Heart of the OHR Contest

WARNING LONG G-WRECK POST AHEAD

To me, there are two problems with this entry:

1. It breaks the Rules (explained below), and

2. It seems unfair when you first think about it.

Of course, 'fairness' can be a very subjective term, which is why objective rules are stated and agreed to by the participants entering the contest to solve disputes of fairness that may arise later.

What seems unfair is that the amount of time spent on this entry compared to most of the games people are working on seems to be a huge difference. However, the rules state that updates to previous games are allowed, so anyone entering should have been expecting (since Pepsi explicitly stated it several times) a few really good games to show up that have been in production, or even finished, before the contest.

People are not disqualified from the Olympics for training longer than the other contestants (then again, people training for the Olympics are aware that the Olympics exist before they begin training, but that's beside the point).

At the same time, the rules also state that the update requires 30 minutes of new content. New content probably should have been explained a little more, but since the value assigned to 'new content' was a quantity, not a quality, I would argue that the update for Tales does not meet the rules since its update was pure quality.

If you were to add quantity to the graphics (it could be something as simple as an in-game encyclopedia feature showing all of your current graphics that you could cycle through when you hit the arrow keys), then it would meet the requirements laid-out by the rules.



After you have met the quantified requirements of participation, the quality of your game could be judged, but not before. In this case, the hypothetical game you are proposing would meet the quantity required by the rules, but would stand a very small chance of winning if the people voting had any sense at all.

Theoretically, you could just change the rules, but everyone participating would have to agree to the change, otherwise a relentless downward spiral of drama will plunge the contest into a dark, cold void of chaos.

With the technical stuff out of the way, I would like to say this. While I don't think it was ever clearly stated (strongly implied, though) in Pepsi's first post, the purpose of the contest is to see NEW, quality RPGs released to the community to rejuvenate interest in the genre to which it owes its livelihood.

I think the rule allowing updates to old games was mainly placed there for games made in the past that were great, but were not finished. Releasing a game you have already finished and posted in the past seems to be more of an attempt to win the contest than an attempt to make a great game. That doesn't seem to fit the spirit of the OHR. Then again, I've been more of an outsider looking in for the past couple years, so maybe I'm wrong.

To close, I would like to say that if Tales is counted as an entry as it is now, that it should not discourage anyone participating in the contest. No, not because I think it is a bad game (I actually think it is great game; I'm enjoying it), but because it is setting the bar that we should compare our work to, and it is setting it high. I say challenge yourself to meet and surpass those standards.


EDIT: This post sounds ten times more negative than I ever intended now that I re-read it. Especially the comment about the Olympics; that metaphor was more of a joke, but it came-out sounding way too tacky. I apologize, msw188; honestly, my intention was not hostility, but to make a clear distinction in the interpretation of the rules to prevent drama, not start it. Making games is more fun than any unnecessary drama.

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Email contributions to the OHR Collab project to:

ohrcollab@gmail.com

All contributions will be recorded in the credits.

I'm willing to overlook the fact that Tales fails to meet one of the few requirements to enter the contest. I don't plan to vote on it based off of anything except the new graphics however. If that's all
that's new for the contest then that's all that should be judged. Otherwise we're basically just rejudging all the ohr's games.

I'm fine with bending 1 rule. but not 2 for the same entry.

Right, and I would be fine, too, but odds are the issue of "how many rules are we going to bend?" may come-up.

Seems like the safest solutions would be to either have everyone vote to change the rule, or stick to what Pepsi's original post reads.

Deciding what to change the rule to could be tricky, though.

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Email contributions to the OHR Collab project to:

ohrcollab@gmail.com

All contributions will be recorded in the credits.

Reading these posts, I find myself agreeing with G-Wreck in a couple of ways.

I don't like bending rules and making exceptions for things just because of efforts or intentions. This graphical update took much longer than a month, and was started before the contest was known. To say that I did this "for" this contest would be a flat out lie, and shouldn't matter anyway.

