Along with ne0_kamen, we have created a new website for the UFEC - Unofficial Four Elements Contest. It is located here: http://ufec.zymichost.com and it hosts all the information about the contest.

Plus, (!!) it hosts a voting system for the elements. Instead of sending feedback through PM, input it to the form available in section "Element Selection" when you log in. Suggestions are still to be made here. Comments are still to be sent to Lesan's Private Message Inbox.

I thank you all for participating.

Long live UFEC!

Nice work!

I would like to comment on the judging again however. As of now it seems pretty random, that participants can judge the entries they want to judge, and a total of 3 reviews has to be made for each entry. This will make some entries be better evaluated than others, and with different criteria (not necessarily intentional, but people value different aspects).
I strongly believe it would be much better, and in every participant's interest, if the same people judged all entries, people who find it interesting to evaluate the games properly. A couple of posters seem to have expressed interest in judging in this thread, and there are several frequent posters in the Game Design forum that might be interested, people who seem genuinely interested in how games work. This would make for much better judging than participants, who probably choose the games they think most appealing and judge only those, or someone who doesn't really want to judge a game, but does so anyway because one entry is lacking its three needed reviews.
I feel that if one puts several months into developing a game, good feedback is essential for it to be a rewarding experience. It would be much more interesting to read the reviews then, and a better learning experience reading the comments about ones own game, as well as comparing to comments about other games.
It would of course also be very nice to read what other participants feel about the games, as well as writing about other entries, and I definitely support a community rating. However, it seems likely a review process, based solely on judging as each participant see fit, would result in quite biased feedback.

Ja, agreement with Erik - standardised and thorough judging is essential also from a credibility standpoint (both the competition and the winning entries).

You're both right. It would be better if all entries were judged by each judge (from a quality point of view). However, this puts a lot of strain on the judges, that way judging might seem less attractive for people.

Personally I would be aiming at judging all entries. However I would also value feedback from somebody who only judged three of the entries. I think its a matter of quantity (you probably get more judges if the judging rules are less restrictive) versus quality (by requiring to judge all games you get a better comparison and each game gets an equal amount of judgments).

Judging is perhaps the toughest problem of such a contest. However, maybe in the ends its not that bad because contenders themselves probably want to see what the competition did and don't mind taking some time to judge the other games.

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
You're both right. It would be better if all entries were judged by each judge (from a quality point of view). However, this puts a lot of strain on the judges, that way judging might seem less attractive for people.

I'm not sure judging needs to seem very attractive. In my opinion more than three judges will just complicate things, so finding 2-3 people who are really interested in judging is enough. If that cannot be done, then of course there's not a choice, community judging is the only way, and in that case relaxed judging rules might be the way to go. I do believe however that it should be possible to find a couple of interested persons, who are well qualified to evaluate the entries, and whose opinions can be held in high regard by all contestants.

A community-rating could still be implemented, where everyone can vote, but without so high demands, just for fun in giving and receiving general opinion about the entries.

Quote: Original post by Erik Rufelt

Quote: Original post by TheFlyingDutchman
You're both right. It would be better if all entries were judged by each judge (from a quality point of view). However, this puts a lot of strain on the judges, that way judging might seem less attractive for people.

I'm not sure judging needs to seem very attractive. In my opinion more than three judges will just complicate things, so finding 2-3 people who are really interested in judging is enough. If that cannot be done, then of course there's not a choice, community judging is the only way, and in that case relaxed judging rules might be the way to go. I do believe however that it should be possible to find a couple of interested persons, who are well qualified to evaluate the entries, and whose opinions can be held in high regard by all contestants.

A community-rating could still be implemented, where everyone can vote, but without so high demands, just for fun in giving and receiving general opinion about the entries.

Well I get the common opinion here is,that there should be 2 categories - judged by judges and judged by fellow contenders? Perhaps even a third one which is the average arithmetic between the categories above.
And of course the official placement of a entry should be determined solely on the judges' opinion.

If this is what most of the people around here want,then that's fine with me.
What about the judges who participate then? In my opinion this gives them some advantage,since if there are going to be just three votes,each vote will weight more.Not to mention that a judge will recognize each other's entries,and be somewhat "attracted" to them,considering the other (2) judges will evaluate his own entry.
So bla,bla,bla I think in these circumstances the judges should be uninvolved in the contest as participants.

Finally I encourage everyone to start voting at the site for the element sets,since there is not that much time.

Quote: Original post by ne0_kamen
What about the judges who participate then? In my opinion this gives them some advantage,since if there are going to be just three votes,each vote will weight more.

That's true, and they can of course not judge their own entry, so participating judges would probably have to be ineligible to win. A community rating is good in this case, so that judges with their own entry can still win in that category.

Some more element possibilities

time constraint - city - isolation - communication
survival - alchemy - puzzle - food
dying earth - travel - magic - love
primitive - plague - plants - competition


On a more general note, having one extremely general element (e.g. space) and one which is fairly specific (e.g. cats) seems a good way to add some challenge to coming up with a unique game.

Judging

These are some difficult propositions you make here. If you look at the beginning of this thread, it was I who was strongly against community voting and supported qualified, determined, judges. People mostly opposed me and thought of community voting as a better solutions. I accepted that.

Now, the positions are inversed. I defend community voting and you defend dedicated, official judges. It seems we have some divergence of opinions here.

The common opinion as ne0_kamen says... I don't think there's a common opinion now...
-------

So...

I suggest this:

This contest is mainly about getting feedback and working with a community on the same goal. If there are prizes, they will not have so great a value to need qualified judges. Therefore, the community will vote to allow for greater feedback. Non-contestant judges will be there, too, and they will judge all the entries. Every judge will have a "power value". Normal contestant will have the power value of 1. A contestant who judges all the entries can have the power of 1.5, for example. And then, a non-contestant judge from Game Design forums with lots of posts here and good rating and so on, can have the power of 3.

A judge with power 2 is twice as influential as a judge with power 1.

-------
Of course we can separate contestant-judges and dedicated-judges. Then we will have two different ratings. But, who decides who can become a dedicated-judge? Me as the Organiser? Or some kind of non-subjective fact, like the number of post or something like that? We would have lots of trouble getting the good judges since we have nothing to offer them.

-------
Thank you, Tesseract, for submitting element rows.

It seems to me that the judging criteria is not as time-critical as getting the elements and basic rules in place. The contest starts in two weeks, and the judging will start in six months. Not that the judging isn't important... I just would hate to see the contest delayed over this issue. We have half a year to sort out the details.