z2

Uh, Ando's Scorch game took third in my WoZ, and as every entry I received was legitimate, taking third was actually a notable accomplishment. And it would have gotten higher if I personally didn't score it so low just for being a community game that the best Nadir's higher score could do was average it out.

Kjorteo wrote:My first draft of the rules had absolutely no mention of them either, and then totally at MadTom's suggestion, I went back and added the stipulation that they will be completely thrown out, not counted or scored or compiled, and not even given to the other judges. This ended up being a moot point because every entry I received was legitimate.

I'm pretty sure that the lack of junk entries was at least partly a consequence of this.

Er, duh. That's what I meant to say. What did I actually say instead? Damn, I'm sorry. But yeah. It was a good rule, was my general point.

Banning all community related games seems a bit harsh to me. I will try to avoid community related topics, though.

Quantum P. wrote:Banning all community related games seems a bit harsh to me.

I concur. It's glaringly obvious when people are pandering to the judges anyway, and unlike the problem of junk entries you can get funny, playable games out of it.

I concur as well. Personally, if I were a judge, I would score a blatant community game low just for not having widespread, general appeal. That's exactly what I did in my WoZ; Ando's Scorch3000 Fanfiction getting severe points off from me. (It then went on to do well because Nadir scored it significantly higher, but that's a different story.) But I never considered disqualifying it, because it wasn't a junk entry by any means. It had serious thought put into it and was well-made.

Anyway, it's the junk entry policy I was curious about, since the first draft of your rules doesn't mention them.

In order to discourage junk entries, I will probably immediately disqualify them; they will not be judged or included in any official contest compilation. I might laugh at how pathetic they are or hand them out to anybody else who wants to laugh at them, but that's all you can hope for if you send in junk entries.

Also, since nobody has yet mentioned dates that will not work, I'll go ahead and just pick one and see if anybody complains: the weekend of May 5-8. Discuss.

Even that policy shows too much leniency I think. If people want to see junk entries let the authors do it. If I were you I wouldn't waste my time dealing with them at all.

Good point. I'm now seriously rethinking my junk entry policy.

My advice stands: do not allow junk entries, period. If Kjorteo's serious treatment of the contest is anything to go by, it works.

<Terryn> ... :<
<Terryn> I forgot z2 existed until just now =( =( =( =( =(

In other news, here's been my junk policy for four of the five DoZs I've hosted. Junk entries get rated and put into compilations, but not ranked in any way - they're all given a DQ ranking. This depends on your view of the junk entry. In the MZX world (and in the ZZT world's more austere days), while some junk entries are pure refuse, others are artfully done. There's a difference between junk games.

Case one: a team props up a workable game that just happens to mock really, really bad gamemaking habits.

Case two: "THE ADVENTURES OF ZAMROS'S DONG!!!!!!! <b>SPOOGE</b>" [P] "what the fuck, zzt is going nowhere near my dick (endgame bloop-bleep-bloo-blee-blu-BLEE-BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAA)"

Problem is, case two happens most of the time. For case one you (usually) know it will happen in advance. It all depends on how many case two junk entries you think you'll get, since the ZZT competiton is finding its wings again.

PS: Community games are no problem at all, considering they don't just insert the judges for ultimate suckup factor. Different judges feel different ways about them, and that's fine. That's why you try to pick a diversified judging panel in the first place. Unfortunately, "diversity" and "competence" don't intersect well.

I think an entry which really carefully parodied junk entries would not itself be considered junk. For instance it would be quite valid to have objects saying "Endgame" at you, or even have blue borders labelled as yellow. However the clearest indication of a junk entry is how much time and effort has been put into it. I've never seen an entry of no merit which clearly has had a lot of effort put into it.

What TTTPPP said. If a lot of effort went into a game and the game is on topic, it can't really be a junk entry.

I'll judge!

I see! The thing is, though, there's been entries that are competently-made games that have absolutely nothing to do with the topic (or barely peripheral relevance, max). What then? Would it be junk? There's a grey area there because one'd have no knowledge of whether the game was really done in the alloted timespan. Besides, it's really bad practice to outright ignore a theme except to highlight it verbatim in a dialogue. ("WELCOME TO PENGULAND! EAT FISH FOR SCORE! WE ^_^*HOPE!*^_^ YOU GOOD LUCK! n-n") That's my greater point here.

Would said entries be included in judging/distribution?