In my oppinion, the community should not stand up. For me this is similar to the community, which fixes Gothic 3, because the time schedule of the publisher was too short or whatever. Gamedev announces a game contest, why should the community judge the entries? Didn't they code more than half a year? It is like: Hey, here is the next contest - Create a mmog in half a year, only constraint is that you care about prices, judging and all other stuff on your own... Sorry. This is not my understanding of contests.

4E7: I would really appreciate it, if gamedev continues with the 4Ex contests. They really rock. Half a year is the right time for those, who have a second live next to the computer. All these one week or one month contests are far to short for me. I also like the simple constraints - just include 4 Elements, the rest is up to you. I do not want to use XNA only or whatever related contests. I want to create a *game* with my technical knowledge and my tools.

But as the OP said, I check this forum nearly every day, too - for the same reasons: where is the official judging and what about the next contest...

Fine, XDigital. We recognize that people like the 4E contests, with the time limits and constraints they use. People keep entering them, so that's somewhat obvious (you, for one, created one of the most massively-scaled games I've ever seen in a 4E contest, and actually made it work!). Other people - maybe many of the same people - obviously like short contests as well, since the one week contests see so many entries (even the always interesting 1W1B contests).

But it sure seems like having a contest that actually returns results would be preferable to one which does not.

I think there's a place for both types of contests: site-sponsored ones (4E), and user-sponsored ones (TrapperZoid). It might be nice if the site would add a little backing to user contests, perhaps allowing webspace or submission system, or something of that sort (presumably, one could use their GDNet+ webspace for this under the current system). I don't know, ask the people running those contests.

I do think it's necessary that the site evaluates how it handles its own contests. Judging seems to be a continual problem... so perhaps the judging system should be altered. Either create a simpler, community-based judging system, or pick better judges (I have no idea how judges are picked any more, though it was a little more clear in previous 4E contests). Maybe even ask for volunteers.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
Should the contest be organized completely by the community?

If there was going to be a community organized contest, it should be a different contest. Call it "4 Elements -- Community Edition" or perhaps do a 3 Elements contest.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
For example we could choose a deadline for sending in suggestions for elements and after that we randomly choose 4 elements from all suggestions.

Perhaps listing all the suggested elements and having a one week long period where the community ranks each element from most preferred to least preferred, then finally using the top 4 elements based on their ranking would be better because the choosing of the elements would be completely open the community.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
Or maybe we could even lend last years submission system.

Remember that the submission system was very faulty, especially with repeated issues with timeouts while uploading anything larger than a meg. FTP was used in prior contests.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
The real hard part: judging

I think judging should consist of three groups: the contest organizers(who can't submit an entry), the contestants, and any gdnet user (who had an account prior to the end of the contest, and is not in the two other groups). Both the contest organizers and the contestants would be required to write a paragraph about what they liked and disliked about the entry, along with any additional constructive criticism/feedback they wish to give. Contestants who do not provide feedback for other entries(unless they can't run the entry) will be disqualified or perhaps receive a penalty on their final score. The gdnet users and the contestants could simply rank whatever 3 entries they felt were the best, while the organizer group would use the existing scoring system. That said, the final score would be the point total by by the organizers, plus bonus points for the first, second, and third entries picked by the others.

Regardless of the way the final score is calculated I would like to see real constructive criticism for each entry, not just a final number with a comment here or there.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
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.

If that's the case, why post this? Hasn't the contest provided what you wanted? Roughly 25 games were submitted, all using the same elements, all developed in a few months time, right?

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
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.

There we go, you finally said it. Unfortunently, the same issue plagued 4E5, where the contest ended in November and the results weren't posted until mid January.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
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.

Premature? It's been 5 and a half months since the end of the contest and no word --none. Could you image what some of entries could have been like if we had an additional 5 months to develop? Some entries like Libertine and Blood Feud had great premises and were well polished, but were still in a prototype stage. I hope those developers continued to make progress with those unfinished, but promising games.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
So what do you think? Could this proposal be the way to go?

