Bioware writing contest - The Spotlight Interview

[Corsair5]

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.

[Swift]

It mystifies me how they somehow managed to work the miracle of separating the cheated votes from the real ones, and personally, I think it would have been better if they had just left it alone and put it up like the votes read. Sure, it wouldn't have been entirely fair, but neither is this. What's the point of even having a Community Chooses half? Just make all ten of them BioWare's choice.

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).

As far as judging goes I asked Maximus for a list of the top ranked modules. When we received that we removed those that had been picked as part of the judges top 5. After that we used a combination of the stated rank and our discretion because this contest is about quality of writing and at a certain point it is impossible to judge one type of writing ‘better’ than another so we wanted to put together the best list we could with all the great submissions. We were very reluctant to outright disqualify a quality module based on factors such as word count, number of characters and we were even a tiny bit flexible on submission time because our legal stuff took more time than originally thought and we had a very short window of for those submissions. The stated parameters were followed to an exceptional degree in nearly all cases and it made Kevin’s job of taking a good look at the writing that much easier which was the point. He is ecstatic on the turnout and hopes we can run this again. He is still looking at modules as we speak by the way and his interest has indeed been peaked.

I know there are also a lot of "But how did X win and not Y?" or "A got more points than B, why does B win out?" type of questions. I think Jay is going to comment on this later but we did not simply take "the most votes" or "the highest scores" due to some issues with voting and stuff. Jay consulted with Maximus over at the Vault and, after using some "secret BioWare/Vault powers" the winners were chosen.

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.  

[Swift]

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

OK guys, I emailed Maximus and I think I can explain the "odd" result.

Basically, at 1am on April first, Maximus searched all mods 8.5 or higher, and got the top 25 or so. As we all know, that doesn't update in realtime. Zog did the same thing and clicked each mod to get his top 7 in the old thread.

Anyway, Maximus didn't click each one, so the results he sent were different then what Zog posted.

Score: 9.18
Title :
Firestarter by Adam Miller

Score: 9.11
Title : A
Moonless Night - 1.00 by Kevin Chan

Score: 8.95
Title :
Walking
with the Ghost (Contest Version) by Chris Tihor

Score: 8.84
Title : A
Hero's Death by Thad Boyd

Score: 8.76
Title : The
Badger, the Cat and the Book by Chris R. Deatherage

Score: 8.69
Title :
Find
the Fish! by nereng


That's how it went down.

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

http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?to...074037&forum=41

I should have made that point more clear when I announced
how I was going to take the votes.

It's very possible that the search I ran might not match the individual real time listings on the module pages, but with so many entries I just didn't have the time to physically go through each one.

Even if someone had pointed out the forum thread where the community had compiled the list, I still wouldn't have been able to use it because the list had to be compiled by a totally impartial and perfect judge that only a computer can do.

I would have had to double check all the community's list versus all the entries and make sure it was exact, which honestly I have no time for, nor would I trust that I wouldn't make a mistake myself.

Instead I ran the search using the criteria I mentioned at 1am which would technically be April 1st.

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

We are aware of the situation at hand, I assure you. What will be done about it, however, I do not know. I am not one of the people involved in that decision.

Considering how busy things are at work lately, and the current Easter holidays that people will be spending with their families, it will probably take a little time.

I know it's not easy, especially for people that feel they should have been in the winning top five selection, but I humbly request that you have patience while a decision is made.

Thank you.

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?

A Moonless Night 6,514 (4,647 C, 1,710 J, 157 O) +86%
The Realm Below 5,042 (3,723 C, 706 J, 613 O) +44%
Myranni's Nagic 4,676 (3,399 C, 304 J, 973 O) +33%
Ghosts of the Past 4,207 (3,598 C, 369 J, 240 O) +20%
Aspects 4,002 (3,990 C, 0 J, 12 O) +14%

C is Conversations, J is Journal and O is Other (module, people and item descriptions). Aspects got 12 module descriptions which were basically the name of the guy and his e-mail address. It has modern language and ideas and isn't medieval. So 4 of the top five should definitely be ineligible for words and the 5th for being too modern. No winners!

A Moonless Night actually has 7,000-9,000 due to using journal entries which add on to one another...

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.

[Swift]

http://forums.bioware.com/viewpost.html?to...082141&forum=41

Well, we said that we have been looking into what happened, and would make known any decisions we made regarding the contest results. So here is what we found. The scores and choices for winners were correct at the time that Maximus took the snapshot on the Vault and from this snapshot Jay selected the winners based on the scores and the quality of the writing. But we do realize that there were some honest misunderstandings with the snapshot. Things like Walking with the Ghost’s submission date and module word count were overlooked in favor of what was considered the best writing. However, we realize that this might be different from some expectations so we are keen to make a few exceptions in the spirit of good writing.

To this extent, we are going modify the results of the contest to include 2 Honorable Mentions. The two modules are: Grains of Truth by Jared Evans and To Hell and Back by Silevran Moonflower. These are the next highest scores on the snapshot. They will each be receiving the full BioWare prize pack (BioWare coffee mug, BioWare wool cap, Jade Empire soundtrack, Jade Empire t-shirt and copies of all Premium Neverwinter Nights Modules) and the conest results page will be updated to reflect their honorable mentionness. Check out the change here: Click Here

So there you have it, the finale in the first BioWare Writing Contest. Once again, a huge thanks to all who entered and congratulations to the winners.

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.

[Jigen]

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

[Corsair5]

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

[Swift]

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

[Corsair5]

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.

[Swift]

Check out my interview with BioWare

[Silverbolt]

That's great, Swift!

[Swift]

Thanks.