Some of things I learned running the recent PACC2010 compo that could maybe help this compo and the next PACC if I ever run one again...
1.) No ports. Judges will rate a port higher than an original entry either because it looks more polished or plays nicer, but that doesn't always mean the author put as much effort in. The winner of the PACC2010 competition won using a SDL tutorial he found on the net and not one of the judges who judged this entry bothered to read the description saying exactly that or didn't bother to deduct points for originality which was one of the categories. In the end I had to award him the 1st place because it was no fault of his the judges didn't do their job properly... This will also work against devs who spent a massive amount of time and effort on a port just to have a judge say... pfft he just ported it... May as well just not include them in my opinion.
2.) Choose your judges carefully and before the competition starts. I was so desperate for judges at one point I was accepting people I had never heard of. Some of the judges didn't understand the criteria or just didn't care. All category points were out of 100 and I had some judges judging everything in the high 90s and others judging under 10. It really messed up the averages. Especially when the person judging everything in the 10s could have been a fan of a rival platform and was just doing so to slant the results.
3.) If you accept help with the webpage, make sure you have editing control. My webguy was a great help at the start but then was unable to update important info when requested, hard to contact and eventually vanished into the real world.
4.) Set deadlines for everything: entries, judging, results, file uploads and prize distribution. People get very upset when they feel things are being delayed around here...
5.) Get all judges to write a small review and feedback. I didn't even think about this until it was too late. The things devs crave more than anything in my opinion is feedback. What did you like about the game? What didn't you like? What could be improved, tweaked etc..
6.) Ask devs to ask in public for testers. Some stuff wouldn't work on certain version firm-wares or open firm wares etc..
7.) Multi-platform is tricky. Like I said in point 2, some judges judge high and others low, this will mess up the average scores if they only judge certain platforms...
8.) Ask devs to provide at least two screenshots of their entry in a set format and size to be decided by yourself.
9.) If people want to help, ask questions or need to contact you, make them email you on the competition email. You do not want to be trawling through five 20 page threads looking for people who offered to do stuff or asked questions.
10.) Provide entrants a questionnaire they need to fill out with vital info like: Who worked on this, real names, forum names, contact details, paypal adddress etc..
11.) Don't underestimate your competitions success, I started PACC2010 thinking I might be lucky to get 5 or 6 entries and a couple of hundred bucks in donations... I was overwhelmed at the response, something I started as a bit of fun became serious business very quickly... This is why I made it multiplatorm and open to any kind of entry, I didn't expect much.
That's all I can think of for now, If I think of anything else I will be sure to post...
This is what a judges scorecard looked like for the PACC2010. There was a slightly tweaked version for applications, emulators, games etc but all fairly similar.
