Competition 2010

[Chris]

Since there is a spark of hope for for the next competion I will post a few comments on previously mentioned "obstacles".


1) Competition has no use.
It is fun to me as a participant, it is fun to judges, it is fun to spectators. What other reason is needed?

2) There is no reward.
- Take a look at www.Moonstone-RPG.com (place 3-rd on previous competition) it has PageRank4. How many of you have a game with PR4, raise a hand please! No one? Wait there is one! Murzim with www.piratesglory.com, wait this one got 2-nd place on the competition too... Honestly, it is worth years of SEO hardwork, just like that, without effort, just reach top 3 and you will get it. Please, do not tell me that it is not correct, I have a lot of experience in SEO, I have many games so I can compare the results. The thing is, the game I put on competiotion got the best PageRank with almost zero effort from my side. As for me, I'm ready to rearrange my plans in order to start in a competition just for this reward alone. This alone is worth $500 as a prize (minimum) for 3-rd place.
- If you win, you can put a cute ultra cool winner's badge! Just like I did in my signature. I bet you all are jealous now (at the end of the post there are links to the bagdes, if you participated in the last one you can use the correct one)
- If you win you will have a finished game, therefore you will get access to GameOwners board and this super ultra cool and awesone "GameOwner" title below your name!


Really, there is no need to holding back. All the obstacles are just an illusion I vote with both my hands and both my legs to start immediate (and very short) preparations for the next competition.



(participant/winner badges, you can hotlink, that server is used only to host banners)

[gnoh]

I'd like to play

is the time limit one month though and from scratch?

[Chris]

The last competition was: one month limit and you can use all source codes you ever made (the purpose of competition was to encourage people finish games rather than making artificial obstacles). So preparing in advance register/login/etc basic scripts was encouraged. The only requirement was that the game could not have been online before the start and that the coding of the actual game (whatever it means) could not start before the competition.
At least that's what I remember since the actual rules were lost during domain transition.

[Sunchaser]

Well, I can offer one month of exposure in a nice place for the winner along with the badge; even if my topsite has not a lot of traffic, it's better than nothing.

[gnoh]

How does the judging work? vote based or owners of the forum?

[Mufasa]

My wonder is how good games can be with only 1 month dev time? I've been working (mostly consistently) on prisonblock for almost a year now, always improving and adding. So are we just talking a basic game with basic functionality?

Also, not that it matters, but I thought PR pretty much had no bearing anymore?

[bbgames]

The winner of the contest last year was Booze Quest, which was a really neat idea based on the player running an inn and posting quests for adventurers to solve.

While none of the games coming out of the contest were especially polished, they all had some sort of basic functionality behind them - and they were all good starts for something that could have grown into more (as Chris has done with Moonstone RPG).

[Chris]

Zeggy selected judges among oldest/most respected? forum users. Those who participated were excluded of course. (Makari is sending a nice feedback after competion on request with explanation of strong/weak points of your game, why it got the place it got, etc. I hope he will be judge again)

You don't need a whole year to make a game. My very first BBG took me 2 weeks (and I started with only bare login/register/message system). Nowadays sometimes I make games within 2-3 days (althrough the quality is crappy, still some very few people play even these), but now I have an extensive library of source codes which helps a lot
In short, you can make a playable unpolished/half polished game within 1 month as long as you know what you want to do and do not let your perfectionism lead you to failure.

Also, not that it matters, but I thought PR pretty much had no bearing anymore?

It might have no direct bearing but it is an indication of overall strenght of the site. PR3 will always beat PR1 in terms of SEO assuming the same keywords were optimized.

[Mufasa]

I don't mean to soapbox here, but the logic seems a bit flawed. Isn't the goal of every person here to make great PBBGs that are unique and that they can be proud of? What you described above is basically "just crank something out that works so you can say you did it".

Now mind you, I'm not dissing the contest, I think it's great (especially if we're talking making alternative cool games like a few I've seen around and not full fledged MMORPGs), but I just wanted to touch on the "quality" point. I guess I'm just anal haha

[Harkins]

I think it's a great excuse to experiment with a new design and have some fun with other devs.

[Marek]

What you described above is basically "just crank something out that works so you can say you did it".

That's the beauty of it.

Consider the annual National Novel Writing Month. In it, have one month to write an entire novel. It's not a real competition because there is no judging. There are no winners or losers; you're a winner if you reach 50k words. And the goal isn't to produced polished writing. The goal is just to write. Hundreds of thousands of people participate every year.

