Well today is results day, but nothing posted yet. Not surprising as its only 9:10am in the UK, so still the middle fo the night int he US.

My prediction is that Battle Tennis will win.

Good luck everyone.

I hope that either Agedya or HurricaneX win, They both seemed to have done the most work... I don't know, Battle Tennis looked like a minigame for a Wii title.

 Battle Tennis looks great, by IMHO I think that Agedya has the most effort put in, but I would be equally happy for HurricaneX to win.

How do you know the results will be posted today?  And even if they were, wouldn't winners have already been notified via email or telephone...dang I guess I didn't win anything!

From the official rules:

 

Announcement of the Contest Finalists and Contest Semi-Finalists will be posted on the Site on or about the week of October 13, 2008.

 

 So they won't even announce the winner soon, just the finalists, and it could be this week or the next.

 

In my personal opinion, I'd recommend against cheerleading games. I don't care personally if someone wants X game to win. However, nobody is sure who put the "most effort" or work into their title and you have to realize that before making statements like that publically, as statements like that can be offensive. Most of the people who have entered have put months of blood, sweat, and tears into their games, and nobody deserves more pre-win praise and attention than anyone else. I don't think it's very respectful to cheerlead any games in that manner, personally, and I wish everyone luck.  

arrogancy:

In my personal opinion, I'd recommend against cheerleading games. I don't care personally if someone wants X game to win. However, nobody is sure who put the "most effort" or work into their title and you have to realize that before making statements like that publically, as statements like that can be offensive. Most of the people who have entered have put months of blood, sweat, and tears into their games, and nobody deserves more pre-win praise and attention than anyone else. I don't think it's very respectful to cheerlead any games in that manner, personally, and I wish everyone luck.  

I completely agree that assuming its a simple bias towards effort is naive. For starters, how does one measure such a quantity? Total man-hours? Does one take any account for variable technical / artistic proficiency? Also, effort is the least related variable when it comes to the overall quality of a game.

The winners will be judged based on the disclosed criteria (40% Fun, 30% Innovation and 30% Polish) with the Content Semi-Finalists having some possible additional considerations such as strategic positioning and marketing the game on Live Arcade taken into account.

Yep. Plus it's going to be torture this week for all of the entrants as we wait on results since there's no definite date/time announced. And there are so many genres and styles represented that it's near impossible to make a direct quality based statement. Some of the most fun games I played were puzzlers, for instance. So we all have big questions in our head regarding the results. No reason to add to that in general by intending that you don't feel their game deserves to win.

Don't hold your breathe for results today.  The official rules state on or about the week of the 13th.  Considering the submission end date was moved back two days from 23rd to 25th the results might be pushed back a bit also.

To be honest I didn't have the faintest idea that people would find it offensive or disrespectful for people to predict which game would win. I too have put in months worth of very hard work to get my entry done, and I've not felt in the slightest bit offended what people have predicted which game would win.

Good luck everyone.

Ben

No big deal, and your post wasn't bad - however, we need to be careful. Last year, there was a bunch of crap about this same subject where people would come in and say the 3d/polygon games "should have won" and stuff, and started a whole crapstorm. Better to err on the side of caution to try and avoid that this year. Especially at this time where everyone is in the dark waiting on results. This week will be going slow as dirt for a lot of people, and they might be more touchy than normal for a little while (when so much is invested as well). Better to be safe than sorry is my philosophy. But that's just my personal preference, you can do whatever you want :)

BenS1:

To be honest I didn't have the faintest idea that people would find it offensive or disrespectful for people to predict which game would win. I too have put in months worth of very hard work to get my entry done, and I've not felt in the slightest bit offended what people have predicted which game would win.

Good luck everyone.

Ben

My reply was aimed at TadMod who posted that entries should be judged on the effort of each team. Such a blanket statement disregards the actual judging criteria and is plain wrong in associating a subjective variable such as effort with overall quality.

Everyone has an opinion on who should win and such discussion is interesting. Its important to note however that quite a few of the more popular entries don't provide any means of playing them. Many more are only available through the now-defunct Beta service (and therefore unattainable for any non-US folk). I've played most of the public hosted games and found some of the more graphically impressive ones, terrible to play. Its simply naive to judge without access and even more so based on a subjective and unrelated quantity such as effort.

For the record, I had most fun playing Being!

I would have to play all of the games to predict a winner and even then it would just be based on my own personal tastes.  I would say if you learned something then you are a winner.  If you enhanced your skill set you are a winner.  And with a new market opened for indie game developers in December we will all be winners. 

Good luck to all and even if you don't win, take time to enhance your game and get ready to see how the market judges it.

 

I'm so eager to see how my game will do... I took a different approach then most (not a casual game) and I really want some feedback!.... I havent gotten my fill of attention! ;)

 

I take no offense to anyone saying a game should win over mine.  Nobody has played my game, or all the entries, so it's just guesswork.  Knowing this, I cannot take offense to guesses.  I find these guesses interesting, actually.  I hope more people do guess! :)

The games that should win, are the games you would actually buy.

