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Dream Games $10k Contest Point List

Name:	Dave Young
Date Posted:	Apr 19, 2007
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
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We have released the point list for the Dream Games 1-Year $10,000 contest. These points form the criteria by which a contest entry gets judged. Changes to this list will take place up to May 1st, and from then on it will remain final barring major events.

Points began tallying April 1st.

Point List

Reminder that the Deadline to Enter is: Midnight EST on July 1st, 2007.

Right now there are 30 teams who have entered the contest.

Good luck, teams!

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Submit your own resources!

Jay Barnson (Apr 19, 2007 at 19:11 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Hmmm.... do the points start accruiing immediately? In other words, the guys who signed up now get 3 months of bonus points over the guys who start July 1?

Adherence to Design Document: This one bugs me, but at least it has a low score. But I'm kinda opinionated about design documents. I see them as paper prototypes, a critical foundation to start from but not a blueprint. After a while, the game becomes its own prototype. But if you are going to be flexible on this (and permit the design doc to be a "living document"), it's not quite such a big deal.

(Note to other contest entries: The one good thing about trying to maintain a living design doc is that big chunks of it can be torn out at the end and re-used as the player's documentation).

The COOL THING about these judging points, though, is that it makes it somewhat relative to the skills / size / budget of the team. It's interesting about it being about process. I imagine that if you score well in these goals, your game also has a pretty good chance of doing well in the marketplace.

Dave Young (Apr 19, 2007 at 19:22 GMT)

Yep, the design document should be flexible, but it should be kept updated. A change log in the beginning of the document is a great idea. There is no illusion that sometimes as you actually build and test,something that looked cool is not, and something really fun creeps it that wasn't originally planned on!

This approach should do a lot to balance out the team sizes and conception of "project A is further along then Project B" and let the teams pick which areas they will focus on.

Jay Barnson (Apr 19, 2007 at 19:25 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

So since talleying already began, folks are out 200 points already, I take it.

Better submit soon then!
Edited on Apr 19, 2007 19:40 GMT

Dave Young (Apr 19, 2007 at 19:38 GMT)

The scoring started April 1st, many teams saw from the previous posts that the potential points would include blog posts and they've been making them. But with 38000+ points available, 200 up front is not going to be a tremendous impact, and it's a reward for the fast movers.

Prairie Games (Apr 19, 2007 at 20:10 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Awesome contest Dave, the point system looks well thought out and is quite unique. I'm glad we were able to meet ya at IMGDC :)

Dave Young (Apr 19, 2007 at 20:54 GMT)

It was *really* awesome to meet you guys too! Your speech was chock full of gems for aspiring developers, it's going to be a big hit :)

Richard Van Stone (Apr 20, 2007 at 17:45 GMT)

Let the games begin!

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