Also I think that creators of a game should not be allowed to vote for their own game. It would probably stop a lot of trolls who are impersonating other voters.
I think for the next BGMC we should not allow users to vote at all. Only the judges.
Specially when there are such a big money as prize!
That or somehow track IP address and make sure that there are no addresses voting more than once.
User voting is really important because judges are not infallible. A game being good is almost subjective because it’s usually based on one’s own opinions about design and game theory, so common consensus is good. That being said, our judges, from what I’ve seen of them on the forum, are pretty good at being objective - but again, that doesn’t mean they’re infallible.
What’s not good is fraudulent votes. Like sdfgeoff, I would have thought people would have been more reasonable given the fragility of the current voting system with Google docs.
I think the safest way to do voting would be to somehow do it on the forum itself, but there aren’t many options when it comes to polling here on vBulletin, so I completely understand why sdfgeoff moved it offsite. If there was somehow a way to link the BA account to google docs (with password authentication), that would be the absolute best way, though, I don’t know how possible that is.
There are two possible solutions:
- Comment (or private message) the vote itself on a separate thread (or through direct message)
Pros:
- Only BA users can vote
- People are accountable for their own votes
Cons: - Votes now have to be tallied manually
- Voting is not private (if commenting)
- Keep the google doc, but at the end have a “public password” that a voter chooses, and then messages sdfgeoff on BA
(The reason for the “public password” is for impersonators)
Pros:
- Only BA users can vote
- People are accountable for their own votes
- It’s “private”
- Tallying is “semi-automatic”
Cons: - Validating votes is manual
- Voting is a little harder for voters
Good luck sdfgeoff, I think you’ve been the best contest holder yet. The timers were very smart because it takes away ambiguity from the deadline 
One suggestion would be to not have a “bug fixing time”. The game should be finished in the given time, even if there is a game breaking bug after the person has uploaded and it’s post deadline. The reason for this is because there is a blurred line between “fixing a bug” and “fixing the gameplay”. Thus, the time given should also take into account testing for crashes on other machines, bug fixing, etc.
Edit:
I just looked at the spreadsheet, and I think you’ve done a good job sdfgeoff. I would say be more harsh if someone messes with the votes. Remove it completely if there is any funny business, but that’s just me haha
I just looked at survey monkey and there is an option to track IP addresses so that can be beneficial to know who is voting more than once.
My Thanks to sdfgeoff.
Hosting the BGMC can be a bit of a thankless task, and there’s always someone trying too hard to win. 
Also, you can’t please everyone…
Nice work this time Geoff. I really enjoyed the timers and the voting was fun too. I think this form of voting can really help some entries who might not have done so well under the normal “vote for your favorite game” system.
And for the record, I am in now way related to those votes people that voted 5 for me and 1 for everyone else. I have no idea who did it.
why is the vote being done externally anyway?
we should use a BA vote for this.
great job though sdfgeoff on everything !
it’s been really professional and all the work here inspired me to work harder on my own stuff.
In other words, the forum polling isn’t flexible enough for the type of voting we need, it’d be excessive at minimum.
I agree with Blueprint because it is just too complicated and there is too much room for people faking the results. I think that polling should be easy and there should just be a thread on this website with a poll for your favorite game.
what about 5 polls?
who made best level?
who made best graphics?
who had the most in depth gameplay?
etc?
I agree, this competition has been organized very well.
However I think including both community and judges is important, especially to remove any bias.
To add my own 10 cents to this discussion, I feel like there has been to much manipulation going on in this voting. It´s kind of sad to see this, even on such a small competition. I guess the reason for that happening is the price that the winner will get. While I like adding a price to the challenge as a means of motivation, it also ruins the voting, as there are always people that try to exploit the rules to get a better chance at winning. I´m not accusing anyone to have done this for this challenge, but it wouldn´t be hard to do.
Also I think that team projects shouldn´t be allowed in future challenges, as they always have a big advantage over the other games. Or if team projects get allowed, they should be handycapped in the voting, to make it fairer for the other games.
Team projects have their own problems, not least the difficulty of organizing a project between multiple people who may live in different timezones.
I agree, having a big prize is fantastic for motivation. I guess using BA polls stops fraudulent votes because the voter actually needs to have an account and can’t impersonate someone else. It does seem like there is some funny business going on in the voting, but I’m sure the ruling of the judges will even it out as it will be very hard to influence their point of view.
In regards to your opinion on the team projects, this is a bit ironic considering you won a BGMC with otto;) also sdfgeoff’s bgmc21 entry was collaborative 
I think team projects are good, for example I wouldn’t have had enough time to complete a game by myself this bgmc, but I did have enough time to collaborate with Grenzer to make undertow!
Maybe a better way to moderate team entries is to limit the number of team members to 2, and encourage people to work together. That way BGMC games will be a lot more impressive and potentially run a lot better because there is 2 people building it instead of just 1.
I actually found the time zone offset quite useful. Me and ThaTimster were offset by ~5 hours, so there was usually one of us working on it even when the other was sleeping.
Also, in terms of voting, I agree, that’s why I haven’t voted this BGMC, because I know it would be unfair.
I would like to report a fraudulent vote!
Voter “Dave” voted high for every mans sky and low for everyone else.
The blenderartists username Dave points to a profile that was not active since:
21-Jul-03 15:53
Clearly there is something wrong here.
Again I think that the creators of the game should have their votes discarded, as a couple of them are very bias towards their own game compared to others.
Obviously someone is trying to get Every Mans sky to win. It’s my game that Dave voted for highly and to be fair to everyone else, I think his vote should be removed due to the suspicion of him being fraudulent.
What I see is that we have several options:
- Use community vote as is, and moderate it manually
- Re-take the poll on google docs but require login with a google account.
- Re-take the community vote as a BA poll
- Just use the judges vote and get rid of the community vote.
A final option is we could use thread voting because BA allows you to rate a thread:
At this stage I’m lending towards #3 as manipulating votes does not sit right with me and the other options are hard/confusing/limiting - hence why I opened this issue up to the community.
@Thatimster:
I’ve already modified Dave’s entry as he had voted the leading games (undertow, horsey adventure) as 1/2’s.
What I do not want to do is cast suspicion on any submissions voting Every Mans Sky highly - because it is a good game.
I personally think option 3 is the best. BA polling may not have all the bells and whistles that Google Docs does, but it is tried and true, and all the previous BGMCs used it. Also, you can create new emails/ Google doc accounts pretty fast, whereas if we were polling on BA someone could not just pump out new accounts and vote quickly, as you need a moderators approval for your first 10 posts or so. So I personally think a BA poll is the best idea.