GAA category discussion

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GAA category discussion

Post by Lukazz »

First of all: thanks! I was starting to lose all hopes that the GAA 2013 is actually gonna happen.

Now the whining: It's about time that we have a discussion about some of the categories, especially rookie, contribution and website imo. "BarTek: Testplaying World Cup 6 levels" made me giggle a little, what the fuck kind of contribution is that? Didn't even know he was doing that, how can that be an award deserving contribution? Same with rookie, haven't even heard all the names. Who the hell is Jarda? Website is also pretty boring category.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Kopaka »

As far as bartek goes no one except him and Ramone really knows the extent of his contribution, so you can't really complain about the nomination when you don't know, on the other hand it's hard to vote for when you don't know. Something I'd love to have is a longer description of all nominees to give voters an easier time deciding. But adding it officially on voting site or topic might cause some unfairness since you may have left stuff out, and it's a lot of work of course.

Anyway good thing that you are starting this topic, deciding categories is something that has mainly (or only) been decided by jury from year to year, so getting some more opinions would be good.

Rookie is something we have discussed almost every year I've been in the jury, but we always ended up not changing it. It's really hard to find 10 nominees, but we also really want to celebrate and encourage new players.

Contribution is the last category I would remove, you want to encourage people to do contributions, if you think there's too few good ones make some damn contributions to the scene.

Website category has stalled a bit indeed. Partly due to more stuff being more centralized on places like elmaonline.net. It could be removed and websites could be nominated in art and contribution instead.

Looking at nominations there's two others with very few nominees:

Contest. Has been hard to even find 10 the years I've been in jury and they only found six this year, but again I wouldn't want to remove it, since it encourages people to make contests which we could use more of.

Art. Sort of works as a scrapyard for stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else, so it would be a shame to just remove it, but I don't know.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Lukazz »

Kopaka wrote:As far as bartek goes no one except him and Ramone really knows the extent of his contribution, so you can't really complain about the nomination when you don't know, on the other hand it's hard to vote for when you don't know. Something I'd love to have is a longer description of all nominees to give voters an easier time deciding. But adding it officially on voting site or topic might cause some unfairness since you may have left stuff out, and it's a lot of work of course.
Ye, that's basically what I was trying to say. Wasn't meant as an insult of course. I like the idea with the longer descriptions, I suppose the jury members are discussing every nomination, would be nice to read a few lines about what the jury members thought is GAA-worthy about every nomination/nominee.
Contribution is the last category I would remove, you want to encourage people to do contributions, if you think there's too few good ones make some damn contributions to the scene.
Of course I wasn't trying to say that contributing to the community is something, that isn't award-worthy, it's actually one of the most important ones, but it's not very distinct from the community award. I think people perceive these two categories as more or less the same. I just checked the last years, because I was curious, and the award winners of Contribution and Community were:
2012: Kopaka + Kopaka
2011: Kopaka + Kopaka
2010: milagros + milagros
2009: Kopaka + Kopaka
2008: Kopaka + niN
2007: milagros + milagros

So 5 out of 6 times (Community category was introduced in 2007 for the first time) the Contribution and the Community award went to the same kuski. I have no certain solution for this, you could try to make the two categories more distinct, or remove the Community category and let the community decide on the Contribution award winner without any nominations, like it's done now with the Community award or whatever, but in my opinion it doesn't make much sense to have two awards for basically the same thing.
Website category has stalled a bit indeed. Partly due to more stuff being more centralized on places like elmaonline.net. It could be removed and websites could be nominated in art and contribution instead.
I think nominating websites in the Art category would be a good solution, and it would also upgrade the Art category a little.
Looking at nominations there's two others with very few nominees:

