Competition Rules Changes Discussion

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Enthalpy
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Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by Enthalpy »

DWaM recently proposed some changes to the case competition rules. I've spoken with him about them and decided these proposals are worth further discussion. That's what this topic is for. After listening to all the community feedback, I'll decide which changes to implement, effective starting next competition. Note that while DWaM's original post called for a broader discussion about "revitalizing the community," the current discussion already has enough topics that I think broadening the scope would just fragment the conversation.

Below, I've summarized the proposals, the reason for them, possible unintended consequences, and my own judgment on the proposals. My thoughts may change over time.

Proposal 1: Shortening Competition Deadlines
Justification:
* Shorter deadlines encourage entrants to manage their time more carefully and reduce the number of dropouts due to not having enough time.
* Shorter deadlines encourage entrants to make smaller cases that can be actually finished in time, giving them extra motivation to enter and submit.
* Shorter deadlines signal to new users that they don't need to meet some unreasonable standard - a "quick and dirty" submission is fine.
* Shorter deadlines cause more activity in the Case Competition section, as there's a flurry at competition start and competition end.
Other Consequences:
* Shorter deadlines may discourage entrants from signing up in the first plac if they think they'd need more time.
* Shorter deadlines may disproportionately cut the crucial beta-testing phase, leading to buggier submissions, or decrease the crucial planning phase, leading to cases with major underlying problems.
* Shorter deadlines will give the authors less time, so this may actually increase the number of incomplete cases.
Enthalpy's Thoughts:
There are a lot of costs and benefits here, many of which counterbalance, and none of which I can estimate the effect of easily. DWaM cited the last competition as an example of the benefits of smaller deadlines. Maybe there's a benefit here, but I can't be sure. For the time being, I'm inclined to hold off on this until we see more of these short competitions.

Proposal 2: Trial Only Cases
Justification:
* Trial cases can be written quickly, relative to non-trial cases, due to the pre-established structure.
* Trial-only cases encourage entrants to submit, due to the pre-established structure.
* Trial cases can be written quickly, relative to non-trial cases, due to the reduced need for custom assets.
Other Consequences:
* This would have prohibit a lot of past competition entries.
Enthalpy's Thoughts:
Southern Corn didn't word this as a proposal for a rules change, but as a rule he wanted to see more competition hosts use. I am strongly against this becoming a general rule: this would have disqualified all three of my past entries! As a rule which competition hosts can employ as they see fit, I'm indifferent. The more the rule benefits you, the likelier you were to write a trial-only case in the first place. However, there may be some good competition theme using trial-only cases, so I don't want to ban them, either. I think that infrequent as this rule currently is, I don't need to do anything. But if "trial-only cases" becomes used highly frequently, I may discourage hosts from using the rule.

REJECTED

Proposal 3: Entrants Can Always Showcase at Completion Time
Justification:
* Having a set release day increases anticipation for the entries, and thus the attention they receive and discussion they generate on release.
Other Consequences:
* Judge reviews now receive less attention.
* Judges must now judge entries that are public, which some judges dislike.
Enthalpy's Thoughts:
When I originally introduced this rule almost three years ago, it was in response to a specific problem. Some users (who I won't name) were extremely concerned about public backlash if their judging deviated from public consensus. Since then, this rule has become common, and I'm not sure why. Is there some other reason for this rule that I'm not aware of? "Judge purity" should not be a pressing concern. The lack of attention case competition entries receive, on the other hand, is a pressing concern. Given this lack of addition, concerns about public backlash seem unfounded, so I'm inclined to reverse this rule and always allow entrants to showcase as soon as the deadline hits.

Proposal 4: Entries Can be from Any Casemaker
Justification:
* The pool of participants and spectators becomes larger, as users of other casemakers are welcomed in.
Other Consequences:
* We lose an incentive for people to use AAO.
Enthalpy's Thoughts:
This is another rule that I'm in favor of. I can't imagine anybody using AAO just for the case competitions, and the activity boost from allowing other casemakers, even if a small one, does seem quite useful!