There is no other choice, is there? Develop and organize your own contest, or wait indefinitely.

Quote: Original post by Dave
I thought this was over already.

Maybe this is part of the problem? If the community doesn't know that the contest is still in limbo after 5 1/2 months, it shows there is some fundamental problem. I bet this issue would grab much more attention and responses if it was posted in the lounge.

Quote: Original post by d000hg
As for prizes, GD should be able to leverage it's reputation (that it claims it has). I've seen small sites get decent prizes, somewhere like GD already has people advertise with them (and even sponsor articles) so I would have thought getting prizes like laptops, consoles etc from big firms could be quite feasible.

After such a delay in judging, why would any company want to donate prizes? It could become a public relations issue or even a legal liability by associating with a contest where the judging period exceeds a reasonable time period. Perhaps the reason this year's contest didn't have any corporate sponsored prizes upfront was because of last year's month and a half delay?

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
How many people are willing to join another current style 4E contest?

It's going to be very difficult. Many decided to skip 4E6 because of the lack of prizes announced upfront. Now because of this delay, it may very well seal the contest's fate.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
There might be a very good reason why we didn't hear anything yet

There might be? Unless the gamedev staff was abducted by aliens back in April, there should have been some official announcement by now. A sticky thread in the contest forum simply saying "Sorry folks, we're still working on it." would have appreciated. And Superpig's journal entry from two months ago saying it's almost done doesn't count because not everyone reads the journals.

Quote: Original post by Avatar God
That said, judging isn't that hard. It doesn't even take that much time. A weekend with some free time, or a couple hours after work for three days, and you'll be able to judge something like the 4E entries, very fully and completely.

That's right. I downloaded, ran, and reviewed each of my competitor's games that very weekend. I didn't go as far as you with providing a score or ranking as it wouldn't be appropriate since I submitted an entry as well. And thank you for taking the time to review and score all the entries.

Quote: Original post by Avatar God
Getting judges might be hard, I don't know.

How many staff members (you know, the users with the word "Staff" in green next to their name) does gamedev.net have? At least a dozen or so, as I can tell. Why can't some of them judge the entries?

Quote: Original post by Avatar God
If the 4E contests are any judge, it's apparently impossible to force them to return results.

No it's not, not if you're using paid labor. Like I said above, there is enough staff to get it done and if you don't have the capacity or resources to run a contest, you shouldn't have one at all.

Quote: Original post by remigius
As a game development community site, part of the goal is to help people further themselves and as such I think some feedback from the judges should be plain mandatory.

Yet in 4E5, not all the games even had any written feedback, just numbers. Some games only had feedback from one judge, others had two or three. Why the inconsistent treatment of the entries?

Quote: Original post by XDigital
Half a year is the right time for those, who have a second live next to the computer. All these one week or one month contests are far to short for me.

I agree. I participated in a few week long ones(even a 48 hours one) and a month long one, and even though they were fun and challenging, the reward of "getting something done in minimal time" fades off pretty quickly once you realize your end result was the same as the boss calling in saying something needed to be done by yesterday and you just threw a bunch of code together that barely works just to get the customer off and running. Six months allows you to plan, design, tweak and test. One week doesn't.

Quote: Original post by XDigital
I want to create a *game* with my technical knowledge and my tools.

Exactly, 4E is about making games, games that the creators should be proud of, not about promoting some company's tools or technology.

I think the contestants, including myself, have given every benefit of the doubt to the organizers of this contest for too long. To continue to say "oh, maybe there is a good reason" is beyond the point of redundancy. The execution and handling of this contest is unprofessional and inexcusable.

Quote: Original post by Avatar God
But it sure seems like having a contest that actually returns results would be preferable to one which does not.

And exactly that is the reason this topic exists. If judging of 4E6 was completed two months ago, or a date when it would be completed was known this topic wouldn't be here. The same goes for an announcement about 4E7. If it was announced to be started, say beginning of November, I wouldn't have started this topic.

