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Title: Comic Author Joined: Dec 12 2008 Posts: 1179

So, since the next Championship is still a few months away, now's a good time to open things up for suggestions and discussion. As a lot of folks know, participation at the start of the last two Championships hasn't been very good, and participation by the end is always dismal. There's been a bit of discussion in the chat about possible ways that this could be improved, and it was suggested that we should open it up and talk about it here as well. So, if anyone has any suggestions or ideas for us, shout 'em out, we're open to pretty much anything that'll increase participation and enjoyment of these challenges.

Title: Alexz Aficionado Joined: May 21 2008 Posts: 2889

You've already heard these, but here goes.

See which games, rounds, genres of games had the most participation. Maybe there's something they all have in common you can't see until you lay it all out and look at it. Given the history and participation I'd give the earlier rounds least relevance to the later rounds inregards to participation. Take a look at all the data you have, in as many different angles you can. I'm sure something is there. Preferred types of challenges, types of games, etc.

In the later rounds I think a possible problem is people don't think they can win. This wouldrequire restructuring the points system which is probably not going to happen. However, in previosu Challenges there have been adjustments made for ties, bonus, and so on that can give late comers a chance to make up some ground.

Something I really want to know: Why do people skip rounds and submit something a few rounds later? Is it the game? Is it the difficulty of the challenge? No one understands more than me how much life can get in the way when these thigns run, and they run for 10 weeks, so I'm curious. When you choose to skip submitting a round what's the reason?

Posted: Dec 10 2011 06:13 pm

Why not expand the SNES and/or NES challenge to an all year long affair. Say like a challenge a month. Instead of having a winner of the whole contest just have a winner for the Month. This way contest have long enough to actually complete the challenges regardless of if they like the game or not or if time in a week is strained. You can still have an overall winner; say whoever wins the most times in a year gets the crown until the next year. There wouldn't be a sign-up thread anymore there would just be people submitting you videos or files by the end of the month. That's my idea anyway. Simply limiting games because of genre would be blasphemy, I mean it's the SNES/NES Challenge, not the SNES/NES Platformer Challenge.

Posted: Dec 12 2011 02:23 am

How about listing all the games and challenges at once then giving players 10 weeks to do them? Some people just don't like certain games so maybe they don't want (or have the time) to put in the effort to learn how to play the game. Giving them an achievement style list would let them focus on the ones they actually want to play first and then, possibly, try the others later.

As for games, Ghandi's suggestion is pretty good, see which ones had the biggest turnout, pick similar titles. Go foreign, get some European or Japanese only releases, stuff many here may have not played before. Some games have level builders, how about a 2-phase deal where everyone builds a level and the best of the group is played for a score/time challenge.

You could give out prizes, non-monetary of course, just simple things like the winners name shows up in gold for a year or let them pick Not Sure's next conquest.

Posted: Dec 12 2011 01:37 pm

I think it is fine the way it has been run in the past. The only idea I have is to have those involved in the competition play some part in choosing the games (not the challenge for the game itself) that we would be playing. Maybe do the sign up earlier, then close sign ups so no one else can enter and have a discussion with those in the competition regarding what games we would like to play. It could be a way to keep participation up if we were playing more games competitors enjoy.

Posted: Dec 12 2011 02:00 pm

I like atom's idea of having the entrants have some say in the games to increase participation, but I don't think we should lock out people. I think people should be able to compete in as many or as few challenges as they want whether or not they signed up when it began.

The main thing you need to figure out is what the goal is. Is it to increase participation as much as possible, or make it so that more people have a legitimate shot at winning the whole thing?

If it's to increase participation, then something like Douche's idea where you have it an ongoing contest with about a month to put together a run would work. It would be a much more casual, behind-the-scenes contest. It wouldn't be such a hardcore competition, and people would have an easier time finding time to actually play the games. I do think a set up like that dulls the competitive edge to it quite a bit, but maybe that's not a bad thing.

If you want to change the Challenge to make it so that more competitors have a legit chance at winning the whole thing, then the basic set up can remain, but some scoring or structure changes would have to happen. I talked to you guys already about possibly having two games a week in which people can only enter a run for one of them. Each game gets it's own 1st-8th place, meaning there are two 10 point runs awarded a week. This would also help participation because if there's a game someone really hates or is just not good at, then they don't have to play it. This means they'll have fewer "wasted" weeks and have a better chance at staying competitive. Allowing input into which games to play, as atomjacked suggested, would also help here because it increases the chance that at least one of the games that week would be playable for that person.

I think we need fewer "long" weekly Challenges. I like runs to be in the 3-8 minute range. It allows me to actually practice games if I have 20 minutes to kill. When the runs are "Get the highest score" on a relatively easy game (Arkanoid, for example), having to do multiple half hour runs is just too much of a time killer. I didn't participate much in the SNES Challenge partly because I just couldn't invest so much time in some of the challenges. High score challenges are fine, but put some kind of limit to increase the difficulty so that the winning run doesn't have to be 40 minutes just to place in the Top 3. Or make it "Highest score in 5 minutes" or something. Those are fun Challenges because it's so much easier to find time to actually practice and record runs.

I've told you guys some other ideas in the chat, but I wanted to hear people's opinions on these.

Oh wait, my biggest suggestion is prohibiting people from Quebec from competing. Thanks for listening.

Posted: Dec 12 2011 11:51 pm

Douche's idea is not bad. and the winner of a certain month's competition can choose the next challenge.