Contest. Has been hard to even find 10 the years I've been in jury and they only found six this year, but again I wouldn't want to remove it, since it encourages people to make contests which we could use more of.
Rookie is something we have discussed almost every year I've been in the jury, but we always ended up not changing it. It's really hard to find 10 nominees, but we also really want to celebrate and encourage new players.
Good thinking of course, but I don't think anyone's going to make a contest because he think's "maybe I'm gonna win a GAA for this next year". Same goes for rookies, i suppose most of the new guys don't even know about the GAA - or at least not before the one, they could win an award in has already happened. Talking about Contest nominees this year, I found it especially funny, that you nominated TL Cash Bounties, although the contest didn't even "finish" and he didn't pay all the prices that were promised.
Also contest is usually quite a boring category, because nowadays there's one bigger cup per year at best (World Cup this year, last year it was Master Cup i think?) and it's clear, that no other contest has even the slightest chance.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Igge »

Lukazz wrote:I think people perceive these two categories as more or less the same. [...] 5 out of 6 times (Community category was introduced in 2007 for the first time) the Contribution and the Community award went to the same kuski. I have no certain solution for this, you could try to make the two categories more distinct
Whole-heatedly agree. I think just because the community vote has the word "Community" in it, people thing it has to do with things around elma, like websites and coding eol etc. What people don't realize is that the community award may as well go to someone like Nekit, who pretty much alone changed the way everyone behaves in eol and encourages lots of new people to keep playing, or Zweq who keeps doing impossible things in ints in order to keep them alive, etc. I do like the community award though, in that it's completely ruled by the voters and not influenced by a jury.
I think nominating websites in the Art category would be a good solution, and it would also upgrade the Art category a little.
Agreed. Perhaps change the name of the category too, to suit the "everything else"-factor it has already become. Perhaps "bulle-category" or "bongo".
Contest. Has been hard to even find 10 the years I've been in jury and they only found six this year, but again I wouldn't want to remove it, since it encourages people to make contests which we could use more of.
Perhaps group it with contribution? After all, creating and maintaining a contest just for everyone else to play seems like a pretty big contribution to me. Even more-so when people spend time on making videos and interviews and analyses etc afterwards (please do this!!).
Also contest is usually quite a boring category, because nowadays there's one bigger cup per year at best (World Cup this year, last year it was Master Cup i think?) and it's clear, that no other contest has even the slightest chance.
You're right in that the bigger cups usually win, but I don't think that has to be the case. Say if someone single-handedly made some really nice elimination cup, or some cool group-play contest, or some weird cup like banana cup - I think a cup like that could compete with the bigger and more traditional cups. The bigger cups usually win because they were the ones people put in the most effort into organizing them really; or look at it this way: The bigger cups usually win because they are bigger, and they are bigger because people spend more time and effort into making them. Your argument kinda doesn't make sense cause any cup or contest that wins the category will most likely be seen as a big cup, and that's why it'll win.
Rookie is something we have discussed almost every year I've been in the jury, but we always ended up not changing it. It's really hard to find 10 nominees, but we also really want to celebrate and encourage new players.
I think rookie is a pretty neat category, even if it isn't that "serious". I remember I was excited just to be nominated. I think the problem is nowadays the rookies who stand out the most solely play EOL and have no part in mopolauta, so people who don't play EOL have no clue who they are.

If any paragraph of this doesn't make sense, please tell me. I didn't have time to proof-read and make sure I didn't mess up any quotations etc)
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by roope »

Pretty much agree with most of the points discussed here.

One thing I might disagree is merging the Site and Art categories into something like "Everything else". A really useful website like Elmaonline and a really well-made video are just too different for me to decide which is better. I do agree that the Site category is pretty boring. Actually I was quite surprised that Elmaonline hasn't won the category since 2008 and Kopasite hasn't at all (or goes so back to history I can't find GAA results). Seems like there has pretty much emerged one new interesting/useful website per year that wins.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Lukazz »