All I want is a new 4E7, a contest that provides enough time to work on a large scale project and still have time to hang out with friends or to study ;). Preferably it should be organized by GameDev (in a proper way of course!), but if for some reason it can't, it might be a good solution to let the community take care of the time consuming aspects (especially judging I think).

Quote: Original post by cyansoft

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
Should the contest be organized completely by the community?

If there was going to be a community organized contest, it should be a different contest. Call it "4 Elements -- Community Edition" or perhaps do a 3 Elements contest.

Sure, I completely agree. Although, keep in mind that a community based 4E like contest is only meant as a replacement in case GD does not start a new contest. It is (in my mind) absolutely not meant as coexisting with a GD contest, simply because I don't think there is room for two long term contests.

Quote: Original post by cyansoft

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
For example we could choose a deadline for sending in suggestions for elements and after that we randomly choose 4 elements from all suggestions.

Perhaps listing all the suggested elements and having a one week long period where the community ranks each element from most preferred to least preferred, then finally using the top 4 elements based on their ranking would be better because the choosing of the elements would be completely open the community.

This could also be a reasonable option. The only drawback is that you probably end up with the usual popular elements like robots, time travel or aliens.

Quote: Original post by cyansoft

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
The real hard part: judging

I think judging should consist of three groups: the contest organizers(who can't submit an entry), ...

This would break the `not dependent on one person/group' rule, which in my opinion is important. It might not really be a problem if the role of these persons can be handed over to another person easily (which is the case with this example I think). Ideally the people who join the contest, also organize it. Alright, you need someone to have the final decision about deadlines and someone who can add up the scores and who creates the start post of the contest topic, but besides that try to avoid any dependence on a single person/group. Another advantage is that everybody can enter the contest, nobody is left out.

Quote: Original post by cyansoft
Regardless of the way the final score is calculated I would like to see real constructive criticism for each entry, not just a final number with a comment here or there.

I agree.

Quote:

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
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.

If that's the case, why post this? Hasn't the contest provided what you wanted? Roughly 25 games were submitted, all using the same elements, all developed in a few months time, right?

I think I was referring to prizes when I wrote this, as I don't really care about fancy prizes. I would like to see some real judging, that is also very important, constructive feedback on an entry.

Quote:

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
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.

There we go, you finally said it. Unfortunently, the same issue plagued 4E5, where the contest ended in November and the results weren't posted until mid January.

I'm not sure what you want to say with this as I don't know how 4E5 was exactly organized. Was the setup similar as 4E6?

Quote:

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
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.

Premature? It's been 5 and a half months since the end of the contest and no word --none. Could you image what some of entries could have been like if we had an additional 5 months to develop? Some entries like Libertine and Blood Feud had great premises and were well polished, but were still in a prototype stage. I hope those developers continued to make progress with those unfinished, but promising games.

You have a good point. And probably if they had some good constructive feedback within a reasonable amount of time, they could have been encouraged to develop those games further.

Anyway, I'm still hoping for some more reactions. If any people think the same way as you do, there might be a solid foundation for a contest that is setup in another way as the current 4E6. I'm sure a community like the one found on these forums is capable of setting up a long term contest (hey, there are some members, at least 25 or so, that were able to complete a half year game project, so setting up a contest is also possible). But to start a community 4E contest, there must be enough backing and it must also be known what the plans of GD are for the 4E contest (maybe they are just reading this topic and hoping that the community will stand up ;)).

Alright I didn't read all of these posts in this discussion, but I can safely say that at least one very important thing needs to be done. I too have gone on to gamedev.net at least once a week for the sole purpose of checking the 4E6 results. I wanted to enter into the previous competition (4E6) but I didn't have any working engine. I spent the whole summer developing one and now... where's 4E7? There's no mention of it, and I was about ready to start a topic just like this.

The most important thing we should do is bug superpig about this.. I posted a comment on his journal but it appears that he either didn't see it or ignored it. We need to all PM him about this and tell him to post the contest results.. according to a previous journal entry of his the contest is mostly scored, and quite a few more prizes have been acquired.. Almost as important as him actually posting the results, he should update the page with at least the prizes, and a deadline for the scoring. He also needs to host 4E7, preferrably with additional hosts this time to avoid this very situation.

