself, here's the new official thread.