Nonoba Forums / Nonoba
The Multiplayer Kick Off Competition Results
Oliver2 months ago | Post #1
5 points
Hello Everybody,
We’ve seen all the feedback on the results of the Multiplayer API Kick Off competition, and wanted to reply to all of it at once.
First off; let me apologize for the unstructured way in wich we’ve ended the competition. This was our very first competition, and as such, the first place for us to learn what works, and what dosen’t. We’re a small company where everybody is moving very fast and has multiple hats on, which sadly on occason leads to confusion and a few mistakes being made along the way.
We’re learning though, and will take all your feedback into account next time.
When we originally sat down to define the competition terms, we made three big mistakes. We said we’d announce the winners on the last day of the competition, which natually dosen’t work well for the very late entries, and we spread the prize money wrong and had too few winners. Having such a big difference from the first place to the second place dosen’t acurrately correspond with what turned out to be minor quality differences.
Our third mistake, was not clear enough in describing how the winner would be picked.
A lot of developers were disappointed with the results. The common complaint looks like this:
"The rules were changed at the last minute: It was supposed to be based purely on popularity, and at the last minute you changed it to be based on a few judges"
This is by far the complaint I’ve seen the most, and understandably so. Changing the rules at the very end is very, very uncool.
However, we were always going to have judges, and hand pick the winner based on more than that one factor. The competition page, which can be found on Google Cache, stated that (direct quote):
”Nonoba will judge the contest, and pick the winners based primarily on the popularity of the game, but also on other factors such as creativity, gameplay and usage of other Nonoba APIs.”
The thing that changed, was that at the end, we realised that we were partial to some games, having been here and having built relationships with some of the developers, and even helping with the distribution of as many games as possible.
Thus the decision was made, to swap out ourselves with some outside judges who didn’t have any bias towards the particular games. Believe it or not, in attempt to be more fair.
The process went like this: We brought in 6 people who knows us and our company, but are not involved in any of the day to day operations, and asked them to sit down and play the most popular games together. I won’t name their names, since they’re all danish unknowns, and I don’t want them to receive the same kind of letters that I’ve received. There were a few game developers, and some that just enjoy casual games. Half of them were women. Originally we tried getting some bloggers and acquaintances in the flash game world to participate, but that didn't pan out.
They didn’t play all the games. First, we removed all the games we’ve (Chris) made and the games from people we’ve employed or subcontracted. The great Zombies games by NerdyGames was excluded here, because he’s a dear old friend that we’ve previously hired to help us with the internals of the multiplayer server.
We then took the ten most played and the ten best rated games, joined them together and removed duplicates to produce the final playlist.
They played the games, and at the end of it, they voted and thus the winner list was produced.
We’re very sad that things turned sour at the very end. We know that our success is linked to yours, the developers. That’s why we want to maintain the best possible relationship with you, and keep having the best offerings and tools so we can succeed together.
Next time, we’ll be crystal clear about how winners will be picked.
Hope we can still be friends,
Oliver
Nonoba.
Last edited 2 months ago
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2 points
It's over, we lost, get over it. Getting 0 dollars is the risk you take when you enter a contest.
I'm as mad as you guys are about how the results ended up (for other reasons, apparently, though) but complaining isn't going to do anything.
Oliver, what was the demographic that played the games? Was it an accurate portrayal of the market or was it all 30 year old developers or game-players?
3 points
We-Die-Young:
First of all, it's always said judges would be involved. It's never been solely playcounts or rating in the final competition. Playcounts would be "Best distributed game" and would be totally unfair, since Nonoba itself has helped some games get better distributed than others, and "Best rated" is Nonoba's own games.
I'm sure everyone aknowledges that you've worked hard and made some good games (using some free API's by the way), but I don't see any model under which you were robbed of a prize. You're games could not have won, if it was only playcount or rating anyway?
As I see it, Nonoba is apologizing for saying that they'd announce on November 1st, when they didn't, and for changing the judges from themselves to outside people (which sounds more fair to me).
Your proposal to take prizemoney away from people, and redistribute it to other people, based on who you'd rather like to see win is... pretty crazy.
If they'd change it to saying, that popularity/rating was the ONLY thing that counts, then they themselves would win 1st, and 3rd prize, and Nerdygames who has subcontracted for Nonoba working on the Multiplayer API would win 2nd. Would that be fair?
Do Nonoba themselves deserve the prizemoney more, because they happen to make the most popular games?
I understand, that you and other developers are disappointed that you didn't win, but I think it was done pretty fairly. The most popular games were selected and judges played them all, and voted on which they liked the best and those games won.
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2 points
According to you, Nonobas games couldn't win, because it was explained from the beginning, but it was ALSO explained from the beginning that popularity/rating was not the only factor. The way you wanted the winners to be picked is also against the rules.
”Nonoba will judge the contest, and pick the winners based primarily on the popularity of the game, but also on other factors such as creativity, gameplay and usage of other Nonoba APIs.”
Regarding "Nonoba being a real winner". Awh, come on. They just gave 20.000 dollars away, and they're taking a shitstorm for it.
I don't know how the memorygame made it to the finals, but it must have been on the list at the time they made it, and the judges decided it should take 3rd place.
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2 points
The sudden increase in Starland's traffic was from me uploading it to Kongregate and it spending some time on the front page there. In fact, during a discussion about game traffic, Chris told me that Nonoba was purposely not distributing Starland to its partners because it was bringing in new traffic to the site on its own merit.
You can verify where the traffic came from by looking at the game's embed stats, and correlating this with the figures on Kongregate for further evidence.
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2 points
What would they benefit from me winning over anybody else winning? There's no motive! Honestly, you're just being hurtful and slanderous.deleted comment
2 points
My girlfriend was happy to beat me three times at my own game.deleted comment
LorenzGames2 months ago | post #20, in reply to #1
3 points
Well wmarsh, just to clarify something,
the problem is that this people is mad becouse the first and probably most important aspect of a game to win was "Popularity" as written on the rules of the competition.
As you know the competition was opened till the 00:00 of 1st of November, and nonoba took other 7 days to judge the games, now taken that, the memory game was not and still is not a popular game is weird that it is in the final 3 game picked.
But the most weird thing is that your game has been uploaded to Kongregate the afternoon of the 1st of November, and as you remember before that day it was not popular at all, thing that should have taken it off from the competition.
I am just talking about following the rule as they were written, I am not saying that your game is not cool, but it was not popular before the end of the competition.
So basically people is mad becouse 2 of the winners of the competition were not popular before the end of it.
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