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  •   over 7 years ago

Winner Announcement Date disappointment

Dear Archiact Jam Team,

First of all thanks a lot to all of you for your time and efforts to organize this great competition! Great respect to all of you who significantly help VR to envolve!

I know it is a difficult and responsible task to judge the submited games. It is in our all interest that the judging team should have enough time to give a decission without any time pressure.
So i don't really want to be the guy moaning arround BUT giving the fact that one of the awards is a demo space at the CVR 2016, wich is hosted on the 14.5., it is impossible for most international competitors to get there when we get the winner decission on the 13.5.
I don't know how others thought about it but as an indie developer it would be a pleasure for me to demonstrate my work personally at an exhibition if i had the chance to, but a flight to canada takes arround 23 hours for me.

So just a humble request for future jams: please give us more time buffer between the winner announcement and the award event date.

Greetings from Vienna

  • 4 comments

  •   •   over 7 years ago

    According to the legal terms that we and Archiact have agreed to, winning game will receive:
    "(a) One (1) exhibition space at Consumer Virtual Reality 2016 to demo the winning game."

    CVR 2016 is happening today, 5/14/2016 and the winners have not been announced. Regardless, because the winners were not announced as per the last two judging deadlines (meanwhile I was able to make a VIDEO of every entry in the first week) Archiact will be unable to award the prize described in the legal document.

    Unfortunately, Archiact is covered on their announce date in the legal terms:
    "3.2 Final Round. Contestants must submit all materials by the designated "Submission 3" deadline. The final round will consist of judging, and winners will be announced within 30 business days of Submission 3."

    In the HackWithMe Jam hosted by IMVU, contestants had to file a class action law suit against IMVU because they did not award the prizes as legally required. Hopefully Archiact either remedies this situation, as they cannot award their prize in the legal document CVR is today and winners have not been announced.

    Furthermore, it's a bit offensive to ask us developers to work for 1 Month plus for these "prizes" but if we are 1 hour late for a submission we are disqualified, however the for the administration it's okay to be multiple weeks late (repetitively missing deadlines). It makes us feel like you don't value our time or effort whatsoever, if we make a 1-month commitment with our time we expect at least a few minutes of gameplay in return.

  •   •   over 7 years ago

    Lo Ryan,

    I can totally understand your frustration but better calm down mate :)
    We are all just humans and we make mistakes. I read the Archiact team apologized for their fault underrating the work efforts needed for judging the submissions and the resources the CVR would consume.

    I think that both sides learned a lot of things during this competition!

  •   •   over 7 years ago

    I'm more frustrated for other contestants and indie devs than myself. I'm guessing most people (other than you) are too afraid they might not win the prize if they speak up, so I'm doing it. I'm not personally upset it's just a matter of principal.

    A significant prize of exposure was offered to upcoming struggling Indies in exchange for 4 weeks of labor. Competition host and contestants agreed to legal terms before committing. Prized listed in legal terms was not delivered. That warrants a bit more than an apology.

    I know the amount of time and effort it takes to judge all the submissions, as I'm probably the only other person who played every single entry. Trust me, it's not that much work. Regardless, as a business when you make a legal commitment it's important to take the necessary effort to uphold your terms.

  •   •   over 7 years ago

    Been following up with them. Poor managing I guess. Lack of updates/transparency.

    Been tweeting them and also on Facebook page. Here's the response from the fb page

    "Hello Erwin!

    We are working hard to judge all of the entries, and hope to have an answer by the end of next week!"

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