I do agree that the theme, prizes, etc should not be announced until the official openning of the contest, but you have to admit that this time around, understandibly due to the fact that we are doing this for the first time as a site, not widely recodnized by the larger programming community at the stage that we were at then, it did take us a little while to get the word out about the contest on other sites and advertize it around the net.

And though I would not phrase it as a supprise, I think that we could definitely give a little net-wide heads up when the next competition will be so we can get more eyes on earlier in the game. I think that that will help us next time around.

If you guys can correct me; I don't think I saw anyone post news on GameDev.net's news page about the contest? I think we should make sure we capture that medium for next timefor sure. It's read more frequently than their forums I think.