RMMV All IGMC2017 votes and results in a spreadsheet

[Talonos]

I'm not going to lie: I think you're on the right track, frogboy, but if you think you can take it easy because you have a simple concept/premise, you'll be disappointed.

We got third place, and our battle system is stupid simple, our plot is barely present, our graphics are RTP, and our enemies are near-identical. Even then, our team still worked a total of 240 hours in the final two weeks to polish and refine what we had. And that's what separated us from the others, I think. If we had gone for anything more ambitious, I think we wouldn't have had the time to bring it to the level of polish that would have let us win third. Our game was basically bug-free until you got to floor 11 or so (which typically doesn't happen until well after the first hour of the game.)

The trick is to find a relatively novel but also relatively simple core mechanic and then bust your rear end working on making it as good as it possibly can be. No amount of content in the world will help you if fail to polish what you already have. Proper scoping is critical.

Based on that, I'd say Frogboy is right. You don't get "bonus points" for doing something hard, you only get points for doing something fun. If the effort and complexity you invest increases the fun in the game, it's worth it. But doing something "challenging" just to see if you can and stretching the limits of the RPGM-MV engine just for the sake of it, while educational, won't score points. The effort could have been spent elsewhere.

(Not that I'm saying that's what you did. I haven't played your game, but I agree with your conclusion.)

 

[SinのAria]

I'm not going to lie: I think you're on the right track, frogboy, but if you think you can take it easy because you have a simple concept/premise, you'll be disappointed.

We got third place, and our battle system is stupid simple, our plot is barely present, our graphics are RTP, and our enemies are near-identical. Even then, our team still worked a total of 240 hours in the final two weeks to polish and refine what we had. And that's what separated us from the others, I think. If we had gone for anything more ambitious, I think we wouldn't have had the time to bring it to the level of polish that would have let us win third. Our game was basically bug-free until you got to floor 11 or so (which typically doesn't happen until well after the first hour of the game.)

The trick is to find a relatively novel but also relatively simple core mechanic and then bust your rear end working on making it as good as it possibly can be. No amount of content in the world will help you if fail to polish what you already have. Proper scoping is critical.

Based on that, I'd say Frogboy is right. You don't get "bonus points" for doing something hard, you only get points for doing something fun. If the effort and complexity you invest increases the fun in the game, it's worth it. But doing something "challenging" just to see if you can and stretching the limits of the RPGM-MV engine just for the sake of it, while educational, won't score points. The effort could have been spent elsewhere.

(Not that I'm saying that's what you did. I haven't played your game, but I agree with your conclusion.)

@Frogboy @Talonos I'd actually disagree somewhat. You might not get bonus points for doing something hard by itself, but it can give you 'bonus points' if it affects how the game plays out. The main issue I saw in almost all the entries was polish.

(And speak for yourself about typical ;P)

Look at Rock and Rose, it had a more technical aspect, but it still did well.

Look at Final Winter. It wasn't the most fun, but for what it was, it did it well.

Look at Recondite. Sure, it wasn't the best, but it had a few things most other games didn't have.

Look at Yomotsu. It was probably the simplest mechanically of all the winners (excluding maybe Wonderdog), but they took what they had and (for the most part), made it fun.

In honesty, POLISH and FUN were probably the most key in this contest. Was your game FUN to play? Was what you had POLISHED? I mean, my love for Polish over Hot Dogs aside.

Look at Rock and Rose and Yomotsu. No sprawling maps, no extremely convoluted storyline, just a lot of focus on making the gameplay interesting.

Look at Final Winter and Recondite. Much bigger maps, more convoluted storyline, but the gameplay was still (for the most part) polished.

Could an even more technical game have won? Sure. There were a lot of close ones that fell short ONLY due to the lack of polish. A lot of simple games actually failed screening or did very poorly because they weren't fun.

You don't even need to know how we score. You just need to remember. WHAT makes a good game? Two reading examples:

https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131472/game_design__theory_and_practice_.php
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_design

 

[Archeia]

We mentioned this multiple times in Discord, but POLISH and PLAYABILITY is a huge deal for contest games. You can have a good concept but if we can't play it (for example RIP Jen's cafe and Soultel for killing my hopes and dreams, I really wanted to play them more) then of course we have to score them lower. Or worse, Disqualified because virtually unplayable.

