[Bullhorn]

REVISED &  SIMPLIFIED.
A suggestion for Annual awards for the FS community, to encourage and acknowledge good work and ideas that deepen and enrich the FS universe.
The ALPHA Awards

• Campaign - Team creation
• Campaign - Solo creator
• Single Mission (overall)
• Model
• Use of FRED

BH

[Rodo]

No we don't have that kind of stuff, but it could be a good idea to implement to bolster fredding and content creation.

[est1895]

+1

[Lorric]

Axem's newsletters have tracked all this stuff, what has been created this year. It could be done if you can find someone to sample everything once the year is out.

[headdie]

hmm, I think this would have to be carefully planned out.  the modeling contest this year proved that these can be very beneficial to the community but there are a number for things to take into account.

1) unless something goes badly wrong, a BP, Inferno, Diaspora, WCS release will almost certainly floor the rest of the of the community's work in most categories for that year due to the level of skill and prominence of those teams, i mean heck there are significant FSO improvements in the engine because there were requested by those teams (possible exception to WCS there).

2) how will you maintain momentum between years for the organisation of the competition?

3) how will you ensure releases early in the cycle will still be fairly judged compared to stuff released closer to the closing date when the memory has faded?

I am sure others will probably think of other things.  As i mentioned before this could be very good but it needs careful planning, yada yada yada.

[MatthTheGeek]

(possible exception to WCS there).

You just won the euphemism award.

[Bullhorn]

1) unless something goes badly wrong, a BP, Inferno, Diaspora, WCS release will almost certainly floor the rest of the of the community's work in most categories for that year due to the level of skill and prominence of those teams, i mean heck there are significant FSO improvements in the engine because there were requested by those teams (possible exception to WCS there).

Very true. That's one reason why I included the stand-alone mission category - not everyone has the time for a full or mini campaign, but a good idea, executed well, can make a stand-alone mission stand out against a campaign.

So, it would be good to have a mix- the big team awards (maybe a seperate, specific category, so that it is teams up against teams) and then smaller, solo operaters.

2) how will you maintain momentum between years for the organisation of the competition?

Good point - there is also significant worry weather we generate enough material and teams progress enough to justify an annual awards. Thence, BI-annual might be better.
In terms of organisation, we could have two strings - The Coders Choice and the Community Awards.
The Coders' Choice could focus on more esoteric stuff, that only a limited number of people might understand or realise the ability/benefit of (lua scripting, coding, high-level fredding).
The Community Awards will be voted on through polls on the forums.

3) how will you ensure releases early in the cycle will still be fairly judged compared to stuff released closer to the closing date when the memory has faded?

It could be up to the creators to submit their stuff, maybe?
But the Coders' Choice could be more pro-active.

Thanks fro the feedback, appreciated.

[headdie]

no problem, glad it gave you something to think over

[Shivan Hunter]

Not unnecessary, I think it could help... but it definitely could be divisive. It's always better to think in terms of "these campaigns are good" rather than "this campaign is the best" (I used to be in the latter camp but in a community with so few campaign releases, there's no need to sort them, and it'd be intimidating for newcomers to be compared to the likes of BP or Diaspora).

The newsletter on the front page does an excellent job of being a comprehensive recap of modding/campaign news. Maybe the annual thing could be a brief summary of all the major releases.

[Axem]

I did a campaign recap for last year, and I'll probably do another one this year.

[Bullhorn]

I must say,  I'm a little surprised at the even split in votes.
This discussion is healthy,  don't get me wrong.
BH

[Rheyah]

So split it:

Team Campaign

Solo Campaign

Single Mission

[Bullhorn]

Good idea - simplify and clarify.

Adjusting OP.

BH

[General Battuta]

Absolutely no. It's taken years of work to start turning this community's mindset away from 'I will make the FreeSpace Threest mod.' and towards 'the more good mods cooperating with each other, the better we can all do.' No zero-sum contests.

[The E]

Oh god no.

By all means, do a release roundup section in the newsletter, but please no awards. Campaigns are far too subjective a thing to declare any one release to be the unequivocally best one of the year.

[Bullhorn]

Absolutely no. It's taken years of work to start turning this community's mindset away from 'I will make the FreeSpace Threest mod.' and towards 'the more good mods cooperating with each other, the better we can all do.' No zero-sum contests.

Fair enough. I certainly do appreciate the egalitarian ethos.
It's one reason why I'm surprised at the apparent tension between WCS and the rest of HLP.

Mods,  please delete this thread if it's deemed distracting or detrimental.

BH

[General Battuta]

No need to delete, it was a well-intentioned idea and it's always good to put these things up for discussion. The idea of formalized attention to and discussion of the year's releases is fantastic, and I bet you could do cool things with it (Axem has really been pushing this well).

The WCS/HLP thing is a shame. I think WCS made some mistakes that were ultimately detrimental to the quality of their final product (no checkpoints for instance), and I think these mistakes could've been avoided if they'd been in closer dialogue with the mainstream of HLP design work. At the same time, I totally understand why they needed to code fork, and it's a bummer that some clashing personalities led to real animosity.