The contest judging has begun. We were able to start a week ahead of schedule. It’s about 52 hours into judging and we already have 268 responses. Every game has been judged at least once so far. It’s a great start.
The system I’m using to organize all of the judging, a mix of google forms, google sheets with many pivot tables, and Awesome Table, is working very well. There are a few quirks that had to be worked around. But overall it’s going quite well.
The judges have a searchable table of games to choose from. So they can find a particular game, designer, or keyword. And they can filter by categories. This is all new this year and I’m noticing a few spots that can be improved for next year or even the next round.
When a judge submits a form, it automatically updates the judge count for that game. Last year in round one this process took me hours every day or two to count out new forms and add them to the count. Then I learned about pivot tables, and it turned it into a few minutes of copying and pasting. Now they just have to refresh the page and it’s updated. Maybe next year I’ll work on the auto refresh. So this process has improved immensely.
We also have about triple the judges from last year and 20 more games. So a smoother process helps with the increase in feedback I expect.
Since the system works so well, there isn’t much additional work with more judges. So we are still open to more judges joining. Round one judging ends on June 28. So if you have a few minutes free and would like to help out, you can get the info and sign up here. If you are interested in following along with the contest you can follow the podcast’s twitter account, @theBGworkshop and join the discord where many designers have posted their contest videos. Or just keep reading this blog. I’m sure I’ll be talking about it a lot.