The contest results are bullshit

Alright, let's see...
First things first: I'm not mad that I'm not in the top five. I'm just utterly disappointed and angry for these winners. I'll probably offend most of the winners in this post. I don't give a single shit.

First of all...

T-hug said:
We are kind of looking for something created for this contest. Stuff you already work on is fine but projects created just for this competition will be looked upon more favourably.
Click to expand...
EhytFA.gif

Yeah, sure. Four of the winners aren't bounty projects.
And you know, what's even better?

T-hug said:
In previous GBAtemp bounties, we have called upon our members to code projects for various devices. This however, left a lot of our fellow Tempers out in the dark, as not everyone has the knowledge or skill to code apps and games.
[...]
Projects can literally be anything; are you good with art? Draw, paint or craft something for us to see! Maybe you are creative with woodwork, an avid gardener or like photography? You can also enter!
The usual coding entries will still be accepted, but this time we wanted to make it possible for as many members to take part as possible!
Click to expand...

Anything, you say? Really? Yeah. Anything's accepted. Too bad not anything's appreciated. Four of the winning projects are coding projects. Makes you think, ey?


Alright. Now, I'm gonna comment on all the winners, and why they should or shouldn't be on the list. The first place is pretty rant-y, I know, but I'm pretty angry about it as well, and you'll see, why.

#5 newo: NewoSky - $25 Amazon Gift Card
NOT a Bounty project
This has been in the making for around two years.
Interesting idea, but still not made for the contest.

#4 Asia81: HackingToolkit9DS - $25 Amazon Gift Card
NOT a Bounty project
This is an around 1 year old project, that is already well-known and widely used piece of software. This feels like as if someone entered FBI or freeShop. It's just not right. Software like this basically gets a head start, which is really not fair.

#3 Dr.Hacknik: SimpliiU - $50 Amazon Gift Card
NOT a Bounty project
This tool, while useful, presents nothing original, and is just a programme that copies stuff to your SD card if you're too lazy to do it yourself.
This should not be on the list of winners.

#2 cracker: DIY PCB etching / Arduino controller shield - $100 Amazon Gift Card
Bounty project
The only project that was made for the Bounty. Are you fucking kidding me?!
This one's pretty good. It should honestly be first place out of these five. It's really creative and has a lot of work put into it.

#1 Voxel: Stick Magician - GBAtemp Bounty Demo - GPD Pocket
NOT a Bounty project
Oh, boy. OH, BOY! This should NOT be first place!
This is also a VERY old project. And you know, what's the worst thing about it? It has nothing to do with the Bounty! What's this? A test level made for his game, that he's already been working on for quite some time. The Bounty might've motivated him to make said test level, but this is something he would've done anyway in some time. Not only that, but (according to unnamed sources) it mostly just uses Unity's built in stuff, and excluding the art assets, this can be made in a couple of hours. Also, according to my experience, said art assets can be made in ~30 minutes!


Now, what can we do to avoid this in the future?
More attention to stuff other than programming
If you're gonna advertise this "anything, not just programming" shit so much and then ignore it for most of the list, we need a different system. There shouldn't be five winners from any category. There should be a couple of fixed categories, and there should be one winner per category. This would not only encourage people to make more varied submissions, but would also prevent shit like THIS.

Fuck the mods and Patrons-only system
It should either be
Just mods: so we can have some responsible adults thinking about the distribution of basically 700 US Dollars,
or everyone: if we're gonna have normal people voting basically just for stuff they like, it shouldn't be just a couple of them.


I'm actually angry at this contest. Even by just looking at the first two places you can see the problems. One is clearly much better and more creative than the other one, yet it didn't win. What the fuck?!
I'm so furious, I could literally flip my table with my laptop, phone and Wacom tablet on it. Fuck this shit!

Also, wow. I've apparently taken more than an hour to write this shit. Phew.
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Comments

WeedZ
I missed this whole thing, but just checked out the bounty entries, the patron votes, and winner announcements. I think this was pretty sloppy. But I can forgive the staff since this is an entirely new way to do bounties.

I do have suggestions, if anyone cares.

Entries should have to follow a theme. A lot of the entries were, as you pointed out, not made for the contest and have actually been available for quite a while and I'm pretty sure some of them were projects built on someone else's work.

Having a theme would ensure that people would have to start projects from scratch. It would be just as much work to modify something to meet certain criteria as it would be to just create something new.

There should also be more time. If this is a quad-annual event, there should be like 10 weeks between the bounty announcement and the deadline, and at least a couple weeks for voting. This would give plenty of time for discussion between voters, and from what I have access to, there was none. If I had been on for any amount of time during the voting period, which was a week, I would have opened dialog about why and who deserved the votes.