Igge wrote:
Also contest is usually quite a boring category, because nowadays there's one bigger cup per year at best (World Cup this year, last year it was Master Cup i think?) and it's clear, that no other contest has even the slightest chance.
You're right in that the bigger cups usually win, but I don't think that has to be the case. Say if someone single-handedly made some really nice elimination cup, or some cool group-play contest, or some weird cup like banana cup - I think a cup like that could compete with the bigger and more traditional cups. The bigger cups usually win because they were the ones people put in the most effort into organizing them really; or look at it this way: The bigger cups usually win because they are bigger, and they are bigger because people spend more time and effort into making them. Your argument kinda doesn't make sense cause any cup or contest that wins the category will most likely be seen as a big cup, and that's why it'll win.
I don't fully agree with you. With bigger cups, especially continuing cup series, or cups by established level designers, the success is inevitable - if the organization isn't a total disaster. I'm not saying that World Cup 6 wasn't a fuckload of work to organize or that the levels were bad, but there might have been other cups (ok, probably not this year) with just as good levels, but nobody cared because it was organized by some nab. I don't think World Cup 6 was the biggest cup because organizers put the most effort into it - again, not saying that they didn't, just thinking that this wasn't the crucial factor. It would've been the biggest cup - and therefor the one probably winning the GAA - simply because it's seen as the most official, the most prestigious cup, and the one that will have most players of course. Kinda like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Everybody thinks that everybody else is playing, so they do so theirselves.
Once again: Not saying that World Cup 6 wasn't awesome but the Contest category is just boring. I support your suggestion of grouping it with the Contribution category.

One more suggestion for the Rookie category: I've had the idea a few years ago already - mabye I suggested it already too - about a category for "Best Progress" - not the perfect name actually. The name kind of explains it already, I think it would be nice just to have a category for kuskis who have improved a lot in the last year. There are not so many rookies nowadays and the overall skill is just so high, that it's almost impossible for a rookie to be considered a "pro" already within just a few months. Most people need at least 2-3 years till they are able to win more battles, etc. It's still a very award-winning-worthy achievment, but there's no real category for that yet. For example GRob I think who hasn't won the rookie award, because it took him a little longer than a year probably to develop his skills, but his progress was still just out of this world. The category could also honour comebackers, who haven't been very active lately and climbed back at the top of the elma-world within just a short amount of time.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by SveinR »

Lukazz wrote:One more suggestion for the Rookie category: I've had the idea a few years ago already - mabye I suggested it already too - about a category for "Best Progress" - not the perfect name actually. The name kind of explains it already, I think it would be nice just to have a category for kuskis who have improved a lot in the last year. There are not so many rookies nowadays and the overall skill is just so high, that it's almost impossible for a rookie to be considered a "pro" already within just a few months. Most people need at least 2-3 years till they are able to win more battles, etc. It's still a very award-winning-worthy achievment, but there's no real category for that yet. For example GRob I think who hasn't won the rookie award, because it took him a little longer than a year probably to develop his skills, but his progress was still just out of this world. The category could also honour comebackers, who haven't been very active lately and climbed back at the top of the elma-world within just a short amount of time.
We have discussed a couple of times replacing Rookie with Improver or Breakthrough, which would be quite similar to what you're describing. I think, at least for Breakthrough, you could only be nominated once also for this category (having several breakthroughs seems a bit odd).
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Lukazz »

Makes sense. ;)
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Igge »

SveinR wrote:I think, at least for Breakthrough, you could only be nominated once also for this category (having several breakthroughs seems a bit odd).
Unless they're breakthroughs in very different areas, eg major drop in internal tt then a major breakthrough in level designing.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Madness »

Lukazz wrote:Talking about Contest nominees this year, I found it especially funny, that you nominated TL Cash Bounties, although the contest didn't even "finish" and he didn't pay all the prices that were promised.
Just for the record, I've already got the money.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Lukazz »

I meant that he just stopped it after half of the levs.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Madness »

He didn't, all the people involved just stopped playing all of a sudden (me and jblaze).
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Chris »

Lukazz wrote:I meant that he just stopped it after half of the levs.
If you didn't tell anyone, how could others know that he doesn't pay anymore?
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Kopaka »

Eventhough the gaa13 just ended the preparations for gaa14 is starting soon and so the lock down of categories will happen soon as well. So just wanted to bump this for anyone else who might have some opinions.

