js13kGames competition 2014

[remvst]

Also you guys didn't seem to care if people followed the theme or not. 

That removes the whole purpose of a challenge theme.

It was discussed earlier in this topic. I had the same problem last year, trying to follow the theme and ended up regretting it.

How can a game like Button Football beat a game like The Amazing Mole?

The Amazing Mole is pretty cool indeed, it should be mobile top5 imo.

Also actively create twitter accounts and tweet about your own game as many times as possible. lol.

I'm pretty sure you're thinking about me on this too, but I didn't create any accounts. I did tweet about it to get some retweets, but probably not more than 2 or 3 times.

Though, how come the entry that won almost all specials did 40th and started tweeting about it on september 13th?

So anyway, it's probably obvious that the category thing was very unfair. Some of the games are clearly better than others in all aspects and have a terrible ranking in the mobile category.

Given the games above him, I think Jack Rugile deserved the three-peat on desktop...

[end3r]

So uploading a single player game to the server category nets you the 2nd place? Really now?

There was only 5 entries in the Server category from which one is still not working and the second is a Pong clone which I wanted to be submitted by the guy who manages the server itself, because there was nothing submitted a few days before the end of the competition. Funny that so many people were shocked when I said there won't be Server category this year. I heard at least 10 people saying they want the Server category back. We (me, Aurelio and Florent as I'm not a node.js expert at all) were trying hard to have it back. After it was brought back two weeks after the start of the compo there was little to none interest in the category and it ended up as it ended up. You're mad at me because almost nobody submitted the Server game and those submitted were so poor for the 7 judges that even though the Pong clone was way behind top60 it won the Server category?

 

Next time I will check that box too lol.

Yes, check that box next time, "lol".

 

Also you guys didn't seem to care if people followed the theme or not.

That removes the whole purpose of a challenge theme.

Theme was optional. You could get extra points for that, but only extra points and it all depended on the judges. One could give you top1 just because you followed the theme, for others it was more important that the game is just good.

 

Same goes with the server and mobile category. It doesn't look like you tested those games on mobile devices or looked up if those server games are actual server games.

They were tested. I spent 16 hours a day managing everything around the compo by myself through last month. If you want me to spend more next time you can send me some donation as I also would like to eat something from time to time and be able to pay rent when I manage the compo instead of working.

 

How can a game like Button Football beat a game like The Amazing Mole? But I guess that is still better than the Mandala Horse.

It was judged by 7 people. In some cases one judge gave 70% while other gave 5%, with me giving the game 50%, and that's ok. As I said somewhere earlier there was a game I really liked and instead of top5 it ended up top50. It's a collective of all the judges from which some like one thing and some the other thing in a game. There will always be emotional bond to your entry, but the judges went through 129 entries. It's normal that you think your game is better than most of the others.

 

Well, what I have learned is that you are better off to ignore the challenge theme and that means you can start coding your 13kb game for 2015 now. Also always upload your game to all categories even if it doesn't work on mobile or has no server side code. Also actively create twitter accounts and tweet about your own game as many times as possible. lol.

With that approach there won't be 2015 edition. I just don't have the strength and energy to manage the compo AND deal with the attitude like this. The only thing that kept me going was the steady stream of kind words on Twitter. I would've just close the compo this year after I was screwed over and had to bring back the 2013 backend just to have the working submit form two weeks into the compo. I'm really exhausted and don't want to repeat all of this in 2015 if all you have is problems.

 

Though, how come the entry that won almost all specials did 40th and started tweeting about it on september 13th?

VIER was one of my personal best, I really enjoyed playing it, but other judges had their own votes. I would definitely give it top5 myself, but then if I was the only judge in the compo, a lot of other games that I just don't feel interesting for me personally (but are good overall) would end up far away than they are now.

 

So anyway, it's probably obvious that the category thing was very unfair. Some of the games are clearly better than others in all aspects and have a terrible ranking in the mobile category.

I'll try to make it better next time, if there will be next time.

 

Given the games above him, I think Jack Rugile deserved the three-peat on desktop...

His entry was great as usual, but for me ap11 and Expreme Mini Massacre was also amazing. GTA1 clone in 13 kilobytes? Destructive terrain? And the Extreme Mini Massacre - I couldn't stop playing it between testing and accepting other games. Yet the Pest Control win because other judges liked it more.

[remvst]

...

Thanks for the answer again.

I think I'm done complaining, because overall the contest is pretty awesome, and seems to get better every year. I don't think I've thanked you for it yet so let me do it now

I really hope you can find the time and motivation to do it again next year, because the challenge itself is always very rewarding from the developer's perspective.

[spmurrayzzz]

I have zero complaints. Competition was super fun and I plan on contributing each year that it's going on. My only regret is not getting a second submission finished in time.

