PGD Annual 2011 Competition; Thoughts

[WILL]

It's almost time to start the competition wheels back up again!

I've been narrowing down some even better ideas for competition theme that I'm sure you all will love one way or the other, but I have to pick one already. Are you guys getting excited for it yet?

I know, I know, you are still waiting for the PGD Challenge results. They're coming. I've gotten all mine done and we are just waiting for Stoney who has had some delays, but they'll be ready soon.

I'm hoping for a Late October/Early to Mid-November start date. I'm also in between making it 3 months or 4 months. taking us to about Jan or Feburary. What do you guys think? Any of you in school, maybe you can help guide us to the best time you can take part. I've done a poll in the past and it seems that November is probably the most productive time for all PGD members.

Also what do you all feel about the IGF entry fee as top prize? Results after some of the past winners being given the opportunity have been mixed. And in most cases it's too short of a timeframe to complete your entries to make an IGF worthy submission. What are your thoughts?

[Traveler]

In regards to the timeframe, I advise not to make it a long competition. 3 months max is more than enough, though I rather even see it become two (initially?).
If there is something I've learned (through my work) it's that shorter timeframes usually give better results. It may sound odd but you'll stand a better change of actually finishing the project if you don't have that much time to work with. For example, you tend to be more realistic about your capabilities and there's less time to get side tracked/lose interest in the project.

As for the IGF price, IMO, it has never really been a great success. It was a nice idea, but I think the money could be better spend on a different price (or prices).

[phibermon]

(You have to pay to submit to IGF? That doesn't.. well, it seems wrong some how)

Some random ideas for prizes :

- Paying for a suitably priced graphics artist, 3D or otherwise to create some content of the winners choice (or in a similar vein, voice-over artist etc)

- A suitably priced licence for a library or application of some sorts (BASS audio lib shareware licence, Milkshape 3d etc)

- A kiss'o'gram dressed up as Princess Leia or Jack Harkness (I'm only half joking )

- Pretty much anything from thinkgeek.com (I'm so getting an enterprise pizza cutter)

- Money donated to charity of winners choice (or a couple of acres of Rain Forest from the World Land Trust)

- A copy of one of the 'Game Programming Gems' books (Volume 5 has some lovely techniques)

---

You know what? it's hard thinking of ideas :\

[WILL]

Well if you look at past competitions (see showcase!) there was a lot of software and licenses given out. Some hardware was also given, but the creme de la creme was a shiny new copy of Delphi from Borland. Well Borland is gone and they cheaped out during the last one, pre-Embarcadero, so hopefully David I. is still interested in supporting the PGD Annual like previous years with a new version of Delphi. In this case Delphi XE2 Starter edition and perhaps even Professional. The idea of getting Architecture Edition was nice and all, but to be honest, it was always overkill as most of whats in the higher versions was never used in game development and the 'cost' would have been better put towards getting more copies rather than a single costly, overkill version to one person.

We've also done books and sound cards too...

We've thought of publishing deals in the past as well, but we've never really had the contacts and honestly only a portion of the games were even close to being publish quality.

Here is a new idea though...

I did think about having a yearly awards nominations, maybe something like how DelphiGL does it, where you can submit your game for presentation no matter when it's development started and we would award from those nominations (usual registration required) for similar past awards like best graphics and best music & audio, most innovative, etc... Each game can be submitted as many years as possible, but they can only win once. Once they have won something, it's no longer valid for renomination.

The question for the last idea is do we have enough projects generated yearly to make it work? I believe so since I see new games published year to year from specific developers. So it's possible to do the yearly awards seperate from the game dev competitions. The Jan Horn award should stay with the competitions though.

Thoughts on that last idea?

[paul_nicholls]

I did think about having a yearly awards nominations, maybe something like how DelphiGL does it, where you can submit your game for presentation no matter when it's development started and we would award from those nominations (usual registration required) for similar past awards like best graphics and best music & audio, most innovative, etc... Each game can be submitted as many years as possible, but they can only win once. Once they have won something, it's no longer valid for renomination.

The question for the last idea is do we have enough projects generated yearly to make it work? I believe so since I see new games published year to year from specific developers. So it's possible to do the yearly awards seperate from the game dev competitions. The Jan Horn award should stay with the competitions though.

Thoughts on that last idea?

hmm...I like these ideas

cheers,
Paul

[chronozphere]

Also what do you all feel about the IGF entry fee as top prize? Results after some of the past winners being given the opportunity have been mixed. And in most cases it's too short of a timeframe to complete your entries to make an IGF worthy submission. What are your thoughts?

That's quite an interesting question. I know that i'm guilty of not finishing an (in my eyes) IGF worthy game while I won that prize, so I feel like giving a comment on this. I think the basic idea of the IGF prize is rather good but it's succes really depends on the motivation of the winner to continue the project and to make a beautifully polished inspiring game. In my case, I couldn't pull that off. It might be worthwhile to make this prize optional. If the winner decides not to continue the game, it may be possible to offer an extra book/video-game or maybe a piece of hardware. I bet everybody likes that. When you sacrifice the IGF prize and one book you could offer a piece of nice video-hardware instead.. yummy!

But above all, I think that the prize pool was huge. If I look at the value of the prizes, my PGD annual entry was the most profitable project I have ever worked on. Not complaining here.

[WILL]

Well I liked the idea of recognizing more than just a handful of those that took part in the competition. I know it'll never be anything like the IGF, but in a small way we can at least reward those who complete projects and release games in this way.

As for the IGF prize, it had it's run but it never really got anyone into the final selections the three years we did it. To be honest a good part of this is because of the short time-frame that the PGD Annual projects were started compared to how long some of these other indie developers have been at it with theirs, it's not that fair to throw such a new project at another competition like that. I think it was, in part, a substitution to an earlier idea I had that we were hoping to land a publishing deal with a game distributor. That didn't fan out well either.

1st thru 3rd do get prizes though. In fact most of the competitions allowed for someone to hold something in their hands after winning. Except maybe the 2nd one, it was all software and licenses I believe. (The Big Boss)