What is it?

A contest where each participant will submit a review written about any piecepack game

If a game you want to review has feedback on its wiki page or at least one review on its BGG page, then you have to choose a second game to review that has no feedback in its wiki page nor reviews on its BGG page. Only when the review to the second game has been submitted, will the review of the first be considered valid.

If the game you want to review has no BGG page, then feel free to create it first (or geekmail me and I'll do it for you if you want)

Here's a list of piecepack games that already have a BGG page:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist.php3?action=view&listi...

Here's a link to a page on the piecepack wiki with all the games listed by number of players:
http://www.ludism.org/ppwiki/NumberOfPlayers

And here's a link to the official piecepack web site where you can download free pdfs to make your own piecepack set:
http://www.piecepack.org

Once you decide what game you'll be reviewing, geekmail me, and tell me what game you chose, so that others don't take the same game. Also, if for any reason, you won't be completing/posting your review, tell me so that I can "free up" the game you chose.

I'll publish the games to this geeklist which will have all the games, and as reviews are posted, the links to them too:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/29294

How does it work?

Once you choose and confirm your game, you have to play it for a while. The more you play it, the better your review will be. Then at some point before the deadline, you should write your review and post it to the game's BGG page. You can post it to other sites too if you want (like the piecepack wiki, for example). Please, when you do, send me a link to your review.

In order to be accepted into the contest, the review must have at least 1000 words.

And how will it be judged?

Once a review is up, it will quite possibly gather thumbs, geekgold and comments from other users. Each user on BGG that has an avatar can vote with their thumbs up (one vote per user. A user that thumbs both the thread and the post will count as 1 point). Also, each BGG user with an avatar can offer 1 tip of at least 1 geekgold to only one review to state that it's the one they think is best (this of course is voluntary). If more than one tip is given by the same person, only the biggest tip will be taken into account. The others will be ignored. Each valid tip will count as 4 points/thumbs.

This way each user with an avatar can give 1 point/thumb to any review they like, and 5 points/thumbs to just 1 review they like best. BTW, users can participate as judges without knowing about the contest.

Also, I'll scan the comments about all the reviews, and if people reading a review have found problems like rules mistakes, or other stuff that invalidates some or all of the review's statements, I'll substract points from its score (generally one point per wrong statement).

BTW, thumbs or geekgold offered by the writer of a review won't count. And geekgold received through the process of geekmod won't count either.

So, what's the prize?

The winner will get a laser engraved piecepack set from RamalamaS (the ones I make and sell) like this one:



Sent for free by mail to any part of the world.

The runner up will get one dice tower from RamalamaS with the piecepack logo on the front of the tower:


http://flickr.com/photos/makageorge/2223291899/in/set-721576...

If anyone wants to offer more prizes contact me and I'll add them here.

I reserve the right to cancel the competition and send no prize if not enough reviews are submitted. I'd say at least 5 reviews should be enough.

Who can participate?

Any BGG user from any part of the world may participate as an entrant.

Any BGG user that has an avatar displayed on their user profile when the time to count the votes comes, can participate as a judge (of course, anyone can thumb and tip the reviews, but only the ones from users with an avatar will be counted for the contest).

What about deadlines?

I will be accepting new entries until 2008-04-20, 23.59h GMT. That's 2 months to create the reviews.

The time to add new entries has ended. I will let the current entries in the contest even though most of them have been late. Please, try to publish your reviews as soon as possible

I will tally all the points and announce the results on: 2008-05-20, 23.59h GMT.

Why?

I think new game designers need feedback for their games. Feedback is more important than winning some contest. Feedback is what makes games better. Feedback is what makes designers design better games.

I love the piecepack system (I wouldn't be making them otherwise) and I think in contrast to the big number of games available for the system, there's very little feedback for the games.

That's why I created this competition. To give an incentive for people to write reviews about piecepack games. That's all.

Questions?

Feel free to ask questions on this thread and I'll try to answer/clarify any doubts or problems.

Update: I was asked if one participant can submit more than one review. The answer is yes. The more reviews we produce with this contest the better. Just try to keep up the quality

Update2:

I'll remind everyone that the goal of this contest is to promote games that are not very well known and have slipped under the radar. I'd ask anyone that chooses a well known game (even if it doesn't have feedback on BGG and hasn't participated in any of the contest) to take a second unknown game to compensate. Thanks a lot.

Update 4

I've been looking at some of the past contest entries and it seems many don't have any feedback at all in the wiki.

I'm changing the rules so that every piecepack game is eligible for the contest but if you choose a game that has feedback on its wiki page or at least a review at its BGG page, then you have to choose another game with no feedback on its wiki page and no reviews on BGG. Only when the reviews to the second game has been submitted, will the review for the first be considered valid.

Update 5

The geeklist with the confirmed entries is up:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/29294