Just a thought:  Out of all the games I've played and watched, I would buy my game first.  I'm not saying any of you would, just that I would.  Not because I made it.  And not because my game is the best.  I'm not even sure what "best" means.  Just that my game is the most fun, to me.  I want to, and I am trying to, make the game I would buy on Xbox LIVE.  Aren't we all?  If I accomplish this, I hope others will find it fun, too.  So, we should all love our own games.  Ask yourself which game you would buy on Xbox LIVE Arcade, is it your own?  If not, maybe some of us are making the wrong game.

It reminds me of a story of music software developers, who had started using the competition's software at home.  If they were not using their own software, why would anyone else?

Matthew Doucette:

  Nobody has played my game, or all the entries

 

Yeah, what's up with that? :) I'd like to play it, personally.

That goes for a few others. The Battle Tennis guys have dipped in and left and so have the Hurricane X people to promote their game, but they and quite a few have not offered a game to play to anyone even when requested. It's not like anyone can technically steal your game. Yours was one of the main ones I wanted to play as I liked the art style and love verticle shooters in general.

I agree--no one's going to steal your game. That's why they're making their own game. Everyone loves and obsesses over their own game to much to steal from others--at least I hope so (and there's a nice long thread elsewhere in the forums about this topic).

 There were a lot of games entered into the contest that aren't available for play currently. If you guys want feedback--Fernando, Matthew, others--post a link to your ccgame. Sure GS3 is coming out soon, but if you have the ccgame ready, go ahead and put it up! This is nice, healthy dev time before the Nov 19th launch, so we actually have a little time to try out games. Come a few weeks, those who are trying to hit launch won't have time to look at a bunch of games to provide feedback--we'll be stressing over our own too much.

One reason I haven't posted my game is that I ran into a bug after I submitted it to the contest.  It's a fairly serious bug resulting from not normalizing my quaternions that makes general graphical badness ensue. I don't want to post it with the bug in it.   I have since fixed the bug, but only in the copy that only works with GS 3.0.

One thing I'd like to tell everyone is not to get upset if your game is not selected as a finalist.  Without it being explicitly stated as fact from Microsoft, a finalist is likely to be an Xbox Live Arcade candidate considering the fact that winners may receive a Live Arcade contract.

A game that may appear as high quality might not be a very good match for the Live Arcade...and the other way around.

It will be interesting to see what style of games the judges prefer once the results come out.

Even though your game may not be on the radar for Live Arcade, it can still be a great Community Game...so don't get discouraged.

That is true. However, one thing you do have to remember is that some of the larger games in varying stages of development might not be able to be Community Games for maybe years down the road just because of investment time involved; you can partially use last year's contest as a barometer. Some of the larger games basically "needed" a win to finish just due to development cost and projected income - they needed the 10k and the accompanying hype (and thus basically guaranteed sales) to take the time off of work that it takes to finish a larger-minded game. Which is why some of them won't ever come to fruition. So don't downplay how discouraging not being a finalist can be for some people; this contest is essentially a "pitch session" for quite a few aspiring developers, whereas for others, it's just icing on the cake.

Being a judge is really tough - I don't think I'd ever want the kind of make or break power (in this type of facet) :(

arrogancy:

Matthew Doucette:

Nobody has played my game, or all the entries

Yeah, what's up with that? :) I'd like to play it, personally.

:)  Well I love that you want to play it.  The only reason we have not released it for review, is because we want to fix some issues that I know will dominate the review feedback.  No sense in having reviews repeat issues we already are working on.  I am very anxious to have everyone play it, though!

I am not afraid of anyone stealing our ideas.  We intend to be as public as we can with our video game.  But thanks for squashing that concern.

arrogancy:

Yours was one of the main ones I wanted to play as I liked the art style and love verticle shooters in general.

Well, that's a good sign!  Whether we place or not, we intend to have a super-fun shoot'em up.

I don't think people at that level really care what I have to say.  :)

Matthew Doucette:

Well, that's a good sign!  Whether we place or not, we intend to have a super-fun shoot'em up.

Just as a quick derail; are your bullet styles, etc. closer to the more recent Japanese vert shmups like the Cave shooters, or are they more old school like Raiden or the 194X series? The difference being the more recent shooters being a little more memory based. I'd say Ikaruga would be around a hapyp medium of the two styles.

Yeah same here, we very much want you guys to play the game, but we also want you to play the nicest build.  We are still working on the game, polishing a few things. We are really close to get 60 frames steady no matter what's going on, at least that we want you to have;) Also we had the crazy awesome invitation to make a Battle Tennis tournament for the gamexpo (something like the local tgs). That means we must have a perfect build (and we are also finishing a few more characters) by december.

Of course, the ccgame is coming to you guys as soon as we finish squashing the few obvious bugs.

And once you have played a lot of it you can also drop by the gamexpo and beat everyone at the tournament:)

 

But this is a painfully slow week already!;) we should make up a game just to pass the time until the results come. Good luck to everyone!

 

 

Yes, this week, and day is excruciatingly slow. And it will only get worse as more time passes. Not to mention my sleep :)  I should be working on my other game that I'm trying to get ready for the CG launch, but it's really hard to concentrate.

arrogancy:

Yes, this week, and day is excruciatingly slow. And it will only get worse as more time passes. Not to mention my sleep :)  I should be working on my other game that I'm trying to get ready for the CG launch, but it's really hard to concentrate.

Tell me bout it... I had serious issues falling asleap last night thinking about it. No matter the outcome, everyone should be proud of how far they come... we all won!