Hero6 Forums

I made a module for the Bioware writing contest (http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/2005_11_30_WritingContest/index.html) during the weekend. You can download it at http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=4627 (http://nwvault.ign.com/View.php?view=Modules.Detail&id=4627). Could you please vote as well? Five modules will be shortlisted through votes and three from a select group of people. I think you'll have to register with the website if you want to vote. Thanks.

Here's the game in script form. Please read it and review, though it would be useful to vote as well after that. Since it's a writing contest, and not a scripting contest, it should be possible to judge whether the game is good or bad from the writing alone, without having to play it.

Alright, apparently the attachment couldn't be viewed properly for some reason, so please download from here (http://www.freewebs.com/silevran_moonflower/nwn_contest_script.html).
 

It's very interesting. Truly a skillful work, especially as your first attempt.  

Thanks, Corsair. Would you mind posting those comments on the voting page, and giving a vote as well?

Added a mod for the vanilla NWN version.

Good work, Swift. I liked it. Voting and commenting now.

Thank you, Silverbolt. :-*

Corsair, since you played the game, you can vote too.  

Thanks for voting, Corsair. :)

Vy, zank thou, madame.

The voting contest will end near the end of March. Quite a lot has happened since then. If you'd been following the voting patterns, we have some people who voted for the person rather than the quality of the mod. eg. "I've didn't play your mod, but you're a famous person so I'm giving you a ten to support you!". Yeah, pretty annoying.

I took part in this contest to see whether I'm capable of producing a game under heavy time constraints (started on it only days before the deadline) and how far I'd go compared to the other mods, especially by those that are experienced with the toolset and knew about this contest from day one. The first objective was achieved, but the second one was disappointing, mainly because too few are voting in general and some who do are voting based on anything else but the mod's quality itself.

If you're able to play any of the mods (including mine), it would be helpful if you could vote what you liked about it and what can be improved on. If you aren't able to play it for whatever reason, you can view the script I posted for my mod and vote based on that (since it's a writing contest after all). For the other mods, you can try to use a text editor to view those.

I'm not making this post to garner a bunch of tens to win, because I'm not interested in that. I knew from the very beginning that I'm not going to win, and I accept that. All I want is to receive feedback and to see where my mod stands in terms of the voting.

If you do not wish to create a new account to vote, or feel that you're not able to review it objectively, then you can just post your thoughts here.  

As the contest draws to a close, a lot of participants became the victims of cheating. Be it vote spamming, or giving 1s under false charges, or writing incredibly dubious comments and voting way below standard deviation in order to pull the votes down. Two nights ago I was among the top 5, and now I've fallen after receiving a handful of dubious votes myself. I was able to get the admin to remove a couple of sabo votes for an obvious cheating case for someone else's mod, but not for a number of other mods, including my own. It's hard to say at this point what the outcome will be. All I can say is that if you haven't voted, then please vote, and not just for my mod, but for others as well. Please don't let the cheaters get away with pulling down votes. I think today's the last day to vote.

When do you get the results in?

I don't know. They announced last week that it'll be this week, but the newsletter came and went, and still no news about the contest.

When the voting deadline closed, I was in the top 6. Then the author whose mod was in the top 5 asked for the latest three votes to be removed even though they were high votes because she felt that they were suspicious votes, so her selfless act pulled her down, allowing me to enter the top 5. As much as I wanted to tell everyone that I made it to the top 5, I wasn't sure whether the results announced would reflect that. In fact, a part of me feared that the worst was yet to come.

The results were announced a few hours ago, and they baffle me.

http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/20...ontest_winners/ (http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/2006_04_12_contest_winners/)

The top five modules as selected by our panel of judges. These modules were hand selected after every single module submitted to the contest was reviewed from the 313 submissions.

1. Myranni's Magic by Mat Jobe
2. The Realm Below by Chris Amos
3. Aspects by Neilan 'Darric' Naicker
4. A Moonless Night by Kevin Chan
5. Ghosts of the Past by Illemira/Aedalena

The top five as voted on by the community (excluding any modules already selected for the top five by our judges). These rankings are based solely on module final rankings according to NWVault at the time the contest closed:

1. Firestarter by Adam Miller
2. Walking with the Ghost (Contest Version) by Chris Tihor
3. A Hero's Death by Thad Boyd
4. The Badger, the Cat and the Book by Chris R. Deatherage
5. Find the Fish! by nereng

Let me draw your attention to two mods in particular - "Walking with the Ghost (Contest Version)" and "Find the Fish". "Walking with the Ghost" was submitted late as the author himself wrote. Quite a number of community members commented that it's a disqualified entry because of the fact that it was submitted late, and yet it's in the top 5 for the voting category. Why? My mod, "The STAR Quest" and "Grains of Truth" received higher ratings each compared to "Find the Fish" (8.7+ vs 8.59), and yet not one of those three entries are listed in the top 5, while "Find the Fish" is. In fact, looking at the search results, quite a number of other mods had received higher ratings than "Find the Fish", but weren't in the top 5 for the voting category.