I wasn't stoked about this one. I don't think people had enough time, and I don't think anyone really got involved in this thing. The projects were sub-par in my opinion. I feel I could have spray-painted tempy on a cop car and had a competitive edge. I think the next round should have more hype, a theme, and more competitive projects.

A couple side notes, @SpiffyJUNIOR 's arcade cabinet should have won (was going to be my entry project actually), and i think the votes should be reserved for staff and patrons. If you're worried about kids getting their hands on votes, you want the staffers and those with jobs to pay for patreon doing it.
 
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G
@SonyUSA
I see what you did.
You went to the future, saw there would be a GBAtemp bounty, went back to your time, and published Season of Henkaku in June, before the GBAtemp bounty was announced in August. I like it.
 
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SonyUSA
@MyLegGuy Technically in June it was just a 1 frame image and 10 seconds of text with no live area icons to get Xyz to port an audio library to the Vita SDK. It wasn't until the bounty that I actually turned it into a game and wrote out the story. That's like saying a canvas is the same thing as a finished painting! ;D
 
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ThoD
By the same logic @SonyUSA , I could have finished one of my old uncompleted projects and gotten a place, seeing I got many game projects at 0.1 version where there's only the game system and models... I wanted to make something from scratch and release it, but there was hardly any time to for me. I went through all the entries and a considerably large number of them were just old ones, either simply higher version or even the same, so much for originality! Also, if you have a game that's really incomplete, that doesn't mean it will take the same amount of work as making something from scratch, but rather that you have the foundation and the plans for what to go for already, which makes everything considerably faster and easier.
 
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C
2 years is not "fucking old".
This specific project in particular was created exactly on August 24th.
 
C
I don't see why I have to put up with this shit quite frankly. (not the blog in general, just the comments towards me and the project).
I had absolutely no choice whether I was going to win or lose, so why does everyone think this gives them a golden ticket to insult my project?
 
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ThoD
We didn't say your project was bad, we simply said that it's old and that there were plenty of better projects. Don't take it the wrong way. Sure, you did it alone, but others did some pretty great stuff and got nothing. At least, it shouldn't have gotten first place is what we are talking about.
 
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C
I wholeheartedly agree; what I made was just a simple niche test level, and honestly, I did not think it would get 1st place considering the wonderful write-up Cracker did.
I think I am just overreacting and playing the victim card too much lately, so I am sorry for that.
 
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SonyUSA
@ThoD You dont understand lol, the original code post was a gag to get Xyz to port audio libs for something else I was doing, the code in it looks nothing like it does now, it was a clever trick to make it seems like it was actually cycling text, but really it was spaghetti code. The only thing that version and my submitted one have in common is the 4 sprites I used, other than that, it was the contest that got me into actually turning it into something.
 
ThoD
I see. But did you already have any plans to do what you did or it was really just because of the contest and otherwise it would have been a discarded project?
 
StarTrekVoyager
@smileyhead Also, don't be surprised that people say your project was made with MS Paint if you say Voxel's was made from pre-made assests and idk what
 
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C
I have absolutely no idea why this ridiculous rumor is being spread around. Absolutely everything is made by myself, except for a VertexLit shader, and that is the only built-in thing I use.

I am sorry, but it's high time I put that fucking hideous rumor to rest.
 
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Kioku
Okay, I'll say it. Why does it matter? The issue really isn't who won... Or who did what. It was a messy bounty with a shallow voting pool. Learn and move on. Voxel didn't pay the judges for the win. Clearly he put some time and effort into this... And realistically, no rules were broken. Whether it was an old project or not (I don't know and I don't care), he didn't shift the votes.
 
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DJPlace
thought this topic was worth reading but sadly it wasted a minute of my life i want back.
 
Sonic Angel Knight
This post is getting old. :ninja:

But I do agree with Memior since well I didn't know about this Bounty thing or that it was a thing in the first place, that it seem like is never been done before. So I mean if we all got super emotionally criticized for our first ever, we wouldn't even be here today. People would be discouraged for ever getting to the point where is better and just ending at the start, not good.

Now people can try again and make things better and perhaps more enjoyable. People really should consider survey for stuff first before trying things. Feedback from communities that people are trying to cater to is good thing, even game devs sometimes do remember and forget. When they do get feedback, it works, and when they avoid it, they don't. Is okay that we point out when someone mess up so is up for debate and discussion on what to improve on, but not when is deliberately hostile, insulting and potentially instigating a negative wave of emotions.

I mean I see someone is upset and from reading I understand why but is not gonna change what has already been done, it will only change what can happen next. Is least good that the people who held the contest are looking into being better than just ignoring things like this. :)
 
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