Reading through the topic again there seems to be a somewhat general consensus on during something about the following categories:

Categories with a lack of interesting nominees:
Contest
Site
Art

"Duplicate" categories:
Contribution
Community award

Igge wrote:
Lukazz wrote:I think people perceive these two categories as more or less the same. [...] 5 out of 6 times (Community category was introduced in 2007 for the first time) the Contribution and the Community award went to the same kuski. I have no certain solution for this, you could try to make the two categories more distinct
Whole-heatedly agree. I think just because the community vote has the word "Community" in it, people thing it has to do with things around elma, like websites and coding eol etc. What people don't realize is that the community award may as well go to someone like Nekit, who pretty much alone changed the way everyone behaves in eol and encourages lots of new people to keep playing, or Zweq who keeps doing impossible things in ints in order to keep them alive, etc. I do like the community award though, in that it's completely ruled by the voters and not influenced by a jury.
The solution could be to make community award completely decided by jury (and maybe rename it). Because with current rules all the others will be completely decided by community if there's enough votes, so the concept of something ruled entirely by voters won't be lost. This gives jury the opportunity to give it for something a bit more obscure, such as the examples you gave igge. When it's decided by the voters and there's no real category, it will end up being somewhat of a popularity contest, since they don't have any discussion or anything about it. A jury can have a discussion and make a more nuanced decision.


Something else I wanted to mention was a discussion we had in #gaa about the jury. Some people thought that some of the jury members were pretty inactive people, few eol battles for example, but of course there's other ways to be active. But with the delay of this year's show I think I can say without insulting anyone that the jury showed some inactivity or lack of motivation to get things done. I suggested in #gaa to have a public call for jury members rather than or as well as the current practice of the arranger asking people, as a way to get people who says "me me me I really want to" rather than people who say "ehm sure I guess". The two who replied seemed to agree with me. Of course you might not get anyone you want in the jury applying, but worth a try.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by roope »

I actually kind of like the idea of the jury deciding on Community award. Every year it's a bit obvious who's gonna get it; I'd like if the jury went like "hey, this guy has been great for the scene, but has no chance of winning anything over x and y. Let's pick him". So, instead of the award being a "what (big things) have you done for me lately" it'd be just a recognition for the unsung heroes of the scene.
The Contribution award could be like a mash-up of the current Contribution/Community -awards, as they already are pretty much the same.

While I personally do agree that there hasn't been many interesting nominees for the categories of Contest, Site, and Art, I don't think they should be removed, at least not yet. It would be quite hard to combine them well too. So, I vote for keeping them as they are at least for a while.


And yeh, like I said in IRC, I'm available (and interested) for jury duty. Deciding mans, be in touch if you are interested in me)
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by John »

GAA has lost much of it's reputation, just look at how few of the winners actually attended and the quality of speeches. Nobody seems to give a damn anymore. Some categories can hardly be filled with 5 suitable nominees. Maybe rather re-introduce KOM instead?
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by bene »

John: One problem this year is that gaa is held a year too late. People don't remember what happened. People are not excited about these things. osv. So can't expect quality speeches.
Topic: I like best progress category, this is something I can win in 2014, ty. osv
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by SveinR »

John wrote:GAA has lost much of it's reputation, just look at how few of the winners actually attended and the quality of speeches. Nobody seems to give a damn anymore. Some categories can hardly be filled with 5 suitable nominees. Maybe rather re-introduce KOM instead?
I think at least some of the blame for this is due to the lackluster organizing with the long delay. A year with a World Cup should have given a much higher interest in the GAA i think. Though, the amount of community suggestions in the first step, which was early on in the process this year as well, also showed a decline in interest.

KOM would be good, but as an addition, not replacement.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by roope »

John wrote:GAA has lost much of it's reputation, just look at how few of the winners actually attended and the quality of speeches. Nobody seems to give a damn anymore. Some categories can hardly be filled with 5 suitable nominees. Maybe rather re-introduce KOM instead?
It was quite a short notice though, many of the people just didn't know it was today (and so early). I for example text messaged Spef to come to IRC, because he didn't know it was going. Also, I can assure at least some people took the speeches seriously (nom stressed about it quite a bit beforehand).

