If you haven't been keeping up with our 5th Casual Gameplay Design Competition, you should know that most of the games have gone through several updates based on feedback received since we rolled them out last week. So, you really owe it to yourself to check out the latest upgraded versions.
And now we invite everyone to take part by voting for your favorite(s). Each finalist is represented by its icon along with a "vote" button next to it. The vote button will take you to a PayPal donation form where you may donate $1 (USD) or more to the respective game. (You do not need a PayPal account to vote, PayPal accepts credit cards as well.)
We are limiting voting to only those who donate as it discourages ballot stuffing. And besides, it's only a dollar, so please show some support for all the effort these talented designers put forth for you to enjoy. No one is obligated to vote, and all we are asking for is a single dollar from each of you.
At the end of the competition (April 7th), all of the votes will be tallied and the game that receives the most community votes will be awarded the Audience Prize of $500!
All proceeds* from the vote donations will go directly to each respective game designer(s). Of course you may donate more than a dollar when you vote, though your vote will still count as just one vote. (*Your donation less any fees PayPal deducts prior to our receiving it. For reference: PayPal takes $0.33 from a one-dollar donation, but only $0.45 from a five-dollar donation.)
The deadline to vote is Sunday, April 6, 2008 at 11:59 PM (GMT-4:00).
To cast your vote, simply use the PayPal ("Vote") link next to the game icon you wish to vote for, and then enter your donation amount in the PayPal form. "Vote for this game" links have also been added to the competition page for each entry. Thank you kindly for your anticipated contributions of support!
Total from voting... $437.34!
Not quite the level of support we've seen in previous competitions. Our sincerest thanks to everyone who voted and for your kind support of these competitions!
The site doesn't work in Safari 2. The information for the first game you click on doesn't load until after you click on a second game, and the games don't load at all.
Safari 3.0.4, however, works fine.
Thanks for the bug report, Peter.
I don't have access to a Safari v2 machine, so I guess we won't be supporting it. The site should work in that browser with Javascript turned off.
Jay, didn't you also say that the number of times a game is played is being tallied? How are you using those numbers? Well, I'm off to vote!
Yes, dsrtrosy.
For CGDC5, in addition to the audience prize, we have also introduced the Viral Award to be given to the game designer that gets their game played the most.
The Viral award is designed to reward one enterprising individual who is best able to leverage the viral nature of the Web by spreading their game entry to other sites and game portals.
Contrast that with the Audience award given to the designer who receives the most votes from the JIG community (voting links are published only on this site).
Gotcha! I thought I'd be able to host games on my blog, but I haven't been able to set it up. Darn. Still, I have been promoting my fave games and the JIG site!
You know, I really hate to say it, but I don't like any of the games this time around.
That's a shame because there's plenty here to like.
It would be nice if put a little "Updated" next to each, like you did last competition.
Once again, I can't vote. I liked it when voting was free, but I respect the needs of the server and jayisgames team, I'm not complaining. Thanks for inspiring all these great games though. :)
Voting never was free. Enjoy your free games.
Once again I would urge JIGsters to also donate a bit to JIG and team. They don't get any revenue from this competition, just some attention, despite all of the hard work that they (and especially Jay) do.
[ If that doesn't convince you, then count Jay's fancy new game interface as a game in itself. If you liked it, give a little "thank you" back :) ]
I agree wholeheartedly, Haphazard. Like I said in another post (although joking at the time) the JIG team should get a special Audience Award, and I plan on doing my part towards that when I'll have money to vote. :-D
I really really like Super Energy Apocalypse! I just wanted to say that.
Hmmm, maybe I should actually play some of those other games now... ;)
Jay, why don't you add a button to donate to the JIG team? I don't think anyone would mind.
Good luck to everyone! :D
I agree, Jay. You do amazing work, and provide us with more games than we could ever play in a lifetime and a half!
Helmaroc--you can "vote" by replaying your favorites. I am playing dRive several times a day because I love it, but also because I'd like to see it win something.