I posted my response in http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.ht...477035&forum=41 (http://nwn.bioware.com/forums/viewtopic.html?topic=477035&forum=41). I doubt I'll get a reply from them (or one that would be satisfactory). While I knew I won't win from the very beginning, to lose in this manner, when there are mods up there that by right shouldn't be there, is downright ridiculous and insulting.

I guess I should have realised that this contest won't have a good outcome from the way they treated the contest from the start.

Nonetheless, I'd like to thank all those who took the trouble to play or read my mod and voted. I appreciate the feedback.

I find it curious that none of the Judge's ones correspond with the ones the community selections. Most peculiar. I've never seen that occur in a contest like this.

Urm... I have no idea what you posted in the Bioware forums, Corsair. They didn't do any vote culling. This is what happened, according to Jay and Chris (both Bioware staff).



The contest makers announced that the top 5 would be picked through voting only, then went back on their word and only picked entries that they like rather than what the community liked, and then pretended on the announcement page that those winning entries were picked "solely based on voting" and nothing else. Frankly, I'm appalled by that move. It's both insulting to the community and wrong. It's them pretty much telling the community that they don't know what's good for them, that only an elite few know what's best for the public.

One day has passed and that forum topic has grown to 6 pages long. A number of people have raised their unhappiness over the way Bioware had handled the situation and even more people are demanding for an explanation on how a mod that was 7 days late (yes, 7) and a mod that had a much lower rating than four other mods including mine got into the top 5. So far, Bioware's keeping quiet.

It would be good if more people would speak up and put pressure on the PR team to give a proper explanation on how those mods were picked over others.  

It feels like more and more dirty secrets get discovered as the days go by. Beb, one of the contestants whose mod scored higher than "Find the Fish!" but was bypassed, contacted both Jay and Maximus to find out how to community top 5 were chosen. After he received a reply from Maximus, he posted it in the forums.

http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?to...073889&forum=41 (http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?topic=477035&post=4073889&forum=41)


But wait, there's more! Taken right from the horse's mouth.

http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?to...074037&forum=41 (http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?topic=477035&post=4074037&forum=41)


Some of us were very put off with the way the results were handled. Everyone knows that doing a search on the vault will not give the real time results, and the admin can dare to say that he didn't have the time to check?!?!?!

Some agreed that I got the raw end of the deal and felt I should contact Jay about it, so it was up to me to write a lengthy explanation on what happened, and that five people were affected because the results weren't based on the actual rankings on that day. Four mods (including mine) had higher ratings than "Find the Fish!", and one mod had the same rating, so it was five people. Of course, if Bioware wants to be strict about word count (as if!), it would be four people instead of five, as it was brought to my attention that the fifth mod had either 4400 words or over 5000 words, depending on whether stringspeak words should be counted.

Bioware still chose to keep quiet, and then we had posters coming in to tell us to "move on" since Bioware's announced the winners and nothing's going to change, so we might as well submit job applications to Bioware! We even had one idiot step in and accuse us of "lacking passion", "caring only about the contest", and having "no right to criticize the contest since we have never made a mod prior to the contest". And we had people who said that it was perfectly acceptable for a winning mod to be a seven day late entry! Some people responded to those posts, and a short while later, a Bioware representative asked everyone to keep the "thread civil", or the topic would be locked. After a couple more posts from Imported_Beer (another bypassed winner) and myself about Bioware's silence on the matter, the same representative finally gave a reply.

http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.ht...075298&forum=41 (http://nwn.bioware.com//forums/viewpost.html?topic=477035&post=4075298&forum=41)


We still had people coming in to criticize us for daring to complain about the contest results, that Bioware has every right to run it the way they want, and that everyone should take a "chill pill" and "move on". Thankfully there were a handful who do care about fairness, so those people would speak up everytime the conversation goes down that route.

We're still waiting for this investigation to come to an end. Mike, another contestant, decided to do a word count for all the winning entries for the Judges' pick. Remember that the word limit was 3500 words?



He didn't bring this to Bioware's attention, but he notified a few of us about it, so a few people complained about the word count issue in the forums. I wonder how Bioware's going to fix its own mess.

http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?to...082141&forum=41 (http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?topic=477035&post=4082141&forum=41)


It's still wrong. Imported_Beer should have made it to the list as well. I see them using "honourable mentions" as a way of saying "Yes, we messed up, but we want to save face so we're giving you "Honourable Mentions" to appease you". I guess at this point, there's hardly anything else I can do.

Well on the somewhat sour upside, at least you're getting all that free Bioware crap.

I wouldn't be caught dead wearing a Jade Empire T-Shirt. We'ren't you supposed to get money?

Ermm... no. No money was ever offered as one of the prizes.

Hm.

Then if I may make a suggestion, eBay it. Some Jade Empire fanatic or BioWare lover will snap it up for a colossal sum. I've seen 'em selling the plastic coin that came with the Collector's Edition of Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for like, $50.

Check out my interview with BioWare (http://www.bioware.com/biozone/articles/2006_05_02_contest_winner_interviews/to_hell_and_back.html)

That's great, Swift!

Thanks.