The BGMC is a game developments challenge for BGE users and the ninth challenge has just ended and you can vote for the best gamehere.
In these 9 challenges over 25 developers made over 35 games, that is 35+ new ideas and games that otherwise might have never been developed. All games are open source and new BGE users can use the games they like to play to learn how to make one them self.
I would like to make the BGMC better, to attract more developers and to help developers make their games better. I can’t do that alone, I need your help.
I already got some great suggestions, some of them I already considered but didn’t want to push too hard. Some of them make a lot of sense and BGMC 10 should be a new beginning.
There should be 1 olympic BGMC after every 4 years,1 BGMC championship every year,4 Seasonal BGMC championship,weekly/monthly challenge, ! Developers with real names & full details can only participate. .the BGMC participants should be a winner of BGMC(seasonal) or 4 times winner in weekend challenges to participate BGMC olympic !
You are actually not the first one to suggest that and I will consider it. The only problem I see there is that its a lot more trouble for the developers to get to a certain competition and they will expect some kind of a reward, I am currently unemployed and can’t afford to pay for them myself, the BF is not interested in donating even the $5 Blender stickers so can you please suggest some rewards or ways of getting money for a reward.
One thing I had in mind is making BGMC Bundles, so after a challenge ends I pack 3 or 5 best games and make Bundle then upload it on Desura and sell it for 99 cents. Buying it would be considered a donation and all profit will go for a reward for the winner.
Of course I won’t do that without first talking to the original developers, its just an idea right now. Even if the developer intends to develop his game further after the challenge the version sold in the Bundle will be called the bgmc version so its not confused with the real one.
May be we should start a blendergameengine website. .where we anounce new tutorial like citizen tutorials or cgmasters. .and make it free. .for anyone who wins BGMC championship
Or give out a gaming consoles with a BGMC 3D printed trophy. .BGMC owner takes the rights of selling the game,sell the assets etc. That way we can make money and the winner gets the gaming console(like OUYA) powered by android only $99. .whoever participates in BGMC championship have to submit all of their resources. .
The Idea with Bundles is a good one, but it would be questionable if the Winner would profit from the Sales of mostly not his own Entries – I would say that the Sales could go to BF as a BGE-specific Donation as far as that would be possible.
But don’t overthink what Rules could be squeezed in – the Competition should be fun and not spoiled with restricting Stuff like giving Tutorials for free to Winners only (if I understood that Post right) … because that would not fit the social and altruistic Ways of a proper OpenSource-Community.
The problem is money for the reward, not the reward it self. I had a donation link on the bgmc website for a while but no one was interested in donating even $1 so I tried with ads since the site gets around 2000 views per challenge and most of them from usa and india and in the last 2 challenges only 5 people (5 views) could spare 5 seconds to see an ad and close it.
I think that selling a Bundle is a good idea to try, and if it works we can continue using it. But making a Bundle is not as easy as collecting all games. I would have to make sure all games work, make a launcher with a game selection screen, get permissions from original developers and a few more technical things. Also all games must be playable in the same version of BlenderPlayer and should be of high enough quality for someone to want to buy them.
Then of course the store takes ~30%, taxes and stuff, but even a cheap symbolic reward is better than no reward I think.
Donations to the BF is something that could be done, but as far as I know the BF doesn’t even take small donation.
I will try to gather/make some tutorials on how to organize the development time and how to increase the quality of your game. That combined with possibly a longer challenge time limit could lead to better games.
But all this is the backend of the challenge and developers shouldnt worry about it. Developers should have fun and explore new ideas. The challenge will never be to make a full,big, AAA game, it is and always was to test new ideas, inovate, prototype and learn. Learn how to prototype, organize, communicate, share and play Blender games.
Thank you for all the suggestion so far, they will help me a lot.
Also do you think that only developers should be able to vote for the best game and the google form or some other system should only be used to determine the rating of a game ?
Everyone should be allowed to vote (I say) – you play the Game, you have a Voice. (So, probably not everyone but everyone who has in Fact played the Games (or most of them) of one BGMC – I guess I thought it was self-explanatory.)
About the Rating of a Game, that is a good Point: Right now, the Games are just rated by individual overall Preferations – however, there could indeed be another Kind of Rating like rating Graphics, Sounds, Idea etc. … but I am not sure whether it would make Sense. (EDIT: Just took a Look at the Link to the Voting… hm…)
Right now, it is all about a “democratic” System where everyone votes for his Favorite. This does not necessarily lead to the Entry with the best Quality being the Winner, but rather what most People played and liked – so, someone could make the Game with the most original Idea, the best Graphics, best Performance, best Sounds and Music, best Scripts and smoothest Gameplay… but if People simply liked another Entry better even though it is technically worse, they might vote for that. And well, that sounds fair too – the Question is, whether the overall best Game shall be found or the Favorite of the People. To mee it always felt like, it’s about what the People will like most, and not that one Game shall be the most “AAA-Minigame”.
I live in Argentina, how do you think that you will get me an OUYA if i win?
also, you cant just go on the life throwing OUYAs at people, you need atleast $100 to give that as reward, if you want to give money worth prices, you could ask the participants to give something like $5 to enter the competition, but no one would participate(atleast i wouldnt because u$s 5 is like $25 in the money of my country...), however, i do like Josips idea about making a bundle of games, but maybe $0.99 is not that much, i would raise the price to something like $2.
thats all i have to say about the money-related rewards.
about rating games:
maybe there should be a judge or something, people, as C.A.ligari mentioned, tend to vote their favorites, instead of those that are really the best, instead if there is a judge, the judge can vote depending on how really good a game is, however that judge should be higly serius and trustable.
Really, I wouldn’t bother with a reward. I see the BGMCs and a fun, simple challenge. Adding rewards would complicate it. One thing I would recommend, is to be a bit more cognizant of time zones. For deadlines, “noon on Monday” isn’t very helpful, especially for someone like me at GMT-7.
I tried using GMT as a universal time and people complained so now its 7 days from the time the theme was published. But I will probably change it back.
I did use that same link in BGMC 5 or 6 and people didn’t like it because in some time zones the challenge would start in 3-4 AM so they loose half a day and then another half when the challenge ends. Most developers have 2-3 hours a day that they can dedicate to games so I thought that they would like 7 day challenges because they always have a weekend to use. But the number of developers actually decreased. I will figure something out and prepare everything before BGMC 10
No matter what you do, some people will like it, some won’t, some people will be able to do it, others won’t.
So, just keep hosting them, and let people do them if they can!
Well, since this Forum is the primary Platform for the Competition Posts, why not orient on this Forum’s Time? (Edit: I know, it’s GMT.) Everyone involved in the Competition also is on this Forum and can easily check the Time (at the Bottom of the Site).