I also strongly disagree with the idea of voting on an update based only on its "new" content, for a number of reasons I will discuss in a separate post. I do NOT think voting on updated games as a whole necessarily leads us towards "just rejudging all the ohr's games". The crux of the matter is having a clear rule to make sure that an updated game is worthy of the word "updated".

The rule as it is currently stated is not bad for this task. I don't think it's ideal though, and I'd love to come up with a better one. And yet I'm not sure such an "ideal" rule exists. My solution would be to allow voting on update eligibility, AT PEPSI RANGER'S DISCRETION. That is to say, Pepsi Ranger, as "owner" of the contest, would be allowed to immediately allow or disallow any entry. There is already an inherent ambiguity in the contest - namely, whether or not a game is an RPG. Wouldn't that go to a vote if there was a borderline case? But if he really feels that so much voting has the potential to "cheapen" the contest, then I feel we ought to either discuss a possible change of the eligibility rule (a tough situation, I will admit), or that my game should not count for voting. I'd be a bit upset, naturally, but I don't want forum drama over my game any more than any of you do.

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I am Srime

POSTING SEPARATELY FOR ORGANIZATION (perhaps this discussion should be in a separate thread?)

Eligibility aside, I do not feel that an updated game should be voted on based on its new content alone. I think that this is an incredibly difficult thing to accomplish, and counters the very notion of a classic style RPG, which is what this contest is supposed to be all about.

An RPG, as I understand it to mean for this contest, is about growth and progress of the player, in a number of ways. For this reason, it is impossible to judge the gameplay of only the last 30 minutes of an RPG The balance therein will depend greatly on the characters as they have grown up to that point. The 'new' portion of the storyline depends on the existing story - a huge plot twist cannot be judged on its own if it depends on expectations being created earlier in the game. The 'new' equipment available is immediately compared to the 'old' equipment, not to a lack of equipment. I could go on and on.

It is not just new "playble" content that works this way. Stat rebalancing, new attacks, enemies, items, and yes, graphics - these are not things that can be judged on their own. They are updated to not to make the game LONGER, but to make it MORE ENJOYABLE. It would seem to me that this should be the goal of updating an existing RPG. Adding additional 'playable' content is meant to increase enjoyability by allowing the player to continue a formerly uncontinuable scenario. This is not so impressive if the player did not enjoy the scenario beforehand.

There are conceivable '>30 playable min' updates that would be exceptions to all of that. New content in the form of an unrelated side quest, with battles or obstacles that do not depend on growing stats, could be exempt from many of my previous considerations. If it were up to me, it would be THIS kind of update that would not be eligible. This is not adding to the RPG experience of the previous game - if it is, then it must be judged according to how it adds to said game, and so it really wasn't "unrelated" after all. If it isn't, then it should have been made and released as a separate game, and judged thusly.

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I am Srime

Ha ha, I'm sure we all could. But you're absolutely right about this being Pepsi Ranger's contest. I would agree with whatever decision he makes.



Bacon!!

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Email contributions to the OHR Collab project to:

ohrcollab@gmail.com

All contributions will be recorded in the credits.

I'll address the other stuff later when I get off of work, but I wanted to say that "cheapen" refers to bending and changing the rules to suit the needs of a game (or many games, which is the thing that I'd fear would happen if I don't discourage it now), not necessarily to the voting process. And I'm only saying that now because I've been known to do that very thing for Epic Marathon, and lo and behold, that contest is now merely a shell of its former self. I want Heart of the OHR to have a prestigious reputation in the coming years, so I'm reluctant to do the things with it that I used to do with Epic Marathon, which was to modifiy the rules enough to help games that were otherwise ineligible to become more eligible.

I just wanted to clear that up in the meantime. I'll address the other points later today.

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Place Obligatory Signature Here

I haven't read every argument in detail, but if your game doesn't manage to qualify for the contest, that doesn't mean that it's hopeless to get publicity. You can always just make a separate thread to advertise the update to your game, and the game can still get voted on separate from the contest via Slime Salad's rating system.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

Not enough people use this to make it helpful, and too many that do just give everything a 1 or a 5, skewing the averages rather horribly.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

X-Play gave L'Sol Nocturnal Tears a 2 out of 5, which I think is quite accurate, so I wouldn't discredit the system just yet!

