Well as you have asked, here is my thoughts on the matter... oh, you did not ask? Bummer, well as I have already begun writing this...
(This is just me rambling, you may skip it entirely if you don't have some extra spare time and want to read me ranting.
Text formatting only applied to make it more read-able, especially when you are just scanning over the text)
If I were to organize another competition (having helped a bit in the pre-RTTC set-up),
I would not allow any unfinished work or "demos" to be submitted as the final entry
as well as not allow prior-work (for similar reasons).
The reasoning behind that is simple, you get something unfinished, maybe playable, maybe not and cannot be sure whether it ever reaches its fully potential, yet you possibly award it something.
Looking at the RTTC you can see only 3 of the final winning entries can be considered "finished" at the time of submission namely AAAA, Shootet and Puzzletube (with only AAAA and Shootet considered finished by the creators), Paper Wars is in a tricky spot where the core gameplay is clearly visible and can be fully explored, but the creators obviously don't think that's enough as the rough edges are clearly visible. Also kudos for keeping working on this project up to this point (and hopefully in the future, it certainly looks promising!).
Of the remaining entries 3 more are finished (Daff's Adventure, Geek 'em up and El tesoro del dragón) - all the others were left unfinished (with most of them up to this point - and yes, I am very much putting the blame on myself here, too).
In my eyes that is a disastrous result, but what if one were to actually go by my rules and exclude unfinished projects, only those 6 would remain(?)
I actually don't think so, LD48 and the finished entries show you can actually create a full game in a short timeframe, it just boils down to planning your time, staying motivated and KEEPING IT SMALL (probably the number one point of failure).
You could argue that competitions give a huge boost in motivation and winning even more, so when one disallows unfinished projects, people will just not start.
Maybe that is correct,
competitions are not a good source for great uber-projects anyway (as those need more time). Small side-projects on the other hand are perfect for this and this is what one should expect, the devs taking some time off to explore a simple, small idea in its fully potential, not attempting to create an open world RPG in three months.
You just need to make the devs aware of this (LD48 does this perfectly) so they can plan accordingly and don't overextend like some of us apparently did (yeah I am bad with planning, just look at my three "small" game projects with over 3 years of development time).
Don't take a competition as a start to work on a big project you always wanted to do, if you really want to do that you eventually will in any case (and if you don't or abandon your project half-way-through, maybe it was not worth exploring anyway?).
Look through your pile of idea and select a small one you can experiment on for a month and maybe turn it into a FULL game in the given timeframe. Select something procedurally generated, not a huge hand-built open world, select a 2D side-scroller, not a 3D FPS, go with compelling gameplay, not lots of narrative, etc.
Starting with an existing project is something similar, it just gives you that unfair advantage and if you really like that project you will finish it anyway, you don't need an extra push to do so (and if you do, maybe that project is not so special after all - game developers throw away tons of seemingly interesting prototypes on a regular basis). It's a harsh thing to say, but that's the way I see it, feel free to disagree.
I like how Archibald and Dragons_Slayer approach that: Don't enter, but concentrate on the deadline anyway, make it a present to the community and if you succeed and create a good game, maybe some donations will make up for your "loss of a potential price".
Lastly, allowing ports and new creations in the same pool is a bad decision in my eyes.
Usually because porting, too, gives you an extra advantage on the term of how much visible work (to the user) was put into it.
Creating an new game is a lot of work, but in a short timeframe the final product might look rough around the edges, which is to be expected. A ported game on the other hand already will look great and in most cases you got to be really lazy to make it look like a bad port (exceptions on the other hand, where a lot of work is required, apply obviously: Lugaru took Pickle a lot of effort to convert, lunixbochs, ZXDunny and a few others put a lot of extra effortin their ports to make sure they fit the target system as best as possible).
It's even worse with porting an emulator, this will instantly give users access to a lot of games and if you would have to weigh 1000 new old games vs. 1 new original game (which might even lack polish), the decision is easy.
Case in point QEmu, which already is handled like the official winner for some and keeps other developer from even starting and puts mcobit in that tricky spot where he gets praise from the one crowd of people and evil looks from some others.
Judging on how much "work" has flown into a project simply does not work as the layman cannot see how much work has flown into a project (about the same amount of work has flown into Puzzletube and Schizophrenia, but the former clearly was the better game).
Then do you judge what brings the most benefit to the community? Well then we can stop here and declare QEmu the winner
It's a tricky and hard thing to judge and in my eyes the best solution is to split the entries into two categories: original work and ports.
This however will either double the cost of the compo or lower the amount of places awarded prizes to, both not optimal...
Anyway, this is my point on the matter... it obviously does not change anything in the running compo, but as I began this with "If I were to organize another competition..."
PS: Schizophrenia is being finished eventually, promise. (just don't ask me for a date)
