Intel® Software Network

Hi, I wonder if it would be possible to change the criteria by which you display featured entries...? from empirical observations they're: the more votes and the more recently it was released, the higher the chance to see your entry. That's ok if you want the "featured entries" to be those with most votes :-) however displaying the same projects over and over on the first page gives them huge publicity, which gives them votes, which gives them place on top, which gives them more votes etc. endless feedback.

Some entries didn't have a chance to get few votes at the begginning, weren't released before submission end and don't have project title that appears at the begginning when sorted - no wonder they haven't been scored even once, and IMHO that's a bit unfair. Some of them are quite nice so that's not becouse of their quality. If you would make featured entries show random poll, that would fix the system ;-)


Anyway, I'm not bashing anyone, just my 2 cents on how to make this (already great) competition even better :-)

I do agree with koshmar ! I was working on my engine so I display only few artwork and now my game is having a really good shape, but the problem is that I can update my picture or anything ... It's kind of unfaire I mean for those who cam late in the contest and are willing to progress ... There is a way to update this or am I going to loose just because I came a bit late in the contest ?


anyway I hope you guys understand and if you could at least give us some information about we could solve this problem.

koshmar, thank you very much for the feedback.  We'll definitely take this into consideration for all future contests.  This is the type of feedback we very much appreciate in order to make these contests more fair in the future.

sueds, I don't think koshmar has an issue with the deadline of submitting/modifying entries.  If we extend the deadline for you, then we'll have to extend the deadline for everyone and for anyone else who came to the contest late.  This would result in a contest deadline that is continually pushed back... there would be no end! :)  Sorry, this is probably the answer you don't want but we have to enforce the contest rules.

mwyi @ intel

No offense, but I don't think it's unfair at all. I started my entry a bit late as well, but I worked very, very hard to have something resembling a gameplay demo by the July 1st deadline. It's far from perfect (I'm still working on it - so much to do!), but it's fair that entries are judged based on their state by the time of the deadline.

I agree with Koshmar in that the "Featured Entries" list should be updated periodically, though.

hello, I'm not thinking about changing the deadline, it's just you mislead us in putting the deadline for applying in the contest and send the game. I mean I'm pretty sure there is a lot of guy which would like to be judge by for their entire work and not for reandom atken in their early developpement. It's seems a bit weird for you but I'm in holydays so I can focus on the game and most of us still student. I do understand it's hard but I can't even put some link to some blog or anything. I was thinking to create a forum showcase but it don't seem that people check it often... We do'nt have any chance to advert our game so wa't the point of working so hard ? I'm not trying to tweak any rules just that it's really hard to compete when you canno't update your current progress.

With regards to periodically changing the featured entries, we'll be sure to change this functionality for upcoming contests. It is very good feedback.

With regards to the contest overall, it launched on Feb 18, 2008 and participants had until July 1, 2008 to enter their abstract, screenshots and movies. Participants had the timeframe from Feb 18 through July 1 to update their abstract, screenshots and movies. We are now going through phase 1 judging and will announce the top ten finalists in each category on August 1, 2008 at which time the finalists will have until August 15, 2008 to upload their demos.

Please let us know if we can provide further clarification.

Thank you.

Wow, and I was expecting to be banned for stirring the waters ;-)

It's great that you'll take this into account in future contests, however... couldn't you do it a bit faster? I mean, there are still 3 weeks before public voting will end, and adding this little feature won't be big deal, and it will immediately increase fairness of this competition. If I understand correctly, Intel's judges will look only at games that scored max public votes and choose winners from this group, right?

And btw, another little tip: please add at least one additional <br> after each game entry - that will help to visually distinguish them, see where one ends and other begins, which "thumbs up" belongs to which entry etc.

Thank you for understanding.

I certainly hope the judges won't consider just the most voted entries. Otherwise, no one stands a chance against Sky War!

The rules say just that the most voted entries "will receive priority consideration". I think this means the judges are free to completely ignore public voting.

mpersano is correct, the judges are free to completely ignore public voting.  receiving a high number of votes will not automatically guarantee an entry to be a finalist, nor will it receive more consideration than any other entry.  usually, receiving a high number of votes is a good indicator of which demos are better, but as you've brought to our attention, the featured demos tend to get higher votes.

we'll look into implementing a change for the featured demo topic for the rest of this contest, but can't promise anything.  this will definitely be changed for all future contests though.  thanks again for the excellent feedback.

-mwyi@intel