A panel of judges goes against my mission. Even if it were someone else's contest and not mine, I would have an objection to that, which I really don't want to get into here in detail.
Art competitions can never find "the best" because there's no such thing. There is no objective best writing or best idea - even if we all agreed that Game A was far and away the best, it might be Game B that turned out to have cultural significance over time. We can only judge what we like - it's
always a popularity contest. But if the discussion is open then you can at least see
why the winner won for that particular audience - and it should be clear that it is, indeed, for that particular audience. With different voters the result would likely be different.
About the judging only for people partaking in the discussion, wouldn't that make it obvious who made what? Unless I'd also post a critical analysis of my own work as if from someone else's perspective (and this would be interesting, now that I think of it), one entry would stand out as being undiscussed, and that one would be mine.
Fair point! I'm not quite sure what to do about that one. If the discussion rule requires only that you critiqued *something* rather than posting a full critique of all the entries, maybe?
I have seen other competitions where people talk about the works during the judging period while managing to avoid giving away what if anything they were involved in, so I don't think it's impossible.
Is ATL allowed? Transitions, like Dissolve or ImageDissolve? Is this a writing, or writing+scripting contest? It probably makes sense to agree in advance what sort of engine features are in play.
Also a good point!
I think scripting needs to be included in the list of acceptable attributes, because it is an important part of VN design and helps to set it apart from writing a straight story. However, ImageDissolve would be out because of the no-custom-art rule.
I don't want to be too specific on what can and can't be done with code, because being inventive with the medium should be worth brownie points. Are there obvious sticking points that people can see that would be questionable?
how are we going to handle ESL writers? Are they allowed to have their work checked by a proofreader for grammatical inconsistencies?
My first reaction was to suggest that collaboration was okay as long as the group dealt with splitting any prizes themselves, so someone could have a partner to help them with their text if they wanted.
For background donation - ifwhen this goes ahead the prompt will be public so it'll be more clear what makes sense to have then.
Another question is how long people should have to create their works after the contest officially begins. Since you're not having to come up with art and music, is a full month necessary?