 

[Ennacrima]

Sin, a missing vote can't be count as 0. It would lead to unreadable results.
If a judge gives 60 to a game, but the game didn't pass the round, the average value of the game is not 60, 0, 0, 0 but just 60 fot that single judge. It would raid the score of the judge and lower it's value near to zero, wich is not ideally true.

The average tab is to be compared with the number of votes the game have, or it can lead to misreading.
Is't not the number to be wrong, is the prespective used to read the data that could do mystakes.

 

[ProGM]

@Talonos If you say like that, you haven't played other games ^^'

I mostly disagree with your evaluations. I think that the right answer is a good balance of all elements.

My team won some prize in both pasts IGMCs (3rd place with Little Briar Rose in IGMC2014, Best Platform with Oh! I'm Getting Taller! in IGMC2015), and this taught us something different.

Little Briar Rose was a game with an extremely simple mechanic, with a great focus on art and dialogues. No bugs, but no innovation.
I think LBR got a prize mostly for the WOW effect of the art, more than other factors.

Oh! I'm Getting Taller! was a game with a really clunky platform (it was the first time I tried to make a platform game, so it was not polished at all), but with strong focus visual impact and on being coherent with narrative.
Again, even if the mechanics were far from perfect, other factors and the "awwww~" effect of the storytelling compensate it.


Journey to the East was too ambitious on mechanics (making a rhythm game was REALLY a pain). And on art (we tried to use a difficult Chinese art style). And on narrative (humor, animated cut-scenes). And everything. The result was a "Cool! But..." effect. And I think this is a TERRIBLE effect for a contest. It means that the "good" stuff could not hide the "bad" ones.


So... no, I think that there are a lot of factors that can take your game to victory. There is not a single formula.
Not only polishing, not only "FUN" (that means nothing, itself... Fun can be originality, fun is complexity, fun is gambling. There are lot of way to create "fun")

It's like for stats in a video game: your average score on all aspects should be high, with no low parameters. And if you have, the good ones should be GREATLY above bad ones.
Then I think you'll have chance to win.

 

[SinのAria]

Sin, a missing vote can't be count as 0. It would lead to unreadable results.
If a judge gives 60 to a game, but the game didn't pass the round, the average value of the game is not 60, 0, 0, 0 but just 60 fot that single judge. It would raid the score of the judge and lower it's value near to zero, wich is not ideally true.

The average tab is to be compared with the number of votes the game have, or it can lead to misreading.
Is't not the number to be wrong, is the prespective used to read the data that could do mystakes.

I mean that works for your personal average, but not for your contest average.

My point being that people are looking at the results too literally.

 

[Frogboy]

By definition, games that pretty much do what the engine was designed to do are going to be more POLISHED and easier to PLAY. That POLISH comes right out of the box with RPG Maker and that's a ton of work that a developer can skip and use in other areas (is there a reason why everyone is screaming these two words?). If you get no points for this, and everyone is seemingly in agreement on this, then don't do it. It's a bad road to take. It won't help you and it will most likely only hurt you. Thus, my advice to the community and change of plans for next year. I don't really get why this is a controversial statement.

I don't have a Discord account. I'm only here in the forums so I didn't get the memo. I know now so I'll just stick this in the back of my mind for next year.

Again, I'm not saying that my game deserved to win. I made mistakes that certainly should have killed my chances. But if you guys really liked the joke and troll games better than my entry, I can give you one of those.

Probably two.

 

[SinのAria]

In all honesty, if you took something right out of the box, it probably wasn't fun to play despite any inherent 'polish' (also, that isn't true considering MV was really made for mobile devices, not Windows).

What ended up doing well was games that took what came out of the box, made the software their own, and then polished it. Look at several of the top games. It might not look like it, but there was a lot of inherent polish on top of some modifications.

 

[Frogboy]

Are you saying that RPG Maker can't make a fun game right out of the box?


Just messin' with ya.