Five Secret Prizes have been offered...

[smack]

See Current Competitions for the results of this discussion...

We need a whole new brainstorming and framework discussion because:

Five (5!) Prizes have been offered to us to give away just a few days ago. We'll reveal what the prizes are, after we have designed and approved the competition (Sulla will approve). So lets have a short brainstorm and come up with a good competition. The prizes are small, but very rare

Some on staff have proposed a TWC-logo comptetion. Top 5 entries win prizes, with the best logo getting used all around the TWC website to boot.

Another proposal is to have 5 concurrent competitions, with the winner of each recieving a prize. That lets us have another essay competition, a graphics competition, etc..

So come forward with fresh or recycled proposals and we'll see if we can't get the Spoils of War distributed.......

[Atheist Peace]

I think the 5 concurrent competitions is a good idea, including a new essay competition. The logo thing would also be cool, but id really like to be able to redo that essay competition. It was a shame when it got cancelled and it would be nice to reconcile it.

[MoROmeTe]

5 concurent competition is OK with me with as long as there's a essay competition and I take part in it.

[Tom Paine]

I agree; 5 competitions, including an essay. The titles would have been fun, I joined way too late though....

[Atheist Peace]

i think there should be more essay topics than last time and they should be pretty open to abberation, not too much but there should be a lot of room for creativity and variation without penalty.

[Carousel]

Ok, so 5 concurrent competitions including an essay competition.

What about the other four?

Screenshots?
Wallpapers?
Music?
Fanfic/Story/Fictional writing?
Logo?
Mascot?
Signature?
Avatar?

[squeaky]

a wallpaper one would be good
I would like music, though I don't know if it is to that many people's abilities with that one, less competition.
the mascot one would be very amusing to see though, I'm sure a lot of very amusing entries would result from that.

[Tom Paine]

Certainly a fictional-type writing one, unless that was a title in the essay competition in which case it would be giving the same comp twice. The two could easily be collapsed into one, so people can write a factual-type essay or a fictional-type one.

[Carousel]

I would prefer to seperate factual and fictional writing. It would be difficult to judge since they are of differing style - one relies on imagination and the other relies on stone cold research and understanding.

As a disclaimer, this competition will be FOR the people and BY the people, hence any suggestions the staff make are just that guys - suggestions.

At the end of the day, it's entirely up to the majority. So get as many people involved as you can.

[Maximus I]

i would prefer a wallpaper or sig.

[the Black Prince]

given the amount of entries we actually recived for the essay competition, having 5 prizes for one comp may mean everyone gets a prize...

i also think tyou need to pay attention to scaling and proportionality here.

it may be that you end giving equal prizes away for winning competitions that require substantially less work and time from each other, and this, i tihnk, should be avoided.

my own idea is somewhat biased at the moment

write a document detailing how to bail out the Royal Navy and save it from the gross negligence of the labour government before our sailors have to pay the ultimate price for ministerial stupidity

sorry, i just read a disturbing article in Warships IFR (the International Fleet Review magazine) and i'm pre-occupied.

[Tom Paine]

How many people could answer that?

And of course, if 5 people entered it would make the judging easy....

[the Black Prince]

me, profler, madburgermaker... ummm, not sure who else, there are a few others here though...
certainly not blair brown or reid

if 5 people enter it kinda defeats the point of the competition...
but with the 1st essay comp, we had 28 entrants (i think) but only 6 entries, with 3 of those coming only after we extended the deadline

[Tom Paine]

However, you might get more this time especially if it is publicised in places like the Thema Devia main area. That is a place where many go, and many would enter from there. So put up an announcement there as well as having stuff here.

[Justinian]

If we have another essay competition will I be able to send in the same essay? Because I rather liked my entry and the essay competition never really got started right anyway.

[Bruticus the Steadfast]

I think 4 of 5 diffrent competitions. Have one "main" competition maybe. Such as the Essay one. Give 2 prizes to that one, then 1 each for the other three. Not all the members here will be able to write a good essay or whatever you choose if you do just one. Put out a few diffrent ones, and you can give alot of the people in the forum some sort of competition to enter.

[Carousel]

Yes Bruticus, good idea, I think it's unfair to limit it to one style of competition. We should give everyone a chance, artists, musicians, writers. We can get a LOT more people involved that way.

[bdh]

Why don't you just do a modding competition? Each prize for a different field: Scripting, skinning, etc.

[Carousel]

That would be really difficult to judge bdh. We need a competition where the average joe can look at it and say: 'wow, thats a nice piece of work'.

[Bruticus the Steadfast]

Well, you could give an award for the best vanilla unit mod maybe?

Like the best Legionary mod? something like that.

Some sorts of graphic competitions would be nice I think, such as the logo on. Maybe the best Avatar, or signature? Or maybe someone can come up with new group banners?