Discussion on Contest Judging

Just test the maps longer and let the maps speak for themselves

 

That's how I would do it

 

People / Judges opinions will always vary and have some sort of bias, even if it is a tiny amount. That's human nature, but these ratings wouldn't only be good for matchmaking. They would provide fundamental feedback to the forge creator's without the judge's having to add manual "Here is what I think about your map" comments to every one they test. These ratings should be on every map judged in any contest to provide a transparency of why their map was eliminated early on or not. The harshness of the scoring would be per judge and should be a bit less lenient in round one of the contests. Performance (frame rate) should be a category or a heavily weighted factor as most people won't enjoy playing the map if it stutter's no matter how good it looks or flows.

Most importantly, judges for contests should be required to avoid viewing of any maps ahead of time and the name of the creator of the map should not be disclosed to the judges until they have play tested the map. People have a tendency to appreciate / have bias to a familiar name, also people watching the stream of a contest will be highly put off if judges mention excitement towards particular creator's maps in advance or just before it loads. Not that their friend's or known forger's name mean the judge is being biased as certain people's works will always be better than the mass of generic forge maps submitted.

 

While I agree with most of this, since Hammerfall was my first judging opportunity, I think it's best to share what I intended on being as transparent as possible during the judging process.

There are several things I love/hate about contests. Contests are fun to see what comes from them, someone will become butthurt because of the decisions that were made, and being transparent about the process is really difficult to achieve.

So the first step in regarding how I wanted the contest to be judged, was put everything on a Trello board. While it was hosted on another site, I believe hosting the contest results in live fashion on Trello was a great move. That way everyone can see the changes as they happen. Plus there's historical data that can be seen behind it. Overall, that's a plus.

Getting the judges to work together in different timezones and their schedules WAS difficult. I know everyone has lives outside of Forge/Halo, but working on judging panel can be stressful. With Hammerfall, since it was mostly a aesthetic contest, it was a bit easier. As for the Extermination contest, the ATN guys have been doing an outstanding job weeding out the non playable maps due to DQ's and such. Now gameplay, that's gonna be fun. I personally still need to get through the first round of those.

Back to the human factor and opinions with the judging. I personally thought the selection of maps was all over the place regarding the Hammerfall selections. And I do agree some of the maps that weren't in the top selections could have avoided being not selected if some other percentage or ratio was implemented. But when you get down to it, the people who picked the maps regardless of their selections, that was their choice. I picked my choices in that contest based from a forgers standpoint. I went for the piece usage, minimal, best looking, etc. If was overly complicated and didn't portray the idea, then my opinion it wasn't what I was looking for. As for the other judges, I don't what they were basing their choices on. It's really hate on someone for their opinion. Whether or not it's a good one, it's still theirs.

 

I am the only unbias human capable of judging

 

You're full of ****.

 

As long as Given wins I am unbias.


I'm also extremely loyal to Forgehub. That being said, if my loyalty is valued more somewhere else like Beyond...then I will go where my loyalty is valued.

 

Something you could do at the beginning of contests when you announce judges is have each judge post a small paragraph talking about what they're looking for.

For example:
@Nitro - "I'm judging from a forger's standpoint - impress me with creative piece usage, nerdy jumps, and visual polish."
@MultiLockOn - "I'm favoring maps that do something new with FPS level design, disable sprint through clever scripting, and are made by Forgers with names that rhyme with "FlivenToGuy."

Basically embrace the fact that judges have their own standpoints, but give people a little bit of chance to see what they those standpoints are. Overlap is totally fine between judges, too, and it shows agreement on what's important in the contest.

(And Multi, I really only tried on that first one - I'm sure you have higher standards )

 

Except the definition of "best map" is subjective to each judge, which means the contest will be be finding the best map *according to the judges.*

All I'm saying is make that visible.