Well, stage 1 is behind us. And after reading the judges comments and reading the other entries that have been so kind as to post their information up, I thought I'd return the favor to PGD and post up some of my own thoughts.

Judges:
Alexey Barkovoy:
Don't get me wrong, but your comments are very very concise, almost too brief in many cases. It would be nice to get a bit more information from you then just "Good doc". How about something on the storyline (where included), info presented, and game design idea.

Christina Warne:
See my comments on Alexey in many cases, though you did provide better feedback overall. As I said, its always good to get as much info out of a judge as you can. Some entrants may not have the resources available to do full reviews with others, and I'm sure that they would love to have as much feedback as they can get.

Sascha Willems:
It really shows that you read every design doc, in some cases I think you read them better then the authors. You can see in your comments that you even went as far as to compare them in your own mind. Your breakout of how you see the categories fitting together, as well as comments on storyline and game concept are perfect .

Judges In General:
The most difficult thing last year was finding out what we as entrants were doing wrong. Personally, I didn't have anyone that I could bounce my game idea or work against. As the compo progressed I started to find people, but initially I relied almost completely on the judges comments. I'm sure I'm not the only person, and believe me that we as entrants value your input.


Stage 1:
Personally, I had no problem with Stage 1 at all. But, from the posts that we saw about how to do a design document, and what belongs in a design document, may I suggest that next year you provide a "Working Template". This should be a simple document that explains what belongs inside of it, and gives a basic layout for someone to follow. Developers are hardly ever the person creating the Design Documents, and if it were not for me doing them every day at work, I would have found it difficult as well.

Giving a template and an example is always a good idea when it comes to documentation. I wouldn't lock the stage to the template provided, but note some place what parts of the template (from an information standpoint) are mandatory. This way, entrants know exactly what they need to write about, and it will aid in the discovery phase of the project. It might even point out some questions that the entrants didn't know that they had .

PGD Support:
Ok, so far this years compo is way superior then last years . We haven't had a site hack, or anything (WOOPIE). Still, we have seen quite a few feature requests out of the site that existed last year (don't run away screaming WILL). Some are quite valid, and make our lives easier. To re-cap here is the list I've seen:

* Add a compo button to the main navigation
* Combine the logins some how
* Add a listing of files uploaded and what stage they were uploaded to
* Some place, give an idea of how much space of the available 20Mb we have used
* Lost password reminder
* Forgot my email by team name reminder
* A separate area on the forums just for contest entries.

Fellow Competitors:
Good luck to everyone, this year is looking awesome so far. We have more entrants showing their work already, and we are working together in many cases. Can't wait to start seeing playable versions, movies, screen shots, additional documentation. I'm amazed to see just how many different ideas there are this year compared to other years.

Ok, now everyone can tell me to STFU