This kind of size constraint is a great change of pace for the type of development I'm used to doing where performance may be top of mind, but size is very rarely a concern (concat, minify, and gzip over the wire has spoiled us greatly). I also got to experiment with some module design patterns, eventing systems, audio, and even got to work through some quirky canvas perf bugs that I would have never dealt with as readily in the past.

So in short, there was value in this event for me which was far beyond placing or winning. Thanks for putting in the hard work this year, I'd count it as a big success.

[SomeKittens]

To be fair, having a singleplayer game win 2nd place in multiplayer is like having a game that's 15KB compressed win overall.  It technically wasn't qualified for the category, and yet it managed to beat out two other games that were (not counting the one that didn't load).

 

I wrote SPACESHIPS, my first HTML5 game, and had a good time with it.  However, being beat by Pong and a game that didn't even qualify for the category has left a sour taste in my mouth about this whole thing.  I seriously considered dropping canvas game dev altogether.  If I couldn't even beat a singleplayer game in a multiplayer category, why try at all?  Do I really suck that much?

 

It sounds like I'm in the minority here - most had fun - but I won't be participating next year.

[end3r]

To be fair, having a singleplayer game win 2nd place in multiplayer is like having a game that's 15KB compressed win overall. It technically wasn't qualified for the category, and yet it managed to beat out two other games that were (not counting the one that didn't load).

TL;DR: The Server category this year was a bit of a failure because of my fault. I wanted to make everyone happy and ended up with a bunch of problems.

Long story: There was a bit of confusion with the Server category - I'm not a node.js expert, so I said I'll drop it this time, but there was a lot of people saying that they really want the category back. Aurélio and Florent helped me and worked on the semi-automated way to prepare the entries and run them on the special server dedicated for that. Unfortunately it all started way too late and I ended up announcing the Server category two weeks after the competition started. There was little to none interest in the category, a few days before the end of the month-long compo there was nothing submitted yet. I decided to convince Aurélio to submit his Pong example game to show people that multiplayer game is possible and is working fine. The validation process was kind of missing as I rushed to send him the only node.js entries I received. It was the time when I got 80 entries in the last day and had to validate all of them by myself manually. The Server ones were just sent to Aurélio to see if he can run them. I quickly added them to the list, after the submission form was closed the judges started voting. We had a lot of problems with one node.js game - I really wanted to have it working as there would be 4 entries in a category where I was suppose to award top5 games. I missed one of the games wasn't even multiplayer - all I saw was package.json file in the zip, so I just forwarded it. I was crazy buzy and already way behind the schedule. After all people said they didn't even know the Server category was back. I ended up with one node.js not-so-multiplayer game, one not working at all, one example Pong and two others that were judged very low. So the Pong won and the not-so-multiplayer was 2nd. I will definitely prepare everything better next time - either have it completely clear there won't be Server category in 2015 or have the server ready up and running weeks before the start of the compo.

 

I wrote SPACESHIPS, my first HTML5 game, and had a good time with it. However, being beat by Pong and a game that didn't even qualify for the category has left a sour taste in my mouth about this whole thing. I seriously considered dropping canvas game dev altogether. If I couldn't even beat a singleplayer game in a multiplayer category, why try at all? Do I really suck that much?

I'm sorry to hear that, but if scoring bad in a competition that was created for fun and to learn some skills is the reason you're gonna quit gamedev, then I'm a bit confused. You're missing the point of the compo itself. It's about finishing games, leveling up your skills, trying harder next time. Collaborating with others, learning and teaching. Keep pushing yourself. If you're gonna quit after the first failure then you didn't have any future in it anyway.

 

It sounds like I'm in the minority here - most had fun - but I won't be participating next year.

I can't force you to do so. I just hope that all participants will have a healthy attitude towards the core idea of the competition - learning and having fun while making games.

[SomeKittens]

The Server ones were just sent to Aurélio to see if he can run them. 

 

Ah, this actually makes me feel a lot better - if the winner of the category was also the one managing it, maybe there's a reason beyond "I'm terrible at making games" for my poor showing.

[end3r]

Ah, this actually makes me feel a lot better - if the winner of the category was also the one managing it, maybe there's a reason beyond "I'm terrible at making games" for my poor showing.

It was 100% my decision to convince him to post this game, not his. He said he don't want to participate in the same category he will manage, but I said that the games will be voted by a panel of judges anyway, so there's no reason not to send the example game. It was suppose to be a working demo that will just be there, on the last place. It's not my fault that your game, an Asteroids clone without an asteroids, scored less points than a Pong clone. It was a decision of 7 expert judges.

[SomeKittens]

I think this thread should be less concerned that my game was bad (it was) and more concerned that despite it's badness, it never got a fair shot.  Also, no one explained what I could do to improve - a pretty key component for a competition created ostensibly to learn.

 

There should be a lot more transparency in how the judging occurs (as well as the specific criteria that were listed upthread after entries were closed being released beforehand).

[Imanol]

I think this thread should be less concerned that my game was bad (it was) and more concerned that despite it's badness, it never got a fair shot.  Also, no one explained what I could do to improve - a pretty key component for a competition created ostensibly to learn.

