According to http://creators.xna.com/downloads/?id=412 (from http://creators.xna.com/en-US/press/dreambuildplay2009) it is 40/40/20 but according to http://www.dreambuildplay.com/main/Rules.aspx it is 40/30/30.  I'm just curious if innovation was actually worth more this year than the previous years...

I personally don't think they follow those percentages too closely.  I'm sure it's more of a 'gut' feeling thing, and then they check for technical competence.

Funny, as I thought they would have scorecards, but maybe you're right.

I agree with Noogy. I'm guessing those numbers are more just to give developers a rough idea of how the judges will be viewing the games. It's basically just a way to say "innovation and fun are more important than production quality", but put into some numerical description which I assume is more comfortable for geeky engineer types like us. :)

I bet if you did a statistical regression on the games that placed well, you'd find the actual emphasis was more like 20/30/50...

jwatte:

I bet if you did a statistical regression on the games that placed well, you'd find the actual emphasis was more like 20/30/50...

Are you
a) just making fun of the discussion about percentages because you think they can only be a coarse guideline?
b) of the opinion that production quality was so much more important than other aspects this year?

If a) I want to remark that Matthews idea of scoreboards would perfectly realize any percentage-guideline that is determined before the contest.
If b) you are basically saying that the cake is a lie? If the judging process doesn't try to keep to the guidelines (in any way other than to listening to your gut instinct) then I'd consider it fair not to announce any.

Remark to b): I am aware that there may be a constellation of 350 games where 40/30/30 and 20/30/50 yield exactly the same winners, but the probability for such a constellation is negligible. ^^

Noogy:

I personally don't think they follow those percentages too closely.  I'm sure it's more of a 'gut' feeling thing, and then they check for technical competence.

I also believe they are more like guidelines. Instead of being absolute percentages, they tell us their relative worth.

1. Fun factor is the single most important aspect
2. Innovation and polish are important seconds, lacking in one might be balanced by extra care for the other

This might also explain why polished games are felt to be scored higher than innovative games. A polished not-highly-innovative game is more likely to have a high fun factor than an innovative one

So I go for 50/20/30 ;)

If I had to guess, which I have to do, I would guess that the "gut feeling" is used to weed out the bottom 300 entries or so, and then it comes down to scorecards.  I remember Nick (or maybe ZMan?) related judging games to going through job applications and resumes, where the majority can be discarded very quickly (ie, not qualified, etc.) and then more time has to be spent narrowing down the best.

It was me....

Of course you should also note Pheel's comments about how games he played crashed (simple stuff like MU that we've documented here for 8 months), had terrible frame rates on the 360 (my guess they never tested on the 360) or were just so confusing that people couldn't work out how to play (typical usability issues - you tell you friends how to play but never do any blind playtesting). My guess is that those games were very easy to reject without any gut feeling.

At the end of the day Microsoft have not given any comments on the judging process in previous years and I suspect the same will apply this year.

I lean more towards b.

Think of it this way: If inventiveness plus fun is 80%, and production values 20%, then there ought to have been at least one game where the production values aren't that great, but where the gameplay is totally out there. (A goat herding MMO racing game based on a trading card action mechanic, anyway?) Yet, all of the finalists have pretty good art! From this, you can either draw the conclusion that everybody who has the ability to create a fun, inventive game also has good art skills (just as blond hair causes blue eyes, right?), or the conclusion that there simply were no inventive games submitted, or the conclusion that production values counted more than 20%.

Perhaps it's as simple as the entertainment value of something is, subconsciously, tied to production values. Looking at something ugly for a long time simply isn't as much fun as looking at something nice.