Hey thanks dsrtrosy, it means a lot to me to hear that. :) If you'd like you can play dRive on nonoba.com where I've added badges for different achievements. Might as well get some shiny badges to show for all the playing you do. ;)
If you do get a profile on nonoba, make sure to send me (axcho) a PM so I can tell you the secret easter egg to get the Digger badge. :D
Actually, dsrtrosy makes an excellent point. If you for whatever reason don't want to or can't vote via Paypal and donate money, go play your favourite game(s) as much as you can, and maybe on different sites. It will all help your favourite in the run to get the Viral award.
From the article above:
"Total from voting so far... $116.62 And we're just getting started! I know we can do better! If you want these competitions to continue, then we need your support!"
I'm confused by this statement. Are we supporting the developers, or this website? What does "if you want these competitions to continue" imply? I was under the impression that our donations were going directly to the game developers, and if that's the case, I'm going to be happy to donate. However, if it's just supporting the website, then I'm sorry, but that's very misleading.
I fully plan on donating if it goes to the developers, but would appreciate clarification on this issue.
Phoenix00017 - I apologize if my call for support for these competitions is misleading to you. The fact that all proceeds from voting go directly to the respective game designer(s) hasn't changed.
I am simply suggesting that if the JIG community would like to see more of these competitions, then we need to see a show of support in the form of votes and donations (to the game developers of this competition).
Therefore, without support the competitions may be no more.
I hope that's clear and not misleading at all.
Ah, wonderful. Thanks for the response! In that case, I'll be posting my votes/donations shortly. :)
By the way, that's not to say that I don't want to support your wonderful website as well, but in this particular case I wanted to see exactly where the donations were going. Thanks for the awesome site and the fantastic design competitions.
Thank you! ^_^
And thanks to everyone for all the kind words of support!
As for donations to the site, while we appreciate that very much, we would prefer it if your donations go to the developers participating in our latest competition.
Yes, the competitions are a lot of work and effort to host and administrate. And yet if we don't create a positive experience for the developers participating, then what's the incentive to participate ever again?
I would prefer it if my donation went to a developer aswell - instead of one third of a dollar vote going to Paypal - the greedy so and so's.
i voted for the last canopy. but i wish i could afford to have donated more than ten bucks. they deserve it.
Wow Sloth, thanks so much for the encouragement! People like you make us glad that we took the effort to churn out the game. 10 bucks is already a lot of money, so we really appreciate the support :)
I gave some to M.I.L.O
It was the only one that captured my attention for me to come back to multiple times.
Awesome job M.I.L.O!
Jay, I respect your decision on wanting us to donate to the developers instead. But I would like to note, that I think that those of us who are willing to donate a little money to your site, would also be donating to their favourite games as well. One does not exclude the other. And as far as I myself go, I'd definitely send money both your way and the developers way.
Like you say, there would be no incentive for developers to participate if the JIG team did not work hard on creating a positive experience. And you have done so for all the CGDCs, but this one in particular. And I personally think all that hard work for the last 5 competitions deserve a financial reward. We don't have donate big amounts of money, maybe just 5 dollars or something like that, like you'd donate to the developers.
But should you stand firm on receiving no donations for the website, know that you have the deepest respect and admiration of myself and others, I'm sure.
Thanks, ThemePark, that means a lot to me and the team. :)
On a related note, one kind soul just donated $200 to the audience prize today.
Here's a challenge: If another person donates $100 or more (to the audience prize), we will match that amount, dollar for dollar.
HOLY CRAP! thats amazing. i wish i could do something like that.
I'm incredibly impressed by someone who is that generous... I was wonder what I would do with money if 70% did not go on rent.
On an evil cynical note - does $200 represent 200 votes or 1? I really hope the latter so that the whole process is not massively skewed. God I'm such a pessimist.
I assume we're talking $100 in total, and not for each of the entries you'd want to vote for?
Nevermind my last comment, that was a stupid question.
Edd - $200 represents only a single vote (for each game that was indicated in the distribution request). You can vote only once (1 vote) for each game in the competition regardless of how much you donate.
ThemePark - not a stupid question. Yes, I'm saying $100 in total, which may be distributed over several/all of the entries. :)
it seems the voting has bottomed out. though perhaps that happened a long time ago. 381.52 is a disappointing number in my opinion. i think people are being stingy. i mean come on! its only a buck!