And lastly, while DWaM brought up to me the importance of making the period between entry submission and end of the competition, this is already in the rules. The issue here is that I have not been enforcing this with a quite strong enough iron first. If I maintain the standard I set last competition, this should be fine.
____________________________________________________________
And, that's all I have for now. All thoughts welcome!
Last edited by Enthalpy on Sat Feb 23, 2019 4:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Rejected proposal 2.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by cesar26100 »

I mainly agree with proposals 3 and 4 here. Can't see any downsides to 3 really, maybe that judge reviews can help improve some cases before they're made public but entrants can always just choose to not release the case until later if they want more feedback first.

A downside to 4 might be issues with the judges accessing non-AAO cases, like Pywright not working on newer versions of Mac, but that is just one issue with one engine and it's easy enough to get around, and I can't think of many other cases where AAO would work and other engines wouldn't besides that, and it'd indeed provide a nice activity boost especially seeing how there's at least one new engine apparently making good progress right now.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by Enthalpy »

cesar26100 wrote:A downside to 4 might be issues with the judges accessing non-AAO cases, like Pywright not working on newer versions of Mac, but that is just one issue with one engine and it's easy enough to get around, and I can't think of many other cases where AAO would work and other engines wouldn't besides that, and it'd indeed provide a nice activity boost especially seeing how there's at least one new engine apparently making good progress right now.
I recently played a PyWright case on my Mojave without issues. Also, is the new engine UCANT, or is there something else?
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by cesar26100 »

Oh, I heard there were issues with El Capitan, so I guess whatever caused issues in that version isn't there anymore.

And there is also this one someone is working on in CR. They seem to be posting updates at a decent rate at least.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by clcman »

I'm not so sure about #1. One major factor to consider is that the shorter deadlines model means that there is a raw increase in the number of competitions, from about 4 a year to about 6 or even 12, depending on how crazy we get with that deadline. That could drive up engagement, but it could also burn people out, lead to the same winners over and over again and further reduce people's ability/desire to actually finish and release incomplete entries.

It does seem like for most people casemaking is a process of relatively time-dense activity (a lot at once, rather than a little over a long period), so the reduction might not have as much of an impact as I fear. Still, I would recommend experimenting some before making a whole bunch of 1-month comps.

I am heavily against #2 for reasons stated before. Certain authors like making not-so-trial cases, a lot of unique concepts would be tossed out and, as far as I can tell, there is no real benefit to anyone. All- or mostly-trial cases are already the norm, and it's awfully hard for me to imagine a person being encouraged to make an entry as a result of another type of case being banned.

This might be me having more experience as a judge than having completed comp entries ready for Day 1 release, but I'm not so sure about #3. Obviously, it is a problem when a judge is holding things up for weeks but I think there is something special about the anticipation of comp entries, hearing things about them and seeing reviews, but not quite seeing them yet. Is it better to see a movie and then read its reviews, or read the reviews first and then see it? I suppose that's an open question, now that I say it out loud. At a minimum, the release-ready comps do come out pretty much all at once on top of the awards ceremony or whatever, so I think that offers some hype. Also, there are authors whose work needs a few days of tune-ups and betaing who aren't in a good position to take advantage of the Day 1 release (especially if the judge is giving them detailed feedback). And I'm assuming that those authors are still locked from editing their entries while the judge goes over them, so that could also be an issue with the public release.

My entire AA fan career has been with AAO, but I don't have an enormous problem with #4 as long as the entrants make sure that the judge will have the ability to play the case without too much trouble. Preferably near the start of the comp.
Enthalpy wrote:And lastly, while DWaM brought up to me the importance of making the period between entry submission and end of the competition, this is already in the rules. The issue here is that I have not been enforcing this with a quite strong enough iron first. If I maintain the standard I set last competition, this should be fine.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by Enthalpy »

Another point on #3: In your last competition, you asked that all showcases be delayed until after the winner was announced. Why was that?
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by DWaM »

Seeing as how I'm the one who suggested numbers 1, 3 and 4, it should be obvious that I'm in favor of those. I also feel like I more or less made my arguments clear in the actual thread.

