What's good everyone?
Not sure how many of you remember me, but a long time ago I used to host and run some contests for a couple of years. Unfortunately I failed to keep up with that due to trying to become more powerful irl, but I believe it is about time to try this thing again. Also please forgive the messy formatting; it's been a long time since I've done a proper post here.
What's gonna be different this time around:
Less Contests
- As a naïve fool I thought it was a brilliant idea to overwhelm myself and my crew with one contest a month, so now I'm going to be a little less naïve and decrease that number.
- The plan is 4 contests within a year with a 3 month cycle for each. 1 month to submit entries, 1 month for the judging, and 1 month to relax and do other things.
- When looking back at my old contests it contained a mostly limited set of themes that I think discouraged a larger variety of entries. Whether it be generic New Soup themes like desert or snow, something overly obscure like disco or brambles, or shamelessly plugging my 10+ year old project (yes SMC still exists), it was clear that this method just won't do for a comeback.
- The plan is to come up with some contests that have some uniqueness to them while encouraging contestants to think more creatively.
- It's been nearly 10 years since I did this, and I have been informed that there have been changes implemented to the modern contests of today. While I still have yet to properly set up the new rules, they will likely be a more updated set of my old rules while trying to follow a majority of the current general rules for contests.
- I won't guarantee it will happen, but I feel bad that I never followed through with this back then. Assuming things go well with all 4 contests, then yes I would like to make this an episode. It won't be anything flashy, but having an episode that serves as a collection of all the best entries would be fun and handy.
- There will likely be standards for what qualifies for the episode too, so hopefully this encourages everyone to make quality levels. Troll levels, or ones that are poorly designed are unlikely to make the cut.
- Some of you know I used to have a group of 4 additional judges that I would work with on these contests back then along with back-up judges who'd review levels made by the judges.
- For this we're gonna shoot for 3 regular judges including myself along with potentially a back-up judge should it be decided that judges can submit as well.
- So far Ness-Wednesday has volunteered to help out with judging, but if you have any interest in judging please reach out to me through dms on Discord (I will likely miss your messages on here most likely... sorry). I am looking for people with solid experience, a good personality, no fear of judging others objectively for their output, and to give their input throughout the year on contests. While I used to do this for a long time, having some folks who can help me steer this ship well would go a long way.
- Maybe we'll come up with a cool name as well as make some cool merch.
- We're shooting for March. Ideally by this Saturday, but realistically sometime next week.
- Nothing get lost... for real on top of my head I think that's the overall gist of this. I really wanted to get this info out as soon as I could as I really have been pondering this for a long time. Life has changed drastically for me over the years, but even through all of it I've really missed playing and reviewing levels made by you all. I'm certainly not the most active or memorable member here, but I'd like to try to do a little bit more for this community before it's too late.
Otherwise with that all being said I hope you all are looking forward to this grand return, and I hope this works out! Stay tuned for the first contest reveal!
Take it easy everyone!
