Actually Joopsy, the category they added was "Game whose premise makes sense," so me and you should take top 2 for sure...

-J Liechty

Joopsy:

Didn't you see that they tweaked the judging areas?

"HowWateryIsYourGame" - 38%

I knew I should have added the "Snowball In Hell" powerup.  With all of the snow and ice melted, I might have stood a chance against "Battle for the Seas" and "Bathtub Navy"!

(And, actually, "Snowball in Hell" is precisely the chance I give my game of being a finalist...  You guys made some great games!)

Tom

 

Aye ye scurvy dogs, I thought there be some news with all yer replies!  Guess I'll be gettin' back to waitin'.

Kyle's got a good idea, if you forgot to have a naval theme in your game, talk like a pirate, I am sure the T & C's mentioned that would be worth points as well!

J....

Kyle... I thought exactly the same thing... oh the irony!

 

Damn, it's kind of hard to get a naval theme with an abstract tile-based board game.  I guess the holes on the board can be considered water tiles.  But I have no sailors :(.

I'm doing my best to be patient, but I can never calm down until after the results are announced.  I'm having a hard time even concentrating at work.

I've won something in the last two game contest I've entered, but in this one, the stakes are much higher and the competition is much, much, MUCH more intense.  I'm used to only competing with a handful of Flash game developers with 2D games, not 200+ entries with dedicated artists on the teams and using a bunch of fancy 3D and slow-mo and particle effects :(. 

I'm also worried about the innovation score, since technically the game I submitted is a sequel, albeit a sequel to a game I created in the first place (and only a quickly thrown together web game, at that), and has had so many features added (well, some are still planned and not implemented yet), the gameplay tweaked a ton, and the UI improved so drastically it's practically a brand new game anyway.

SageClock:

I'm used to only competing with a handful of Flash game developers with 2D games, not 200+ entries with dedicated artists on the teams and using a bunch of fancy 3D and slow-mo and particle effects :(.

My only concern is if they judge graphics too heavily over gameplay. I only had a month (31 days exactly, ~100 hours) to put my little casual game together. It is addictive as hell, but I didn't have time to put in particle effects or shaders.

"Those Entries ranked 1st through 20th from amongst the pool of Entries will advance to the Finalist Round of Judging and Participants will be so notified commencing on or about the week of July 16, 2007."

I guess that's why we're all getting excitable - assuming they aren't judging on the weekend, today would be the last day "on the week" of the 16th.  Of course, "about" is a very loose term, and I'd rather they properly judge the entries than rush to get us results.  I can't wait to hear the results either...but oh well...soon enough I guess.

Could someone at Microsoft please let us know how much longer we can expect to wait? Because a lot of people are thinking they should be hearing today and if thats not the case, it would save them a lot of worry.

Hrm...

Assuming there's 100 entries, and assuming the judges spent 40 hours this week judging, and assuming every judge looked at every game (hopefully...to avoid any unintentional bias in the results)...

That's about 45 minutes per game, per judge, this week.  Assuming they have to set up each game (though I guess they could have imaged machines in a testing lab...but still...including switching games), that's 10-15 minutes of setup time.  Another 5-10 minutes to judge each category (I sincerely hope they spend more than that...but when you have that many entries to get through...).  That leaves about 20 minutes to half an hour to actually play the game - hardly enough time to properly play and judge a game.

I'd like to know about finalists too, but I'd rather they judge the entries fairly.

As for people planning on attending the event if they're a finalist...I'd hope if the judging takes too long then Microsoft would extend an invitation with airfare and event entry fee included (and possibly hotel).  Those things aren't part of the prizes in the official rules, so I wouldn't count on it...but I know they've done similar with other contests.

*sits back and waits*

Relax all, I read the rules a couple of weeks before the first scheduled end date i.e. they said on or about the 9th for notification which was changed to the 16th when they needed to give an extra few days to allow everyone to upload when they had some problems with their server upload.  So the idea here is the rules can be varied at their descretion - the Director said they may not announce anything to the day so that's what I think might happen or it might not but it's up to them so have a cold one and start planning to write more games - like me!

