pouët.net

I can perfectly understand that organizers don't have time to add screenshots/previews themselves.

But wouldn't it be possible to ask some trustworthy non-organizer to help them out for that task?

Kabuto: maybe you? :)

D.Fox: agreed, as long as neither life nor deadline pressure prevent me from doing so :)

Practical or not, I think there's an interesting point there about paper votesheets: having seen it in action at Forever, it does change the way you experience and perceive the compos, in a way that most likely encourages higher participation in voting. You're sitting up front with a pen and paper in hand, and when you're done, everyone queues up to hand in their votesheets before heading off for a beer. It means that - psychologically - the voting is the purpose of the compo night, rather than an optional postscript for the stats nerds while everyone else is out boozing.

So, is there a way to recreate that vibe without the logistical nightmare for the organisers? I guess that's where D.Fox is heading with live voting on Partymeister, although there's a social barrier to consider as well: sitting up front with a laptop / tablet / phone out feels a bit antisocial, especially when (in typical party lighting conditions) there's no brightness setting in between 'off' and 'lighting up the audience like a christmas tree' :-)

gasman: I don't know much about Forever but it seems like they have one demo block. How would you handle that for bigger parties? As bigger parties have separate demo blocks demosheets are in risk of getting lost if you don't write your name onto them, and if you do you're no longer anonymous. Alternatively, you could hand out one sheet per block. But in the end counting 100 votes each from 500 visitors would be too tedious, and automating that would increase difficulty

At Evoke, there were these glowsticks handed out. Create halos out of them, and everyone that votes, gets a halo. Then all halo-wearers can then mock everyone without the halo. Participation from Peer Pressure ftw! :)

So voting is suddenly something worth mocking each other for, but entering compos isn't? :)

of course compo participants get a shirt with a led array scrolling "elite incoming, get out of the way lamers"

Haha, that's actually a bit fun, Gargaj. There should of course be the über halos for compo entrants to wear ABOVE their voting-halo. And what the heck, while we're at it, let's throw in a complementary i-cleaned-the-garbage-from-my-place-at-least-once-during-the-party-glowstick-bracelet too :D

When did the demoscene become the boy scouts? :D

LOL! The amount of beer consumed at parties, pretty much rules out the possibility of that ever happening :D

A long time dream of mine is that all parties are using the same user database, and we get achievements/scenepoints for attending a party, releasing, winning, voting, etc. :)

People don't vote because they don't care enough. It isn't important, easy and rewarding enough. Some people don't care enough to even come inside and watch the damn compos, because the real party is outside. And sometimes even the organizers don't really act like it's important... If it was important, there would have been a siren and warning lights outside Revision 2012 saying THE AMIGA INTRO COMPO IS ABOUT TO BEGIN! GET INSIDE RIGHT NOW! But no such thing happened... (*cough* says someone who missed that compo) There are alarms for important things.

By the way, at the Abduction party around 1997 or so, they had a nice vote-counting show. The vote counting machine was connected to the projector and it showed the progress of the vote count, as more and more vote disks were inserted and counted. :) It was actually a lot of fun to watch. I wonder if anyone has pictures of it.

gargaj/dfox: It's important to make the point that I'm not saying voting has declined (in fact, in the matter of Solskogen I know for a fact it hasn't, but we do try to make sure people vote as well), but I'm simply saying that I want more people to vote.

ok so how about virtual tickets that enables you to vote from a distance and maybe gives you access to a better/priorized videofeed? =)

Give everyone two leds, a green one and a red one. After each compoblock you play all entries back for 30 sec. People get their lights out and you measure the amount of light.

I strongly oppose any solution that gives away the complete list of entries beforehand.


Voting during the compo would be the best way. Obviously not during the actual demos. At first I thought this was the best solution but Gargaj had a valid point: it distracts. If you do a recap after the compoblock people might leave as well. Also since wifi isn't always an option, another system needs to be in place. Hence my idea of led-lights.

Paper ballots could work if you make it multiple choice, and if you give everyone an id when entering the party. So the visitors just get an empty voting ballot with no names.
Than after each compo they tick their winners and their id-code using boxes. This is rather foolproof, all you need a an automated scanner system.

Hand raising is also an option. Or make boards with 0-9 and hand them out. After each demo you raise the boards and use OCR.

also demoparties totally need achievements.

Hm, a lanyard with LEDs as an indicator if somebody has voted yet could be cool :D

I usually don't vote. Sometimes I'm just too tired to pay enough attention to give a fair score to each entry, having participated and watched all the entries late at night. If you open the compo up to people less fucked up by the party conditions, via internet streaming or something like that, you'll probably get more good votes.

Part of the issue I think, when it comes to visitors not voting, is probably down to overall tiredness, particularly when the compos, and even more so, the demo compo, runs at or around midnight or so.

Although we were watching the Assembly 2013 livestream from the UK, with the time difference it did feel like the compos were on at good times, particularly during the early to mid-evening. A similar thing at other parties might be do-able, depending on the situation. Later on, when people want to have a few drinks or so and socialize, they don't usually want to tax their brains too hard and would be happier to watch / dance to a DJ set or concert in the later evening.

Cutting out too many delays, particularly with the oldskool / Alternative Platforms compo would also help by pre-recording these entries to video for the big screen compo, with the possibility of the platforms being made available for people to assess afterwards. For instance, at Revision 2013, whilst we had the pleasure of watching the PS2 demo that featured the use of the oscilloscope on the big screen as part of the compo - it was even better to see the entire original kit working on one of the tables in the entrance hall a little later. This made that particular entry out to be something seriously special.

Being able to vote is the thing you should start with...

The evoke vote participation was mainly caused by the non working vote system + the voting for several compos (demo + some others) was not enabled before 3:30 in the night or something like that. Luckily nobody "exploited" that.

I don't like people lighting up the hall with their damn mobile devices while the compo is running - that is just at least as disrespectful as not voting is.

Why not do it like the Eurovision Song Contest... Give the sofa sceners the right to vote. Do a mobile app with in-app purchases or something.

In fact, let ONLY them vote - everyone at the party is already drunk, right?

Everybody except Ziphoid.

Those are too drunk don't vote even know. But yeah, I think sofa sceners are often much more knowledgeable about the entries than those who were physically at (or somewhere near) the party place. I admit, I have sometimes asked the sofa scene about what entries there were in some Assembly compo, what they were like, and what was said on IRC, etc. ;) And usually they know more than I.