Likewise, #2 I disagree with. I don't think the increase in entries that SC and cesar's comp got was due to the fact the cases had to be trial-only. I also don't think that limiting people's options in such a way is the step in the right direction -- be it for comps or the site in general.

I also wanted to comment on this point in particular while I'm at it:
clcman wrote:Is it better to see a movie and then read its reviews, or read the reviews first and then see it? I suppose that's an open question, now that I say it out loud. At a minimum, the release-ready comps do come out pretty much all at once on top of the awards ceremony or whatever, so I think that offers some hype. Also, there are authors whose work needs a few days of tune-ups and betaing who aren't in a good position to take advantage of the Day 1 release (especially if the judge is giving them detailed feedback). And I'm assuming that those authors are still locked from editing their entries while the judge goes over them, so that could also be an issue with the public release.
A few counter-points:
  • I have to question how much information players who haven't played the case are able to gleam from most reviews that judges put out. If the reviews are too specific, it leads to having the case spoiled before people have had a chance to play it. The alternative is to keep things general and vague, but the result of that is that most players won't really be able to accurately appreciate the points being made until they've played it themselves. Simply put, I would argue judge reviews gain more weight and can be appreciated more only after the players have had a chance to play them themselves.
  • The hype aspect feels a bit non-important from my point of view. You can achieve the same amount of "hype" if players anticipate the cases to be released "at some point on the very deadline or some point after the deadline", as opposed to "at some point after the judges announce the results". Obviously, that judge's reviews can give an indication of "yes, this case is good and worthwhile playing," but if a case is released before that review, then it's up to the player whether or not they want to play it then or wait for that review to see if it's worthwhile to play. Thus, I don't think it takes away from anything at all.
  • I also have to unfortunately have to question the argument from the simple fact that -- the site at its current stage isn't active enough for me to believe that the losses described here are to have any real impact -- hype or otherwise.
  • The rule would not be forcing people to release their entries on comp deadline. If they feel like they need to work more on their entry after the deadline, they would, of course, be free to do so. I don't really believe that there was ever an issue in regards to anyone having a "Day 1 advantage" over someone else by releasing earlier; unless someone happened to release months afterwards, which is a possibility even if the current rule is left in place.
  • Finally, I would make an argument that it's actually better that the players have a chance to play entries before having any notion of the quality from the judges. It encourages people to play them and make their own judgements on whether or not it's bad, offer criticisms of their own before the results are out (thus bringing activity to the showcase) and just overall discuss it a bit more. Because otherwise, I feel that if the judge's review is remotely negative, a player might just immediately dismiss the trial and never play it. If they never play it, they can never discuss it. If they never discuss it, the author will inevitably get discouraged or simply never gain some other criticism they could've gotten. And that's not even mentioning the possibility that the judge could simply not like the case because it's not their kind of thing! While they might not write a negative review, it certainly wouldn't be a necessarily enthusiastic one.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by Southern Corn »

Well, I guess everyone here seems to disagree with #2 so I’ll drop that. Fair enough there, I suppose.

In regards to #4, I think it’s a good point but honestly I would prefer it to stay as a thing which judges can decide to be optional or not. AAO is more accessible to some people and doesn’t need to be downloaded or anything, so it is a simpler case maker to use when judge for. Some judges might also have issues playing on other case makers. It sounds a little weak but I’d rather it would be left more to the judges’ discretion. I guess having a crossover with the Game Jam could be pretty good as a yearly thing at least for more diversity.