 

Well, I don't think that an explanation of why each game was rated the game it was, and suggestions for improvements, would be doable. Take into account that this is a quite informal compo, and there were 129 submissions. The judges probably didn't invest the 100% of their time to judge the games too, since they probably have their own jobs, so they probably had to do all the judging in their free time. I think it's just impossible to give suggestions to all the entries. In fact, it was quite astonishing for me the short time they needed to judge all the entries and to announce the winners, I thought that they would need more time to do it.

 

In my opinion, js13kgames is a great competition to create games in html5 and, more importantly, to have fun doing them. I would like to congratulate all the judges and specially Andrzej, I know it had to be very exhausting to organize everything. I personally had a great time creating these games, and if I have enough time, I will definitely take part again next year (if there's a 2015 edition of js13kgames).

[SomeKittens]

Well, I don't think that an explanation of why each game was rated the game it was, and suggestions for improvements, would be doable. Take into account that this is a quite informal compo, and there were 129 submissions. The judges probably didn't invest the 100% of their time to judge the games too, since they probably have their own jobs, so they probably had to do all the judging in their free time.

 

Any judges worth their salt take notes as they're judging - simply make those notes public (or at the very least, show them to the dev).  So long as the judges are aware beforehand, this shouldn't be a problem and is almost no extra time on the volunteer's part.  Virtually every competition I've participated in , from debate to hackathon, does it this way.

[end3r]

Any judges worth their salt take notes as they're judging - simply make those notes public (or at the very least, show them to the dev).  So long as the judges are aware beforehand, this shouldn't be a problem and is almost no extra time on the volunteer's part.  Virtually every competition I've participated in , from debate to hackathon, does it this way.

I, for example, didn't write down anything. I was playing all the games first to know the overall level and then playing all again giving them exact scores. Christer was tweeting short feedback about some of the games. He wanted to have judges comments implemented already a year ago.

I wanted to have it this year. Judges feedback, user comments, logging in via Twitter, accounts integrated with GitHub, ability to edit your entry and then submit it, medals for various activities, and lots of other things. A year ago my friend said he will prepare the backend for this year's competition. He screw me over and I was left with the broken submit form two weeks after the compo started, so I used the one from 2013. I'm tired of writing this over and over again. I wanted this compo to look a lot different, but I ended up spending sleepless nights just to have it look like everything's ok, half the things was done manually because I'm a frontend dev, not backend. Maybe I can't handle organizing it on my own, maybe it's too much. I'm not a good judge and I'm not a good compo organizer. What do you want from me, to give you the first place? To say that the competition was a total failure? That the rules are not fair? That I should leave it and forget about the next editions? You're expecting a perfect competition with perfect rules with no flaws. It started as a fun project that will evolve in time, but now you're ruining everything.

[SomeKittens]

He screw me over and I was left with the broken submit form two weeks after the compo started

 

I've also had (ex)friends back out on me in projects.  It's not fun at all and I can totally sympathize with you being left in the dark.

 

However, you may be right.  Number-wise, js13k is growing pretty rapidly.  I think everyone can agree that the server category was a fairly large disaster, mostly due to the lack of time available.  There's no good answers here.  Reaching out to connections to help is a good one, but it sounds like that already happened and you got bit rather hard.  Open sourcing is another but that's never the magical fairy wand everyone wants it to be.  I wish I could offer more.

 

It started as a fun project that will evolve in time, but now you're ruining everything. 

 

If I may....

 

Keep pushing yourself. If you're gonna quit after the first failure some random guy whines in a internet forum then you didn't have any future in it anyway.

[end3r]

You're ruining the overall positive experience, not that because of you I won't run the next editions. You should stop worrying about the places in the competitions and just enjoy developing games.

[Sebi]

Criticism is part of public life and you should take the complaints and try to improve.

Calling people "haters" on twitter just because they criticize that one of the judges won the server category, that a client side game got the 2nd place and that a non-game got the 5th place is a little overreacted, don't you think?

 

 

Why bother with haters when there's such a lovely community around #js13k. It's for fun and sharing knowledge, negativity is not allowed!

That's not how you deal with complaints. And people are not even hating on you, just stating the obvious flaws - which were ruining their experience with this compo - that need improvement for the next time. No one even said that you didn't do a great job.

[end3r]

There's a huge difference between giving feedback that something went wrong and how to improve it, and attacking with complaints. It's the attitude, not the facts, that was the key. I already said it at the very beginning that the compo is not perfect and that I want it to be better with every edition.

I wrote down everything what was said about the flaws. I'm just sad and frustrated that most of the mentioned things that went wrong or was missing I wanted to have a long time ago already. If I knew I won't get any help and have to do it myself, I would find the time to do it myself and now you'd have GitHub integration and detailed comments from the judges what was good and what was bad in your compo entry.