I feel as though your vision of the best game winning is something that's very difficult to achieve/guarantee; we can only do our best to better the process (not least because how do you actually quantify the 'best' game? When your main argument is that each genre has nuances people outside of them can't understand, how can we achieve any sort of objective result?). I agree with you that the structure of the competition needs improving but the simple fact is that subcategories on their own, in my mind, are not the way to go: you've admitted they spread the judging too thin, and not just that, the fact you openly admitted smaller categories will mean games don't have to be to as good a standard of games in larger categories means that inherently this method is also flawed.
While it's true I view the components of a fangame as art (sprites, music, gameplay, story if any) please don't think this means I believe they shouldn't be viewed and judged analytically, because I do. My main problem with your argument is that yes, I do believe that everyone's opinion is equal. I take your point that more credible judges raises the legitimacy of the contest and the results, however in my mind this just risks the competition becoming misrepresentative of the community as a whole and in turn makes the process exclusive therefore creating a "big boys club" situation where those less known in the community are unable to participate in any meaningful way. I think it's refreshing that YoSniper's contest embraces community and allows anyone and everyone to make their voice heard; this is for me one of the main draws of the competition and I know that personally I would not participate if it became a more exclusive process. I agree we don't really know who some of the judges are, but that's good in my mind: it stops people just entering because the judges are their friends.
Another issue I have is exactly how we're supposed to differentiate qualified from unqualified in terms of judging. Is it simply who has the most twitch subscribers? Who talks the loudest in the community? People who've been there the longest? People who've made popular games in those genres? Because I really feel as though none of those are accurate indicators of whether or not someone is qualified. I appreciate your comparison to the Carnegie International, but there exist no analogues in the fangaming world of the accolades seen to denote worthiness to judge in that competition (from my understanding there are no hard and fast rules, but nonetheless I don't see how curator for example translates into the fangaming context). The Carnegie International is representative of the art of the world, this contest is representative of the games of a much smaller community and it only makes sense for me when the scope has been reduced so far down to let anyone participate. I just don't believe you can treat the two as one in the same.*
Allowing anyone to judge is exactly what stops this contest from becoming biased, because then the people (and more importantly prospective contestants) don't get to cherrypick a team of judges themselves. I am in no way insinuating that this is some conspiracy to cheat, but you have to see that the risks are there of people just putting forward people who are their friends/know will vote for them. This for me is a bigger issue than games like Draw My Guy getting as far as it has, because, save for that game in my opinion, it's clear that judging has still been effective - you cannot deny that the games ousted first were definitely the worst, and those that are left are among the best. Sure there may be personal discrepancies between your view and the results themselves, but this method definitely is working and I think that this avenue of judging is better than raising the exclusivity of the panel. If Draw My Guy wins, I concede, but I honestly think it's an anomaly and that the best game, whatever it is, will prevail.
I understand your argument about "If you know nothing about a person, it's difficult to assess [...] if much thought went into it all [their decision]." but I disagree simply because this is not the type of thing YoSniper would allow. He's been very transparent about making sure that judges write detailed responses explaining their votes and also about ensuring judges don't vote down games for arbitrary reasons like a game being too short when they're all meant to be alphas etc. I think in your argument you assume too frequently that since anyone was allowed to participate in judging that therefore there is no quality control done behind the scenes by YoSniper when there most certainly is. I agree that it's impossible to know an unknown figures bias compared to that of someone who is a community figure, however I maintain that the biggest risk for bias lies in choosing who can and can't judge because this allows for bias on both sides, not just the judge's side.
I do certainly agree however that the rules should be removed (with the exception of God mode). I know people who are almost certainly removing the misogamy/game references in the next build of their game, and they do almost certainly turn people away, like straight needle makers. They can force people to add things that detract from the game itself, like a poorly conceived gimmick in a game that would have been better without it. Honestly if a game without gimmicks is strong enough to win, then more power to the creator.
While I think there are better ways to improve the competition, I do see viable compromises between our two ideals:
Route one would be to simply combine our proposals. Games are submitted with tags verifying which genre the creator wishes to enter them for. There is then a process where they are open to the public, the tags allowing people to ignore games in genres they don't enjoy, and this creates a shortlisting process whereby the top 5 games in each category (assuming your unverified claims that the number of participants will increase is true) are then put forward to a team of 'qualified 'judges (we'll have to work out a universally accepted method of identifying what qualities someone must posses to earn this title though) who can vote for 6 games (1 extra vote to ensure that even if a game they liked wasn't shortlisted it can still get the praise it deserves).
Route two, which is a tad more radical, is something akin to what the Sonic fangaming community does. I'm unsure if they still do this, but when I was around in 2012~ there was an annual event called SAGE (Sega Amatuer Games Expo) which functioned sort of like a cross between the Oscars and an art festival. There was a schedule of events, like awards announcements, game dev streams, interviews with people etc. The more pertinent part to us was how games were handled. They were submitted then given awards for various categories (best art, best music, best traditional sonic game, best modern sonic game, best mini game, etc). We could just do multiple small contests for different genres and then overall categories for best art, music and ultimately game. This would have the downside of meaning that there would likely be miniscule prizes/only a prize for best game but I'm not sure this is a massive deal. Where this differs from your proposal mostly is that I feel like this should still very much be a public/self-nominated voting deal. On the flipside if it goes far enough to turn into an annual event of sorts we could do charity streaming events, sponsored races, etc which might be a nice way to raise the profile of the community and simultaneously bring it together. But I understand there are separate events in which these things also occur, not to mention this is YoSniper's contest and changing this radically may be too much of an overstep/dramatic move.
As I said earlier in the thread, I am very interested in helping out next year (I even offered to run it if YoSniper didn't want to, but I get the impression he feels more positive about doing it now). That said I don't want to be too overzealous, but this is a good discussion we're having here, and I hope it continues. If the scale of the project increases there could even be a small focus group dedicated to working out how to take this contest in a better direction (even though I do think it works well as is).
*Unrelated note: The library in my town was funded by Andrew Carnegie. Not especially noteworthy considering he facilitated the creation of many English libraries, but still nice nonetheless.
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Topic: YoSniper's Fangame Contest 2015 *RESULTS* (Read 26924 times)