As for #3, I personally only chose that rule for our comp because it was given in the rules section and didn’t really feel the need to change it. I understand why it’s there but I see no need to keep it. Most people had it finished last couple comp anyway which made for good timing. I’m not against letting the entrants release the case once it’s all done and polished regardless of when the comp ends. That said, not everyone is fast when’s it comes to making cases and there’s a good chance most cases won’t be finished even when the comp ends. The last comp got complete entries mainly because of the theme there, I feel. Reviews can be interesting to read once you’ve finished the case, but I’ve seen previous comps have there be two reviews with one being more spoilery for just this purpose, so I think that could also work.

Award ceremonies could also be shortened but I think they’re definitely a fun part of comps, both to make as well as to play. I think including a summary of the awards is also good so that people don’t have time to view them can find out what happened.

I’ll end this post by saying that not all entrants enter after planning carefully. When I entered the They Shall Not Kill comp, I did so entirely on a whim because I had an idea that was...let’s say, rather unique. I didn’t even start programming the case till after I had already signed up, I was that eager. It wasn’t easy and I was tempted to give up halfway through, but I did complete it. Never did expect to win either, funnily enough. But I think that sometimes, people just do enter because they feel like it, because a certain theme resonates with them. So I think ultimately, the nature of the comp’s is a major influential factor when it comes to signing up and arguably the most important as well. So while I think these other factors are worth discussing, I think that it’s up ultimately to the judge to entice people into joining with a suitable theme.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by Gamer2002 »

Proposal 1: Shortening Competition Deadlines
Making cases is time-consuming and during three months people may find time only to make short demos or even shorter previews. Or, a first part of more ambitious projects, like REM or the original Turnabout Curtain. Neither of those two did end up being finished, but A Burned Man Mentioned In A Really Long Case Title was an entry that had to be submitted complete, and I remember DWaM being worried if he would make it in time. Would that case be finished, after the deadline and without the competition motivating its creation? Very likely, but I didn't finish, nor release even in part, 3 competition cases. So, we can end up with unreleased cases if we don't give people time to make them during competitions.

Not to mention, new users also don't have to be aware how much time their project is going to take and can be overly ambitious, even if you only give them a month of time. No to mention, will we keep interest in competitions that will happen every month? If people don't finish their project in a month, they will have to choose between postponing an already started project or skipping the new competition(s). And how many people will be trapped in the competition mania, constantly starting but never finishing projects? Do you want to tempt people like me every single month?!

Hosts can make shorter deadlines if they wish so, but I think that 3 months is a good maximal period of time. But I don't see much of benefit in reducing that maximal time.
Proposal 2: Trial Only Cases
Nope. Majority of my competition's entries wouldn't be created if that rule was enforced, including its winner. Hosts can enforce this themselves, but it's a disservice to limit what we can do with the engine.
Proposal 3: Entrants Can Always Showcase at Completion Time
There was a problem about entrants not being able to release cases before the ruling during my competition. Personally, I don't mind, as I don't let per pressure to affect my opinions. But other hosts may mind, so it's better to leave this up to them.
Proposal 4: Entries Can be from Any Casemaker
A downside is that other engines more easily allow to send entries that were created before the competion's start, if we worry about that (though cheating with AAO like that also isn't impossible, but it raises warning signs for admins to spot). Besides that - sure, why not? But allowing this should also mean that presenting in Your Trials things done with other engines should also be allowed. Which means allowing presenting there any kind of own game. And about that... sure, why not? If flood of titles happens just make a subforum for AAO titles and another one for non-AAO titles. If the need for that ever arises Unas will become rich with ad money (and with 0 additional case hosting costs!), so there's no real downsides.

Although, there is also a danger of downloading viruses and malwares, so maybe there is some theoretical downside...
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by DJJ6800 »

Might as well throw in my two cents to this discussion.
Proposal 1: As a college student with not a lot of time on his hands, I thrive on longer deadlines. It's giving me plenty of time to work on my current competition entry and be able to keep up with school work. (Barely.) That said, I can see the need for shorter deadlines depending on the subject of the competition. Personally, I think two to three months is a fair length for creating cases. Then again, I'm fairly new here so what do I know?