In list form, I believe we need for superpig to:

* Update the 4E6 page with the newly acquired prizes, if any.
* Post the scoring or post a deadline for the scoring.
* Score any remaining entries.
* Organize the 4E7 contest and start a page on it.
* Find additional hosts and/or sponsors for 4E7

Does this sound like a good plan, TheFlyingDutchman? If so, I think we need to somehow contact superpig about this.. he's quite clearly active because he's updating his journal. I dislike the idea of starting another competition (community-based or otherwise) simply becuase I loathe to see 4E die out.

Quote: Original post by xLinear
In list form, I believe we need for superpig to:

* Update the 4E6 page with the newly acquired prizes, if any.
* Post the scoring or post a deadline for the scoring.
* Score any remaining entries.
* Organize the 4E7 contest and start a page on it.
* Find additional hosts and/or sponsors for 4E7

Does this sound like a good plan, TheFlyingDutchman? If so, I think we need to somehow contact superpig about this.. he's quite clearly active because he's updating his journal. I dislike the idea of starting another competition (community-based or otherwise) simply becuase I loathe to see 4E die out.

I don't think this will help much, superpig is probably very aware of the situation (I don't think he just forgot that there was something like a 4E6 contest). Personally I think I am also not really the person to go and ask about the rating of 4E6, I didn't finish an entry for it. Though it is of course ridiculous that judging still hasn't been done. Besides that, why ask the same person for a new contest if the current one is so badly organized?

The number of reply's in this topic isn't great either, maybe most people don't really care about it, or they don't believe in it anymore.

I'm sure superpig didn't forget about the contest.. however he -is- doing something other than the contest, and we have the right to bug the hell out of him for not finishing what he started. I'd like to ask: how many of us came to him with complaints? If we didn't even get that far yet, then we probably wouldn't be focused enough to pull off a separate unofficial 4E competition. I think in the current situation it's not so much reminding as it is bothering. Sure, 4E6 didn't get as much of a turn out as 4E4, but if the contests start being not cared about, I can sure as heck guarantee we'll see less entries. I think that's partly what happened here, between 4E5 and 4E6. I still like the idea of bothering superpig, and like I said, if extra hosts are needed, -he- should bring them in. It's obvious that he doesn't always have enough time to do everything by himself, so why bother?

Isn't Superpig working on at least part of the next version of the site?

Whether it's good or bad that he has both that and the Four Elements contest on his plate, that would seem to be the case now. Given this, it doesn't seem to me to be unreasonable for him to have prioritised the site itself over the contest. On top of that, I'm not convinced that bothering him is likely to yield positive results. For one, it seems to me that, if it does prompt him to produce contest scores, they might not have the depth that they might have had if left until he has less work waiting to be done. For another, the main result that I see is adding stress to however much Superpig already has. I imagine that it's not unlikely that he has already seen or been made aware of the posts already made in this sub-forum, in any case.

I can understand, I believe, that the lack of scoring is frustrating, but might it not be better to continue waiting in this particular case?

Yes.. I completely agree that any additional scoring would be rushed, and that superpig is pretty busy and stressed for now.. But keep in mind that he stated on his journal that most of the scoring is already complete. Also, a major point I'm trying to make is that yes, superpig is officially responsible for 4E6, but it doesn't mean that he's not allowed to delegate work to others when times get tough. If he doesn't think he can at least finish up 4E6, I'm sure any of us still following the competition would be happy to help out. But nobody was contacted. I mean, it takes all of five minutes to delegate work to someone else, right? I'm not deliberately trying to be an ass about all of this, but I just think it really shouldn't be as difficult as it is for all of this to work out properly.

As for continuing waiting, it is another possibility that we just let this contest sit and dig it up later. It might even work quite well, but I feel much better if we at least got a "sorry guys, I'll come back to it later" from superpig. Otherwise, I just feel like I don't know what we're all waiting for.