Now that all the entries are up, I think most everyone will agree that nearly 50 entries is quite a lot to include in a competition like this(!) And while we want everyone to have the opportunity to receive the valuable feedback and constructive criticism the JIG community is so good at providing, we must also take steps to reduce the field to a more manageable size.
Therefore, the 7 competition judges will now take the next few days to select the group of finalists that will move on to the final two stages: the Audience award voting and the final round of scoring. We hope to announce the finalists on Monday, with voting for the Audience award beginning on Tuesday.
In the meantime, we encourage each designer/developer/team to update their games, based on the feedback received from the community, and send them to us.
Although we always encourage updates and bug fixes during each of our competitions to help each game reach its maximum potential, the original submitted entries will continue to be what the judges use to narrow the field and for the final round of scoring. For Audience Prize voting, however, you are free to base your voting decisions on the original submission, the update, or whether you are a friend or family member of the designer/developer or team. It's completely up to you.
For our future reviews of each of the competition finalists, we will use the most recent update of the game that we have at the time of publishing.
We will continue to post the updates as they become available to us. A reload of the competition UI is all that is necessary to receive each update when made available. I encourage each developer to post a comment to their respective thread indicating any changes made.
We wish to thank everyone who has participated by sending in an entry, or by providing feedback thus far on the entries posted. Your continued participation ensures that we will continue to host these competitions. =)
Having only recently discovered Jay Is Games, I couldn't have had better timing. It's been a real treat to discover CGDC4, and to play and critique these games for the first time.
Talk about a win-win situation! As Jay so articulately put it "Wooty tooty flip-bam-booty".
Thanks for the opportunity Jay. And good luck to all of the contributors.
Jay, this was the best contest ever. I'm sure it was a lot of hard work for everybody involved and I just want to say thanks to you and all of the developers. It was really fun having so many great new games to play. Good luck to everybody. I can't wait to see who wins.
Not that any of the games are unworthy of a vote - but I'm very glad the field will be narrowed before the audience vote happens.
I just could not imagine having to pick on (or more) out of fifty!
Thank you judges for doing the preliminary hard work! :)
I have to say, wonderful work everyone. All those GDs that put their entries in did a wonderful job, and I applaud their effort.
I also want to thank JiG, not just Jay, but the whole team, for making this possible for all of us to enjoy. It is really interesting to see how the game mechanic was employed with each of the entries, and it reaffirmed my belief that when it comes to games, it is a universal langauge.
I look forward to next years, and all the games inbetween.
Go games go!
Well done guys, looks like you've created a bit of a monster of a competition now! You'll have to have a JiG Oscar nominations with different categories next time Jay! haha
Big thank you to all the developers theres some great games there - well done!
How many finalists are you thinking of? I'm guessing it would be easiest to narrow the numbers down to about as many entries as were present in past competitions - 15-20?
Either way, good luck making the decision! And good luck to all the developers!
NOOOOOOOOOOO O O O O O O O O O O ! ! ! ! !
Say it ain't so! It can't be over!
Dang that was fun! Jay I think these CGDC's are going to develop a life of their own.
God help the judges... yeesh!
Great competition! Thanks to Jay and the team for all the hard work they've put in to bring all these entries to the 'players'.
And thanks to all the designers and developers for their hard work devising the games.
I'm looking forward to seeing which games make it through to the next stage. And I am thankful I can get on with some work next week!
Hey. So this was it for this time. Plenty of great entries. I look forward to your in depth reviews of some of the games, as they add to the qualities I might not have spotted. After the last competition I really enjoyed playing the winning game, though I didn't give it much attention as it was put out.
I didn't know you could send updates... O well, maybe next competition(s) :)
I don't consider it be fair the judged reduce the numbers of the audience award. Infact the same judges that also announce the normal award. IMHO You shouldn't change the rules like this on the fly.
If the audience is overstrained they rather should be offered a digital decision helper, like always comparing 2 games and you pick the one you like better, after 50 clicks you got your favorite!
Yeah Jay, I have to agree with fuzzygrid on the audience voting. Just leave it wide open for us. I'd think there would be enough voters for this not to be an issue huh? If you only have thirty voters deciding between 50 games it's a problem but I'm guessing you'll have hundreds of voters. If there's a tie you can always have a run-off vote - Adding to the excitement! :)
The idea of creating a side-by-side comparison is a good one but then isn't that kind of what the game display system is already?