Well tomorrow (monday the 23rd) is "on or around" the date that the finalists were going to be posted on the DPB site. Fingers Crossed!

it got very quiet here in this Thread last  week. You could have thought, that everybody has died in consequence of the suspense.... ;-)

So I hope this week there are going to be some results...

... the letters on my keyboard keys  w d r e a m b u i l p and y have worn off ! ... I'm now starting to have nightmares about a stranger robotic character with a three barrelled gattling gun and oversized pink claws ... ... Gaaarrrhgh! I cannot wait... I need closure....

:o)) 

I usuallly go to the "topics not read" page. and get excited if this thread is near the top (Or the DBP- Finalists one is).

In the dark hours of the morning, I wonder "maybe they have already been notified, and have been asked not to post on the board".  

It would be great if some of the big players could post an update to say they haven't been notified.

(you know who you are!)

Joopsy.

ps.. Don't forget to keep slogging on with your projects!

 (I think I will kick off a thread to discuss if people are still working on their entries, or moving on.)

pps.. gl all :)  

I'm just assuming that we may not hear anything until Thurs. or Friday of this week due to the 4 day extension. No news can be good news too!

I can't believe I'm just hearing about this contest now. I've never seen it mentioned anywhere before, and all the prizes are so amazing!

Well I've not heard anything yet.  I'm not really expecting to hear anything until GameFest following David's post.

Cheers,

    Dave J (busy adding the aqualung levels to Shuggy)

So I got my email that I didn't make the finalist list... =( I'm a little bumed but not suprised after seeing all the great entries you guys put in.  So now that the emails are out, who made it?

No word yet here.  Hope everything made it in alright - it seemed a bit weird that there was no confirmation e-mail saying "your entry has been successfully completed"...but it did say COMPLETE on my submission on the web form...*shrugs*

*sits back and waits*

Kyle Schouviller:

No word yet here.  Hope everything made it in alright - it seemed a bit weird that there was no confirmation e-mail saying "your entry has been successfully completed"...but it did say COMPLETE on my submission on the web form...*shrugs*

*sits back and waits*

When I submitted my game, I sent Microsoft and e-mail to make sure that they got it, and the replied that they did. You can never be too safe. :D

As for the results. I have not yet recieved an e-mail confirmation either. I am glad that they are also sending e-mails to those that have not won. Imagine recieving an e-mail about loosing the entry because the game you sent them was unplayable. Oh, the horror...

Haven't received any email........hope that would not receive something like:
1. submit is incomplete
2. cannot open the game
3. don't know how to play the game

Namtar:

So I got my email that I didn't make the finalist list... =( I'm a little bumed but not suprised after seeing all the great entries you guys put in.  So now that the emails are out, who made it?

I also did not receive any message so far... what exactly did they write in the mail they have sent you?

Please ignore my previous post, I wanted to quote another post, but I could not delete this previous post....sorry

No email for me (so far) either. Now (like others) I start to think...

... It did say "COMPLETE" on the DBP account screen ... I'm sure it did !?!

... I did type my email address in correctly...

<fidgets nervously/>

Duckocide:

No email for me (so far) either. Now (like others) I start to think...

... It did say "COMPLETE" on the DBP account screen ... I'm sure it did !?!

... I did type my email address in correctly...

<fidgets nervously/>

Hey, don't make yourself crazy...relax....no one of us got an email so far.

Namtar:

So I got my email that I didn't make the finalist list... =( I'm a little bumed but not suprised after seeing all the great entries you guys put in.  So now that the emails are out, who made it?

So what's the consensus on this? A hoax? Is Namtar the only one to have received a results email? 

I know they have my correct e-mail address, because on July 3rd, I got an email from "Microsoft" saying the deadline was extended to July 6th...  But I haven't gotten any results email yet.

-J Liechty