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb

That must be why Youtube switched over to a Like/Dislike system. I wonder if the same would work here?

Buuut that's something for another thread. On topic, I've been muscling my way through the boredom that is tilesets, but things are still moving along nonetheless. I should be done with Viridia: Chapter 2 in about two weeks, and then I'll be looking for people to test the game for bugs.
If there are any early bird volunteers for this, go ahead and PM me.

It would work a lot more efficiently... if people voted.

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Super Walrus Land: Mouth Words Edition

Okay, here are the rest of my comments:



When I said that previous games were allowed, I assumed that would imply unfinished. I really didn't anticipate a previously finished game entering the contest. After last year's Finish Your Dang Game Contest, I realize I probably should have. I might've made a bigger case against submitting previously finished games if I had. But it's too late now.

.

You are right on both accounts. A longer, more boring hallway (with new, albeit boring content) would satisfy the update rules. And I would want to disqualify it.



And this is precisely why the paradox will remain as is.



There are some things I leave intentionally vague so that users have room to bend a little. I would've accepted 30 minutes of cutscenes, textboxes, whatever. To say that I expect 30 minutes of story-driven drama (as an example) would be too limiting. However, after examining the actual changes made to Tales via the readme update, I didn't see evidence of any update beyond general presentation. In this case, G-Wreck makes a valid point.



These statements sum up my reason for holding the contest perfectly.



I would want the game judged as a whole. But to reiterate what G-Wreck summed up perfectly, the point of the 30-minute or more addition is to prevent old, unmodified games from clogging the Heart of the OHR's arteries. We've spent the last six years or more focusing primarily on short concept games, and the old spirit of the OHR had drowned under its weight. Building new RPGs or adding to existing ones at least encourages the return of that spirit. This isn't to say that improving the presentation of a finished game shouldn't be allowed, but I would argue that it hardly presents us with something new. But this is precisely why I want to leave the inclusion of the game up to a vote. It may be that other contestants are fine with a presentation update as an entry.



Okay, let me first say that the rules, however vague they may seem, won't change. There won't be a vote to change them. As I stated farther up the response, I left the rules purposely vague to allow some creativity and personal discretion in regard to the update. The only thing I wanted made clear was that the game needed NEW content to be eligible. If you want to argue that layer updates, stat balances, and whatever counts as NEW content, then I will consider your argument. But this is one of those gray areas that cannot really be measured, and thus, it needs the eligibility vote. Likewise, Tales, specifically, has already been released as a finished game, and the new content that you're offering us is really hardly more than presentation updates and bugfixes. While I'm already uneasy about allowing a previously finished game into the contest (as I've already mentioned in my comments about Bloodlust entering the Finish Your Dang Game Contest), I do respect the large amount of improvement work that went into Tales, and am therefore empathetic to your request to include it into the Heart of the OHR. But allowing its entry based on my own empathy would be unfair to the other contestants if they were to disapprove, so I must insist that the results of the vote stands (whatever that may be).

And that's where we'll stand. The other stuff about voting on what the term "update" should mean really is overkill at this point. It also sounds a little mutinous. I don't think we need to go to this level just to ensure a particular game is eligible. If the vote goes against Tales, then I would contend that Tales II should be worked on and entered instead.

All of my above comments should also imply my response to the separate post about what defines an RPG in regard to this contest.

So, having said all that:



I couldn't agree more.

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Place Obligatory Signature Here

Finally, someone is talking sense around here.

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Mega Tact v1.1
Super Penguin Chef
Wizard Blocks

It's because a lot of paid YouTube users (the high profile channels and such) kept asking their viewers to rate the video 5 stars.

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<TheGiz> oh hai doggy, oh no that's the straw that broke tjhe came baclsb