About the KOM, I don't think it would really work anymore. LOM had a quick revival and just didn't work, dunno if KOM would do any better.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Grace »

The concept of this "breakthrough" or "improver" award instead of Rookie has been floated for years now; and i agree maybe it is time to action it. Certainly it is only going to become more difficult to find 10 suitable candidates for every category each year. Merging Site and Art is a possibility but feels somewhat imperfect to me.

Certainly all of the people who contribute to current Sites have all won GAA's for site in the past i think. New sites (or major overhauls) could break through on Art category i guess. Would need a rename.

I don't think KOM would work at all. Like roope said; when i attempted to revive LOM there was pretty close to zero interest, even though i advertised it in EOL and on lauta relatively frequently. Can consider it though; i guess. Either way GAA is too prestigious to simply replace. The biggest issue with KOM is the fact that after winning; people were disqualified for a while - it helps spread the awards out but made it uninteresting when the top players can't be nominated each month.

The other topic to broach is whether or not (from 2015 probably, not now) we consider including an iOS category. It'll depend on the player stability of the iOS game.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Orcc »

A while back I got an 800 000 dollar idea about GAA of GAA's after 15 years of Elma. We could pick what really has been THE wr and so on. The problem is that many kuskis have no idea about the stuff that has happened ten years ago. I would still like to see it!
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by ville_j »

I really think it is finally time to do something about those categories, it has been discussed so many times. Contest category is quite important and it is good to award people who contribute to the scene by arranging these things. However, I can't really recall any contests in 2014 (maybe that's just me), no idea what will be nominated in the next GAA. Maybe Contest category could include also the best EOL battles, but that's going to be troublesome for people to vote because battles are much shorter than cups and not that many people would have played all the nominated battles. And then again, it might overlap with the Level category where the EOL battle levels are nominated at the moment. Maybe combine Level/Contest into one single category that includes EOL battles too, most of the levels are battles anyways (okay maybe not good idea, I don't think a single battle could ever win over any cup). Then if you make some a bit more obscure level, it might be nominated in the "Art" category, which leads me to:

Maybe Art and Site categories could be combined into some "Intuitive" award. Because I really like to see some new and original stuff to happen in the scene and encourage people to think outside the box and come up with some fresh ideas. All the current Art category nominees fall easily under this category, the Site nominees maybe not that much but it is not really that important to have an award for some web page specifically. This "Intuitive" category could also include all the external level editors and other applications people are developing, websites are also starting to be more like web applications so i think it would be fair to group all these together.

Edit:
And what comes to the GAA jury, I think an open discussion is a good idea. I think everyone who wants to be in the jury should be able to show their interest, and then somehow we decide who will get picked. Jury should consist of fairly active people, I think it is important that those people also show their activity in some ways (playing/chatting in eol, writing in lauta/irc etc) rather than just saying "I do read lauta and check wrs daily", because giving some input to the scene shows that you care about it enough to put time and thoughts in it.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by SveinR »

Ville_J wrote:Maybe Art and Site categories could be combined into some "Intuitive" award. Because I really like to see some new and original stuff to happen in the scene and encourage people to think outside the box and come up with some fresh ideas. All the current Art category nominees fall easily under this category, the Site nominees maybe not that much but it is not really that important to have an award for some web page specifically. This "Intuitive" category could also include all the external level editors and other applications people are developing, websites are also starting to be more like web applications so i think it would be fair to group all these together.
This is a good idea I think, but I'm not sure about the name "Intuitive", doesn't make much sense to me. Originality? Initiative? Not that great names either I suppose.

Back when Art was created there were a lot of videos and other "artsy" stuff being made, but that seems to have almost disappeared now. However, a website and applications may perhaps also be considered art in some sense?
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by ville_j »

The name can be hard decision, some creative/creativity thing could also be describing yet vague enough?
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Spef »

Some "Topical" category, where the content of that category depends on what has been popular during that GAA year. For example if there were many Elma-related games like Elma Land, it would be some Games category. It could incude older categories that have died out, like if you decide there's not enough art these days for it to have its own category, there would be one if suddenly everyone made artsy things.

