Hey, Lesan, do you think you could arrange having GD place the unofficial contest in the contest listing on the site? I know there are two Intel contests in there now, so I don't think the contests have to be hosted by GD. You could ask that the links point to the site you made. You could then add a forum link on the site that points to here.

What about Myopic Rhino or Michael Tanczos? They also started the site, and Myopic Rhino's profile shows that he's posted recently.

This discussion have shaped quite beautifully while I was away...
About the fire/water/earth/air : I believe that these elements are very widely used and you may as well remove the elements restriction at all if you decide to choose them (since every game I've played in the last year has them already).
However,I agree,that the classic elements are a decent base,which would be far better than a bad combo of elements.
Regardless,such poor combos are not that many on the ufec site,and you could always vote with a 1 for an element set you really dislike.

Someone said something,about how the classic elements both relate and exclude each other being opposites,and I think this is something worth thinking about.
Such element sets are very few on the site,but still the vote shall prove what the majority wants.

Also congrats about the sponsors,this should be an interesting competition indeed.

I agree that everyone will do their best to make a good game, but as ne0_kamen says, with too general elements there's no real point to have elements at all. However, as Trapper Zoid mentioned, the judging and rules could we written so that people are encouraged to use the elements as more intricate parts of their games, even with more general elements.

There are many good arguments for both sides, and I now think that it doesn't really matter.
I must say though, that even though many of the elements we vote on are less general than earth/water/fire/air they certainly aren't very restricting. They could force games in a general direction, but I believe many of the elements allow for much freedom as well. You might not be able to take your completed game and put the elements in it, but as long as you're willing to design from the elements, I doubt they will hold you back.

Lesan has previously stated he will take the element groups that are most popular, and randomly select one of them, so as to make the final elements a surprise. I don't know how much of a majority is needed to just select one group.

In any case I think it will be a great contest, and with the voting and discussion I'm sure the worst elements are already gone from the list, and all the elements used in the final selection will be acceptable at least.

I like a lot of the individual elements that we're voting for, but I feel that other elements in their sets aren't as good. Mixing the elements from different sets might be ideal for some people (could just be me though). Do you think it would be better to list them individually instead of in sets, and then construct the best set with the top 6-8 elements? Maybe over a two-day voting session? Just an idea.

awesome. I'm in. And I don't care what the elements are, I like having oddball guidelines for my project, I feel that it fosters creativity (which, as I understand it, is the entire point of having weird elements).

Maybe you could make flex options, like "fire, ice, metal, and lions / mustard"?