Re: Competition: a consensus?


23 May 95 00:37:56 CDT

I realize that I'm coming in late to this thread, and the issue has
probably already been debated, but I fail to understand why the entrants
cannot also vote. Clearly, if everyone voted for his own game, things
might get a bit out of hand -- but IF authors tend to be a fairly
self-deprecating lot (Steve Meretzky and Whizzard excepted, of course ;)

If you want to ensure that every game will be rated at least a few times,
why not require everyone who enters a game to also rate every other game
that is written using the same system that author used? So if I were to
submit a TADS game, I would also have to rate every other TADS game. If
I chose, I could also play and rate the Inform/Alan/native C/whatever games.

Also, I see no reason to use a numerical rating system. Everyone has a
different idea of what each individual "point" represents. I much prefer
the thought of everyone having to choose three favorite games, in no
particular order. The game which gets the most total votes wins. If two
or more games get the same number of votes, they tie. I mean, it's not
like there is anything at stake here; the idea is just to encourage
people to write and play some new stuff in the near future, right? Or,
if you absolutely must have a tiebreaker, have each person send in their
three favorite games and mark one of them with an asterisk as "the best
of the best". That would be the tiebreaker -- the game which was chosen
by the most people as the best of the three voted for.

Of course, people will have to be on the honor system as to whether or
not they actually play all of the games for their system. And each entry
ought to be anonymized, at least until after the contest. I don't care
whether source code is released or not -- but I think the games all ought
to be freeware, and when the contest's over, an archive/compilation ought
to be put on ftp.gmd.de and we ought to publicize it in various computer
game groups on the net as being available. Might encourage a few people
to play something other than The Space King's Leisure Police Hero XVIII.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.

Sean
----
"Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he
is a tolerable sub-human who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not
make messes in the house." -- Robert Heinlein