Then again, I can't think of any amazing new topical thing for this year. Maybe it'd only work if some least active categories were removed/merged like has been discussed.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by SveinR »

Ville_J wrote:The name can be hard decision, some creative/creativity thing could also be describing yet vague enough?
Creativity is pretty good :)
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Lousku
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Lousku »

How about extra awards outside of categories? You can remove the weak and questionable categories but still give awards for those (and whatever else doesn't fit into a category) when things worthy of awards happen. I don't know how it would work in practice.
then again i don't know anything
maybe easier not to think abouut alöl things thought than not things thought ... or something..=?
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Bludek »

Sooo, smth like this?

New categories:

Creativity (sites, art, programs, video, music, ...)
Progress (a man who's acomplished something which was unthinkable of him the previous year. A newbie top3-ing an event in a cup, regular member driving a WR, juka finishing a long pipe... You name it)

Soon-to-be-nonexistent categories:
site
art
rookie

sounds oke to me.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Ramone »

I think contribution should be kept as it is. I like that. But community award seems kinda the same. Rather (as discussed above) make it a Special Jury Award to someone. (igge made examples of Nekit or zweq, and thats awesome imo. Also I think art and site could be removed. Pretty much same sites over and over. External sites outside mopo, kopa, eol hardly exists, and is not likely to take over. These categorys would fit well in a Special Jury Award, is someone made a sick cool new site or some special art. Someone who made sick really cool stuff that doesnt really fit contribution but still needs recognition.

Also I wasnt nochalant missing GAA, would have been there if I knew it was. I think lack of ppl attenting is more due to late announcement rather than lack of interest.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Lousku »

2 bad things inherent to the current system of categories only:
  • completely incomparable things are thrown together in a dump category (at least art and contribution are these imo). it just doesnt make any sense to pick between a convenient site, a beautiful lev and a hilarious lauta post (in the suggested creativity category). it also doesn't make any sense to pick between a hypothetical $500 server donation and a hypothetical release of elma 2.
  • often there are no clearly good nominees for a category. while the $500 donation was left without an award (only because everything must be mashed into a category and there happened to be an even sicker piece of contribution that year), after a serious struggle to find 5 nominees that half the people have even heard of, the rookie hyllymbvyör6969 wins rookie award because he's the only eligible rookie that bothered to drive a TT or something. sense?
a short convo from #gaa:
18:37:54 <@lousk> 01:27:13 <roopemies> dunno if would be too drastic change though
18:38:02 <@lousk> i dont think this should be a reason by itself
18:38:51 <@lousk> clearly community is nat perfectly happy with the format, so make whatever changes a new active jury thinks best
18:39:33 <@ville_j> but what could the extra award be for..?
18:39:41 <@lousk> anything :S
18:39:48 <@lousk> thats the point
18:39:48 <@ville_j> for exempel?
18:40:04 <@ville_j> what does not fall in to any of the norm catogires?
18:40:15 <@lousk> a website, an elma movie, nomsoup
18:40:16 <@lousk> yes
18:40:47 <@ville_j> well those would be in an creativity category now if it is happening
18:41:18 <roopemies> i guess lousk point would be lajk: if there is something awardworthy, can award it
18:41:24 <@lousk> but they're veri different, creativity is an too broad category
18:41:24 <roopemies> without it being in any category
18:41:51 <@ville_j> hmm well
18:42:56 <@ville_j> i'm not buyed.. yet!
18:43:05 <@lousk> if you stick with strictly categories, you'll always have situations when some given award is clearly less deserved than another "thing" that wasnt awarded because another thing in its category was better
18:43:39 <@ville_j> though it is good idea tha can beisikly award for anything, but but
18:44:24 <@lousk> maybe this idea should be a whole new thing, nat GAA at all.
18:44:31 <@lousk> because might as well remove all categories
18:44:48 <@lousk> though slippery slope is nat necessary
18:46:26 <@lousk> maybe: keep the strong categories and give whatever number of extra awards for absolutely anything that's considered awardworthy, including stuff that would fall into existing categories
18:47:20 <@lousk> it's just nat sensibel to hev a misc category where totally diff things compete
18:47:23 <@ville_j> the extra awards winners would be chosen by who?
18:47:27 <@lousk> i dunno
18:47:34 <@lousk> jury?? :D
18:47:42 <@ville_j> would there be any nominations ??
18:47:47 <@lousk> poss
18:47:53 <finman> imo nominations yes
18:47:53 <@lousk> community can also suggest stuff outside categories, why nat
18:48:28 <@ville_j> i see but it just feels they would easily belong in one of the categories
18:50:33 <@ville_j> i really hev hard time coming up with some weird gaa-able thing that would be completely outside teh categories, but maby i just can't think
18:51:40 <@lousk> i think that doesnt matter
18:51:48 <@lousk> its mostly a solution to weak categories
18:54:38 <@lousk> but its bonus that previously unthinked things that people think are cool can be awarded
18:54:39 <roopemies> imo shouldn't replace weak categories with something confusing/imperfect if can't figure out a good solution
18:57:00 <roopemies> bludek suggested removing rookie category but imo it should remain untouched
18:57:13 <roopemies> though award for best progress would be good too
19:05:00 <@lousk> yeh hm
19:05:25 <@lousk> considering community award seems to be a bit confusing to some pipel already :S
19:07:15 <@lousk> could also list as many categories as possible to encourage suggestions, then just omit the categories that don't turn out strong
19:07:48 <@lousk> i mean omit from nominations... but still include the specific things that are widely considered cool
then again i don't know anything
maybe easier not to think abouut alöl things thought than not things thought ... or something..=?
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Kopaka »

