Messages

Misj:

We'll have to agree to disagree, because I really don't approve of having a friendly, no pressure competition built around rating a person's concepts and sketches toward completion rather than the end result.  It's just more effort than I'm interested in with a competition about having a bit of fun, and if not everyone does (or can do) it they are automatically placed at a disadvantage. 

I'm agreeing with ProgzMax.
I don't think that sort of competition would work very well. It's a good concept but ... to judge how well someone can make a sprite based on their concepts and sketches is very subjective. For example, one person may be a brilliant pixel artist and only need the stick figures mentioned in Misj's previous post before making something worthy of being sold. However, the concept art of just stick figures is not very impressive compared to, say, someone who has thirty sketches, and all them showing some sort of development for the character.
Although I agree it will get people to think and really try to make concepts (and get those thirty-five sketches), it does stem down to sort of "who has the most/best developed character" as opposed to "who has a character that isn't overdeveloped and suitable for an interpretive lead character". As the latter is more often than the former used in amateur adventure games to give the player a sense of their own personality into the character.

I'm rambling on, so I'll stop now, but I guess I'm just against such a subjective concept.

ALPHA2T, had you bothered to read the previous posts (from page 11 onwards), you would've seen that this has already been discussed.

My point is, I disagree the suggestion to make another extra competition, unless it can be proven to be vastly popular.

We don't actually know how many hi-res people are out there as they're rarely allowed to participate. The sprite jam is by all measures a pixel activity, so just like myself, people might not even bother checking whether they can submit a regular entry. To make sure I wasn't basing this on a false impression, I checked the introduction of the last 50 pixel jams to check with reality:

50 rounds - 6 allowed hi-res/hi-colour entries.

The Sprite Jam is for all intents and purposes a pixel art activity; I'm just asking for a character activity where everyone is allowed to join the fun.

I don't see the harm in adding another competition; if nobody's going to participate, it's going to die like the other ones. If people do contribute, we gained a popular competition.

Do I think excluding people is right?  No.  I don't think it's particularly fun to be able to do something and be excluded because it's not what other people are good at, but I also don't think a competition should be a 'boy's club' with 2-3 regular entrants and no one else.  I suppose you could still take this to mean I don't care, but I don't think most people would see it that way.

I agree with Loominous's idea - its worth a shot. As somebody said earlier if there are not enough entrants it will die, but it offers an opportunity to be creative

Aside from the miniscule amount of space it would take up on the server i cant really see any disbenefits. it would be fun and interesting to see what people can do beyond traditional pixel art. Call me a minority but I would definitely enter if i had time.

Oh, and I agree with you about 'boy's clubs', but we can't really know the level of interest, as people have never really had a proper chance of joining in, and by doing so establish a "tradition". I'm actually thinking mostly of 3D folks here. It's kinda like a radio station, where they always seem to be playing music that you dislike. It may very well be that they play your kind of music every 10th night, but it's most likely that you won't be tuned in to notice.

I'm going to quote everyone who was in favour of a theoretical "low-res competition", because that would be superfluous. As has already been discussed, most people here who participate in the sprite jam generally use pixel (or "low res") art.