The future of my tournaments

[NightOfHorror]

Okay, after the 2nd anniversary of my tournaments, only 1 entered in the first 2 month tourney, and 0 in the actual anniversary tournament. There is no point in making these tournaments if there is no competitions, as the February tournament only had 1, and the January tournament had just 2 competitors, the last time more than 2 competitors entered was the August tournament of 2012 with the theme of Darkness, and that was also the last time 4 competitors entered to make an award ceremony. While I have tried everything to make more enter these tournaments, let you pick the theme, commented regularly to remind people, and even extend the deadline by a month, there has been no progress in progressing these tournaments.

I was hoping the big one month extension would jump start these tournaments, but I knew from the start that it would possibly do the opposite. Humans in general stick with decisions when it comes to quitting on a project, and the thing is, when a person decides that they no longer want to do a tournament, they typically stick with that decision, and for those that are a week to a month late in notice of the tourneys believe since 2 months were given, that there would be no way to finish a game in the smaller amount of time they have, therefore I have to wait another month for them to think about entering again. The thing I am most aggravated about is that I basically waited 2 months for this tournament to be over, expecting high quality games, and I only get 1 game(I still haven't played jonathang's game, but I will soon). If I wanted a game, I could have just made this a monthly tournament for 1 person to decide to finish their game and enter.

By no means, will I ever think about extending the deadline by another month, for the problems listed above, heck, I may get even less interested, less pressure equals more boredom for many people. Also more time given, means more time procrastinating, trust me, I know on a personal note.

At the end of the day, these tournaments' goal was 4 things:
- Make people have some fun with competition against their fellow GE mates.
- Get games on GE so other new people could see a glimpse of the power of GE.
- Strengthen one's coding skills and animating skills, by making them keep coding of course, hopefully by making them under pressure, using a lot of time to perfect their game, they will learn better, more efficient ways of coding, and new functions while they are at it as my tournaments cover many different types of themes that typically need different types of games as well.
- Inspire someone to make a full, great quality game, continuing their demos they made in the tourney (lets be honest, in a month or 2, you can't make a full game like I just said) after it is over, even if it was not a success.

Out of these 4 main goals:
- There hasn't really been competition, lets be honest, out of all the 2 people tourneys, there has always been a clear cut winner, and only in the 2 tournaments with 4 or more has there been some intense deciding where it was hard to figure out who would win until it has been announced, even as a judge, and many of my tournaments have only had 1 enter as well meaning, no competition.
- Going with problem 1, not many enter, so not many games are made, not enough diversity is shown, so new people can't understand everything GE can do.
- I have no idea how this has helped people on a coding and animating level, so that would be up to you guys to decide if that has been a success.
- Out of all my tourneys, only have 2 people worked on their games after the tourney has been over, Cracked, in February, he made his game, which was already superb, and after the tourney, he continued fixing problems to perfect it, but the only one who has actually ran with their project to make a full-size adventure game, well hopefully they finish it anyway, but at least they are working on it still, is lcl, with his January 2014 entry, "From the Darkness Into the Light."

Now, I don't know what I will do for next month, if I will keep the 2 month long tourney, put it back to 1 month, or just completely not even do one. My decision will be based on the interest from the community, and I will not release the theme of the possible next tourney until I start the thread.

If you have read all of this, thank you for reading, and please understand why I may stop doing these tournaments, that is all.



_NightOfHorror_

[lcl]

I think you definitely should keep doing these tournamemts, I have enjoyed them always, even with low numbers of participants. I almost always get a nice idea for a game for your tournaments and would like to make a game out of it, but I'm just quite busy and have so much other things going on GE-related and non-GE-related that it seems I rarely get to even start making the game.

I had a very cool idea for this two-month long tournament, but the idea would have needed perfect text boxes for working, and, well, you know the limitations of GE's built-in text boxes. I started coding a system of my own, but haven't even finished it yet.

I also wanted to participate to one of the pong tournaments, and started making a prototype of my pong game, but that failed, as did also my prototype for the stars tournament.

What I mean with all that is that you may feel depressed because it seems to you that people aren't interested and no-one wants to participate, but that's not true. As you see, I, dor example have wanted to participate at least 4 times, of which I actually got to participate only once. The problem isn't about your tournaments, it's about the difficulty of actually sticking to one project and devoting a lot of time for it. That is something pretty much everyone should learn to do better, including me.

But yeah, don't quit doing these tournaments, for without them there wouldn't be my current game project, nor would there be the better text box thing I've started making and which I'll publish for everyone to use when it's ready.

Your tournaments have certainly succeeded in their goals in many ways, but not all of them are that visible for you. I bet there's people like me who have wanted to participate and have started working on a game, but have just failed to organize the project well enough for actually being able to finish it, or even a one-level demo of it.

[Hares]

It would be great if more people entered the tournaments, or that all the ones that entered actually submitted a game ...

Since I joined the forum (December) I participated in one tournament (Januari).
I am still working on that game, but unfortunatly I am having a lot of (non GE related) things on my plate right now, so progress is slow.

Out of all my tourneys, only have 2 people worked on their games after the tourney has been over

You can make that: at least 3

The only other game project I started was when I saw that in the February tournament, with 10 day left before the deadline, there was only one contestant. But in those 10 days I didn't have as much time as I had hoped for. When I saw that there was a second contestant (CrackedPOt) I stoped my project.
(http://game-editor.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=13306)

For this tournament there were a lot of (possible) contestants in the beginning. So I decided not to enter and continue on the Januari tournament game.
As there are not so many people on the forum, and you like the ones that submit a game to the tournament to finish up the game afterwards, that makes even less possible candidates.

I have enjoyed your tournaments, both the one I entered and the ones I didn't. And I wouldn't like to see them disappear.

Even though your name is NightOfHorror, for me you are KnightOfHonnor

[DeltaLeeds]

DO NOT cancel your tourneys out! Most of us love the tournaments. Personally, I love the part where judges rate games, and review games. These tournaments can be so intense! Your goals are a tiny bit too ambitious for an inactive forum, but still, you've made participants strengthen their coding skills. I'll still be working on my game, if more people think I should anyway. Hares is also still working on his game, so you've done a great job for these tourneys NoH. Can't imagine the forums without them. There is a bit of competition sometimes, but it's just that they could have problems and not enter at all. Keep the tournaments!

P.S: Maybe we should help promote the forums to keep the tournaments going.

[NightOfHorror]

I have officially decided that for now on, the big yearly tournament will be in the months of February and March as I consider April to be the beginning of the year for my tournaments, well the new-year anyway. Also, I am making tournaments only 1 month long again. It is for the best, for reasons stated above. I still don't know what the theme is, so I think for now on, in January, May, and September, I will let you guys pick the tourney, lcl, Hares, Cracked, and jon, you can all pick one theme for me to put on the poll tomorrow since you have entered the tournament.