Proposal 2: I think the general consensus here is that this one is out so I'll just leave this one alone. (tl;dr, I disagree with proposal 2.)

Proposal 3: I can certainly see the desire to showcase trials before the deadline, what with letting people judge the cases for themselves without a judge giving their input beforehand. (After all, when has the judge's first instinct ever been right? :judge: ) That said, I can see how pressure can get to judges to rate cases. I feel it should be up to the host to decide.

Proposal 4: I know someone who is working on an AA fancase outside of AAO and wants to showcase it on these sites but is afraid of the backlash for not using the traditional casemakers. I think that as long as the ability to play the case is available to the people, that it's perfectly fine to let other casemakers be used here
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by DWaM »

I would like to note that what I had in mind for proposal #1 was not to cut it down to a month, but rather maybe make it two months instead of three. I think a fair number of entrants are likely to underestimate the effort going in to begin with regardless of the deadline, but that a shorter timeframe is more likely to signal to them to keep their ideas within reasonable scope.
Gamer2002 wrote:Making cases is time-consuming and during three months people may find time only to make short demos or even shorter previews. Or, a first part of more ambitious projects, like REM or the original Turnabout Curtain. Neither of those two did end up being finished, but A Burned Man Mentioned In A Really Long Case Title was an entry that had to be submitted complete, and I remember DWaM being worried if he would make it in time. Would that case be finished, after the deadline and without the competition motivating its creation? Very likely, but I didn't finish, nor release even in part, 3 competition cases. So, we can end up with unreleased cases if we don't give people time to make them during competitions.
TCurtain, though, would be an example of being unable to keep the scope in check. And it shows that regardless of the deadline, if the project you're aiming to submit is overly-ambitious, no amount of time might necessarily be enough, depending on the circumstances. (While on the subject of TCurtain v1, I'll also mention the fact that of the three months, at the time, I'd only actually used two.) As for Burned Man, my concern of being unable to finish didn't stem from the comp length. I was concerned because I'd only decided to work on it 13 days before the deadline. So the actual comp development time, whether it would've been month or three months, changed nothing for me.

In general, though, I think the overall message we should signal, regardless of what we do with proposal #1, is that more ambitious projects in general likely cannot be completed in three months to begin with, and to nudge people towards keeping things on the more simple and reasonable side. Once we do that, the two months I propose I think would be just as manageable in terms of timeframe. With it, as I mentioned before, we also avoid the dead comp thread in the second month, and keep engagement up. That should be enough to help with seeing more completed projects. Which isn't to say people wouldn't be allowed to submit or plan more ambitious stuff. Especially since things can change mid-development and ideas can grow larger than they were supposed to. But I think giving that encouragement to keep things simple is on the overall better than people realizing they're making something beyond their means and just dropping out as a result.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by cesar26100 »

For proposal 1, I mainly felt iffy about it being cut down to just one month except in cases like Keeping It Simple where it's better to encourage people to stick to the basics. Two months as an average length sounds reasonable enough though and still would give people enough time while improving the comp thread's "pacing". Still might be good to allow three months as a maximum for comps like for example the current one which might require more custom assets and stuff, but encouraging hosts to not make comps longer than they need to be does make sense.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by Tiagofvarela »