The trouble with doing a comparison test is that the voting system last time was made resistant to cheating by obliging each voter to donate a small sum of money to the game they were voting for. That wouldn't work for comparisons.
Dom: the comparison tool would be just that a tool for the player, to decide what they go for if they want to use because they feel overwhelmed by 50 entries. Its up to them to use or not use it.
Otherwise it doesnot interfere with audience voting, everyone can put money on his favorite like ever before
Sorry Fuzzygrid, but nearly 50 entries is just too many to administrate for the Audience voting. Or perhaps you would like to handle this for us? If so, then please contact me and we'll work out the details.
There was discussion before we rolled out the entries whether to reduce the field FIRST, and we almost did that. But we also wanted to give every game the opportunity to receive feedback.
Now, in retrospect, even that was too much, and we will likely filter future competitions before we roll out any entries.
Aha, OK. I thought you were proposing that each player only deal with some subset of the 1225 possible comparisons and the results would be aggregated.
The way you're envisaging it the tool doesn't really do anything.
And to everyone else who have voiced their encouraging words of support, we really appreciate your kind comments. Thank you. =)
As far as I recall the audience votes were always also a tool to support the game you like, and give the creator some bucks. So now when you exclude some game I like, I cant support it, altough it might not have a chance to "win" eitherway, it would still have been some support.
IMHO one requirement should be written statement from the contributer HOW he intrepeted the theme and how how he honors it. This would already prefilter a lot of stuff, because IMHO people are already using the competitions for games that have almost nothing to do with the theme, but take their chance for free publicity (both in game and the review)
Dom: It would be a nice thing to have during the competition, and it's one thing you can use in sales e.g. I bought my diving goggles for example like this. The seller handed me 2 dozend of goggles. You wear A, then you wear B. Whats better A or B? You say B fits better, then you wear C. What is better B or C? B is better, next What is better B or D? and so on, at the end you got your favorite.
Oh I forgot, what would have to be administrated I could help with?
Point noted, Fuzzygrid. It is an unfortunate consequence of having so many entries, I will agree with you there.
And I do like your suggestion of requiring a statement from every participant for future competitions regarding how the theme was interpreted. That would also help us when rolling out the entries as we could simply publish the author's statement about their own game. Yes, I do like that very much indeed. :)
jay: you are my hero!
As a casual gameplayer of a certain age, I must say I love your site, Jay.
I visit every day to see what's up. This competition has been the most fun.
Love it!!
Love you all!!
I am disappointed that all of the games entered won't get a chance to be played in future competitions. I really enjoyed going through all the games and playing them. I also enjoyed reading the comments other gamers had to each entry. I think if you look back through the comments, you will find that in almost every game, someone said it was their favorite. I think that is the beauty of this competition, it allows people to enjoy all sorts of new games. I think a preselection would somewhat defeat that element of the competition. I understand the need for narrowing the field but I don't think excluding games is the answer.
One aspect of this competition that I did not like was the UI for the games. It was hard to find a specific game in the competition by scrolling through 5 at a time. Maybe in future competitions you could add a list of the games (alphabetical and in the order of release). In addition, there were several times when I was playing a game and the control panel at the top opened at a crucial moment. One time I even lost my game because I was playing in the top right corner and I was kicked out to the menu page.
Thanks for hosting such a fun competition. I have spent many hours on the site and really enjoyed this competition.
Thanks, Alex, for your constructive criticism.
We have made small changes with each competition based on feedback received and based on the experience from each previous competition.
The competition UI for this particular competition did not suit the number of entries received, and we are already in the designing stages for a new UI for the next competition. Your suggestion for an alphabetical and chronological listing of games is a good one, and we will do our best to include better ways for selecting games.
However, don't always believe everything you see in the comments, for this is a competition with prizes of significant value. I put very little weight in the "This is my favorite of all the entries" comments since it is plausible the comment came from someone connected with the game or to the game designer. While this may not always be the case, you just can't take everything read at face value when real money is at stake (i.e., play each of them and make up your own mind.)
In terms of the number of entries we receive and the subselection process, we are primarily concerned with overwhelming the JIG community as well as the judges and reviewers that must make sound, critical analysis of each game. It is quite possible that we will roll out all the entries that don't make the first cut "Link Dump" style as we do on Fridays. At least that way everyone has an opportunity of receiving feedback, which is something we would like to continue for everyone who enters, if possible.
Thanks again for your feedback. It is very important to us that the decisions we make are appropriate, not only for us, but for the JIG community as well.
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