Yeah, as a developer I am disappointed too. 381,52$ for now. Including a single 200$ donation and I guess there are many donations over 1$. That's less than 20$/game on average. Not too much votes either.
And when Jayisgames is giving away those plushies there are over 500 comments for a single plushie. Now where are you? I would love to see a huge number of votes giving us a signal that there are people who respect our (game devs) work.
Huge thanks to all voters so far - whichever game you voted for. Now everyone else, could you please start voting?
Part of this is that it's the third week. I've been watching my views and they have dropped this last week.
That may be why people aren't voting.
jorge
speaking of views, are developers allowed to share how many hits they have gotten? this is my first real published game, and i haven't even promoted much. i am BLOWN AWAY by the amount of traffic my game has seen so far.
its inanity.
Hey Jay,
Thanks for putting my skeptical mind at ease. The voting system makes alot more sense now.
I think the problem with the amount of voting is the following:
People don't like to spend small amounts of money on the web, even through paypal. It just does not seem to sit right, it is a real problem with the internet for me, and leads to me never really paying money for things like this (and games that you need to pay for). The silly thing is that if there was a tube for change that sent the change to the right place in the world to vote, I would have thrown a few coins down there now...
Does that make sense.
Someone should do that... a loose change internet site, where you chuck loose change into, and it appears in your account to just give away... any takers?
I'll stop rambling now...
Jay, first of all, you have once again out done yourself on a wonderful competition.
As a person who has played all the games in all of the competitions, it has been great to see what the extremely talented developers and designers have come up with. A big thanks goes to them for putting so much hard work and effort into these delightfully fun games.
However, I think most of us can agree that we need to tap into the vast number of people that play these games for donations to the audience prize. After thinking about this for a little while, here are my thoughts:
First, I don't think it would hurt if the competition got a little more coverage on the front page of this site. I think it was a little easy to forget there was a competition going on. One way this could happen is during the competition, the main banner would be a flash movie that would cycle through thumbnails of the current game, and a visitor could click on the game and be taken to play it. This could be enhanced in various ways, i.e. a cookie that remembers which games the user has played and would recommend games the user hasn't played yet. I realize even this suggestion is a lot of work, but I think it could make a big difference in the visibility that the flash games receive.
Second, I think that the flash games themselves should have some information embedded in them. One way for this to happen is if each game provided a link (or perhaps that same flash animation of cycling games found in the aforementioned banner) so people playing one game would be linked to play another game from the same competition. If all developers had to have that clip in their game it would benefit all of the developers.
Third, I think you should open up the audience voting page at the very beginning of the competition, and have each game link to that audience voting prize page. People who just come upon one of these entries would be much more likely to vote right after playing the game rather than later on, and thus I feel the audience prize would be significantly bigger.
Anyhow, those are just a few thoughts of mine, meant to be constructive of course. Jay, as I have said before, you have done an awesome job, and these thoughts only arise from a job very well done.
Thanks a ton Jay+game developers! I hope that there is a new competition in the not too distant future.
i don't have pay pal to vote but i love! tricked out trailer!
I agree that the voting totals are somewhat disappointing, but then again, I also felt that the games were pretty disappointing this round (which seems to be a shared sentiment among many other regular commenters). Comparing this contest with "Grow" or my favorite, "Replay", I find just one truly polished and compelling game (The Last Canopy) in "Upgrade" as opposed to many creative, unique entries in the earlier competitions. And this was even with an extra couple of weeks to finish things up!
That, more than anything, is why I didn't vote with larger amounts of money. I just didn't find much that I liked enough to vote for! I wish I knew why too, since the value of the prizes is significantly higher now than it was before, and I would have thought there would be a corresponding rise in the game quality. I know that the developers put forth honest efforts to create enjoyable games in a limited time-frame, but it's hard for me to see how the lot is deserving of nearly $7000 in total prizes.
Finally, I second the suggestion for a temporary front page banner during the competition. It was a pain to navigate back to the competition, and I also never saw any of the updates and pleas for voting on the front page, which was probably another factor keeping it low.
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