Gomey's 2011 Year In Review #18: Film Festival Contest
I'm gonna admit, 15 reviews into 2011 and already I'm a little tired of games. RedMaverickZero and Surlaw apparently felt the same way back in May, challenging the community to change gears in their inaugural Film Festival Contest. OHR movies were nothing new, of course, JSH357's "OHR House" popularized, if not invented, the genre years before. There'd never been a movie contest though, and people seemed psyched. Stakes were higher than ever, with 30 bucks and original fan-art movie posters on the line for the winners. The rules were what you'd expect, the only minor curveball being a restriction on ripped graphics of any sort. What could possibly go wrong?
Things went swimmingly at first, there was an immediate positive response. Surlaw mused about the possiblity of "Walthros Cop". The public demanded Nathan Karr enter. After polling his electorate he posted a concept involving "The Four Musicians of Bremen". Even notorious contest-hater BaconLabs was on board. James Paige was so excited he finished a scene without noticing the contest hadn't officially started. It was during this lead-up phase that questions started to pop up, mostly about the ripped graphics policy. Particular emphasis was put on whether or not public domain images were allowable, whether or not modifying them would make it more acceptable and whether or not this included the Creative Common License.
Sensing a possible wave of dropouts, SDHawk mutinously suggested they enter whatever they wanted, calling the rule in question "stupid". A heated debate ensued, in which Surlaw argued that it was easier to ban all ripped graphics and derivative works than trying to define how modified something would have to be before it was considered original, and SDHawk argued that the voters would disqualify anything too ripped and that all the rule was doing was scaring an already small pool of entrants. Both sides raised valid points and things were starting to cool down when a third party's sarcastic comments were taken at face value. Surlaw blamed this on IRC trolls and closed the debate, ironically rousing the real "IRC Trolls" who had until then been sitting on the sidelines.
In another irony, it was the noted troll Spoonweaver who got things back on track with a lengthy series of photoshopped movie posters for his project "Deforestation". People were looking forward to the start of the contest again and wondering, "Can the hype be true?". They wouldn't have to wait long, just 25 hours into the contest and "Deforestation" was done. Four hours later, JSH357 would earn his second contest disqualification of the year with "Metal Gear DUCK". Both games were fully voice-acted, a trend that was only getting started.
After a straight-to-video "Deforestation" sequel, SDHawk and JSH presented "Triangle", an arthouse indictment of the Mr. Triangle character's homophobic past. The resulting discussion proved that both "sides" were capable of civil and mature discussion, and ended just as Spoonweaver concluded his "Deforestation" trilogy. Not a man to be out-produced, JSH responded with his own trilogy of indescribable "Harry Potter" adaptations, and a threat of four more. There were still three more weeks to go.
Soon, there were more previews. FnrrfYgmSchnish confused us all with images of Mouse Jesus. RedMaverickZero tipped his hand with concept art of a lobster in a business suit. Baconlabs proved he was finally going to enter a contest, posting three beautiful sets of walkabouts and portraits. James Paige was unable to enter, but shared 12 glorious seconds of animation in his "Great American Novel". Skullduggery Studios released what he had finished of 'The HangovOHR", a direct adaptation of the movie that ran shorter than 2 minutes and featured ripped graphics. He was double-dog disqualifed.
Under pressure of the deadline, Nathan Karr quit, citing burnout from his fan game. BaconLabs claimed illness and Nayus Dante didn't bother with excuses. Early on the last day I dropped out too, surprising nobody when I showed up 12 hours later with "Habla No Ingles: The Movie". Frnrff delivered the teachings of Mouse Jesus in "Fat Frog: The Movie" and RedMaverickZero and Surlaw surprised everyone by joining forces for the almost feature-length and voice acted "Monster Lot".
Voting began on the 19th. Voters were asked to judge each entry on presentation, story, and overall enjoyability using a scale of 1 to 3. Those 3 scores would then be averaged to produce the "actual vote", the actual votes would then be summed up and averaged to determine the winner. Authors who had entered more than one game would have all of their entries averaged together. It was an innovative system, but one that didn't leave a lot of room for error. Games that were merely "below average" were lumped in with the "worst imaginable". People complained openly and motivations were questioned, with grumblings of favoritism on all sides. Perhaps I behaved the worst, changing my vote in response to a perceived slight by Surlaw, though changing it back after talking things out. After voting, James Paige would suggest that perhaps a scale of 1-5 wouldn't have felt so personal and in hindsight I agree with him.
Results were printed in the July Issue of HamsterSpeak. "Fat Frog: The Movie" was the winner, "Triangle" coming in second, "Habla No Ingles: The Movie" squeaking into third, "Monster Lot" fourth, and the "Deforestation" movies beating the "Harry Potter" ones. Tensions continued even after the contest. No word was given on prizes until late September, when upon inquiry, RedMaverickZero implied that there would be no prizes. Following some stupid gestures (Which will be brought up in October), yet another public debate brought around the eventual compromise that RMZ would instead deliver Subway giftcards to the winners, a group photo of the winners' characters for HSpeak, and would never offer prizes in a contest again.
The lesson to be learned from all this is that you need to talk to people. So long as both sides continue to sit in their respective caves sniping at each other this kind of conflict is inevitable and will only serve to wear down everyone's enthusiasm for the real reason we're here: making games. Nobody's getting any younger. Any day now, we might have to give up our hobbies for a real job, for our families, for our health. As we reminisce about 2011, look at all the people who made their first game and look at how many never made it that far. We're all lucky to still be here, doing something that excites us.
I hope this doesn't open any old wounds. I only bring it up to establish context and to show how a little thing here or there in the heat of the moment can snowball into a big, ugly mess that leaves everyone a loser. Now that the drama's overshadowed them in print as much as it did in 2011, it's time to talk about the important part: the OHR movies.
Part of Gomey's 2011 Year In Review
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