It's not easy to sit down and write. Just like it's not easy to sit down and do some programming.  Many of us pbbg developers suffer from a condition called planning-itis. We spend hours planning and thinking over game designs. But the games never get finished because we always prefer to plan some more than to face the dreaded task of actually coding it all and finishing it.

There's a phrase that has been quoted here before: your first game is never be good. No matter what you do. So make the first one to throw away. And even if it won't be your first, make one to throw away anyway, because it will just make your next game better.

If you think one month is not enough, then consider competitions like Ludum Dare. The competition consists of programming a complete, playable computer game in 48 hours. It's a huge thrill. People don't eat, people don't sleep, and they create wonderful things. Yes, what they make is essentially "cranked out" but the real meat of the competition is how fun you can make your game with these limited resources. People make their own graphics and sounds, with often hilarious results. In the Python programming community there's also PyWeek, where you have an entire week to make a game. People probably learn more about programming games by testing themselves like this than they do in a year of leisurely, slow work.

So I am all for a "crank it out" competition. It's the best and most exciting way to learn AND to get something done when you're stuck in planning-itis.

[bbgames]

What if we stepped back from making this a contest, and just turned it into a community initiative like NaNoWriMo? Is there a month that would work better for everyone?

[Chris]

I don't mean to soapbox here, but the logic seems a bit flawed. Isn't the goal of every person here to make great PBBGs that are unique and that they can be proud of? What you described above is basically "just crank something out that works so you can say you did it".

This might have looked like this from outside, but in fact it was a cutthroat race Quality was essential and I think top 5 games were what you would consider quality (and the other ones were mostly not bad either). Anyone with the "crank something" attitude would have 0 chances of winning.

[Mufasa]

fair enough. so is this happening? I missed the first one, so I'm curious to see what comes of it

[jannesiera]

fair enough. so is this happening? I missed the first one, so I'm curious to see what comes of it

It can easily happen. In previous discussions about a new contest the conclusion was that it was possible but that it must come from the community (organization etc). It's not Codestryker or Nyx their responsibility.

Some one should take the lead to organise the contest. It's not really that hard but somebody's got to do it.

A few questions to the community, then:

1. Is it a "contest" or an "event" (in other words: is there a winner or not?) ?
2. How should games be judged (by who, ... ) ?
3. How should participants / winners be rewarded ?
4. When should the contest take place, preferably ?
5. What are the conditions to join ?
6. How long should the contest take ?
7. How should participants share updates ? (or shouldn't they ?)

(if you come up with other questions, please add to this list)

[JGadrow]

Thank for the positive feedback of my judging last year. Very few took me up on the offer. To anyone who doesn't know, my handle here used to be Makari.

I'd be willing to judge again. As usual, professional life and children have performed a beautiful ballet with the purpose of making it nearly impossible for me to write any code for personal projects. Maybe one of these days I'll get around to finishing my basic framework so that I'll feel comfortable with start-up projects that I don't have to write all the groundwork for every time.

[Chris]

Answers:
1. Contest (is someone want to treat it as an event no one forces them to compete, just please do not spoil the fun for those of us who like bloody competition)
2. Irrelevant. Like the last time.
3. Irrelevant.
4. Tomorrow?
5. As few obstacles/limitations as possible. Like the last time.
6. 2-4 weeks
7. Does not matter to me.

[OldRod]

As someone who participated in (and finished) the National Novel Writing Month this year, I would love a similar event for PBBG writing.

The NaNoWriMo forced me to sit down and write 1600+ words per day and got me into the habit of doing it.  But, without the worry of whether the end result was any good or not (it wasn't - but that's what rewrites are for

I'd love to see something like that here.

[Murzim]

Nice nice banners Chris I am amazed that you can actually create nice looking graphics after all

I will take part of course, I got some zillions of games in mind (I have bought at least 10 domains that are just empty right now). I am though very very busy so I will just compete with a real small project this time. After all Pirates Glory is still unfinished (but close to the final idea as I have it in mind).

As for prizes, I will offer some to start with:

3 Months of Premium Membership to #1 in OMGSPIDER.com
2 Months of Premium Membership to #2 in OMGSPIDER.com
1 Month of Premium Membership to #3 in OMGSPIDER.com
News Support for the event


A game review + 10 admin rating for #1,#2,#3 in OnlineGamesGallery.com
News Support for the event