Shortening Deadlines
I believe shortening deadlines will ultimately lead to more unfinished and unreleased cases, as I'm sure there are many already.
It is often difficult to estimate how long a case you are making will end up being, and how much time you will end up being able to dedicate to it within the allotted time. Especially so for people who are new to casemaking, who may severely underestimate the necessary amount of time.
Secondly, competitions naturally draw the attention of active casemakers. If they feel they can, given the activity level on the site, they will feel compelled to partake. But given shorter timeframes, they will be compelled to make shorter cases or unfinished ones. A higher frequency of competitions will mean more competitions to draw one's attention and potentially distract them from finishing other projects, ultimately leading to an accumulation of unfinished trials. Most of my unfinished trials are only so because I was distracted from finishing them by the newest competition, at least. One mustn't forget that the competitions guarantee some amount of attention to your entry.
Finally, as others have mentioned, I believe most work is done in bursts. Yes, people are more likely to work on the case when they're closer to the deadline but, more than that, they are more likely to work whenever they have the time. A shorter timeframe will outright kick some people from participating in a given competition simply because they don't have a holiday or some free time to dedicate to it within the timeframe. Instead, they'd have time for the next competition or the previous one. Overall, I believe this will altogether reduce the number of entries per competition.
I attribute the number of participants in the last competition to the theme encouraging casemaking, not the length, as well as the time period, including holidays for some people.
I think it's perfectly fine to leave it up to the judges to decide the timeframe for their competition.

Trial Only Cases
I don't see how this would compel anyone to participate when they otherwise wouldn't. I see no benefit or point to this restriction. Even though I've only ever made trial only cases.

Showcasing at Deadline
There are definite benefits either way. I say it be left up to the judges, and then the entrants. The judges decide if they allow entrants to publicise their trial at the deadline, and the entrants decide if they want to release immediately, wait for reviews and hype to build and release when the results are announced, or if they're waiting for judge feedback before even thinking about releasing.

Entries from any Casemaker
As long as it does not bar the judges from playing the case, this is good. More cases, more freedom, more liberty. I'm sure there's some folks who can't deal with a lot of AAO's casemaker downsides or want to use some features only present elsewhere. Each casemaker has its pros and cons, so this should be fair game for any competition.

-- Re: Competition Entries, especially from new casemakers, should be encouraged to be less ambitious --
Surprisingly, I see myself agreeing with this!
Three of my four submissions grew to be untenably ambitious. This is fine with me, but I can absolutely see others not submitting anything under the same circumstances. Though I guarantee that I will always submit whatever I have on hand should I officially enter a competition, others may not.

In the end, I still feel the Judge can decide what kind of entries they want or what message they want to impart, and set their deadlines in line with their expectations. But I now see myself quite likely to set a two month deadline in the future should I host a competition again.
Last edited by Tiagofvarela on Mon Feb 18, 2019 10:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by Gamer2002 »

@DWaM
If the problem are dead competition threads, two months are the solution. The question is - are lively competition threads that valuable? Evo' comp was the only post 2013 comp that had more than a half of my comp's replies. In the terms of engagement, me and enigma beat everyone to a pulp. But in terms of released cases?

In terms of engagement we had 24 entering teams, which produced 6-7 submitted entries. Your entry was the only complete one, REM was lengthy and technically impressive, and kwando's entry demo was with reasonable length and good technical values. I give Ghost Trick entry that it sure required time to make even a single frame, but, ultimately, all that engagement resulted with just 3 entries that me and enigma could really discuss as possible winners. And only one was ever completed anyway.

Despite the difference in replies, Evo had 5 or 6 lengthily entries (or so). I think only 2 were completely released, but Tiago's comp had even less replies (slightly more than 1/5 of my comp's replies) and had 4 (!) complete entries released (even if one was short, though was more rich in gameplay content than the shortest 3 of my entries).

Bottom line, high replies count doesn't guarantee that the comp will have a lot of productions.
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Re: Competition Rules Changes Discussion

Post by DWaM »

Gamer2002 wrote:Bottom line, high replies count doesn't guarantee that the comp will have a lot of productions.
And if my objective here was solely increasing the number of entries, I'd maybe agree -- but another thing I want is to have an increase in forum activity in general. Activity helps show new members the forums are still alive, and that there'll be someone discussing their potential entries. And hell, even if they don't end up making anything, there will still be an extra voice in the discussion.
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