Dream Games $10k Contest Point List

#1 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.

#2 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.

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

Better submit soon then!

#4 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.

#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 :)

#6 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 :)

#7 Let the games begin!