While I agree there's an inherent "unfairness" in an award show with catagories. Something really great that would have won its category any other year might get 2nd place because of the one even more awesome thing happened to come out the same year. But it is infact an ineherent thing of award shows and removing it you're basically left with jury releasing a list of 10-15 things that were awesome this year, no matter if those are all replays or all completely different things. Which might be a nice thing to have no matter if it's instead of or as well as the awards, but I could just imagine the days long discussions within jury, I wouldn't want to sit through that at least.

The unfairness or whatever you want to call it is part of the fun of an award show. Something might end up being more famous for being the awesome thing that never won a GAA. And we shouldn't underplay the honour of just being nominated. I agree it's not perfect to have imcomparable things in the same category. It would be nice to be able to judge 10 different elma pictures based on a criteria of artistic value or whatever, but when it's put together with other things the criteria ends up being something more general like effort. I just don't think there'a a perfect solution. If you award a picture just for the artistic value of a picture, when there's no other pictures made, it will seems like an easy award no matter how awesome it is.
Bludek wrote:Progress (a man who's acomplished something which was unthinkable of him the previous year. A newbie top3-ing an event in a cup, regular member driving a WR, juka finishing a long pipe... You name it).
I think before you add something new you should consider if you can come up with 5 worthy nominees of the top of your head? I like the idea but might be too much of a niché. We already have achievement which is a bit like it and which is often hard to find nominees for.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by roope »

I think Kopaka said some of the thoughts I've had that I haven't been able to find the words for. Especially
Kopaka wrote:While I agree there's an inherent "unfairness" in an award show with catagories. Something really great that would have won its category any other year might get 2nd place because of the one even more awesome thing happened to come out the same year. But it is infact an ineherent thing of award shows and removing it you're basically left with jury releasing a list of 10-15 things that were awesome this year
Kopaka wrote: The unfairness or whatever you want to call it is part of the fun of an award show. Something might end up being more famous for being the awesome thing that never won a GAA. And we shouldn't underplay the honour of just being nominated.
Especially for rookies (a category that some have suggested removing) a nomination, even without a slightest hope of winning, can be a big thing.

While some mash-up category could sound like a good idea to remove the not-very-competitive categories, I'd personally dislike trying to compare for example some art and a site together.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Lousku »

Kopaka wrote:But it is infact an ineherent thing of award shows and removing it you're basically left with jury releasing a list of 10-15 things that were awesome this year, no matter if those are all replays or all completely different things.
As I said, I don't think a slippery slope is necessary; it could still be mainly about categories. But I agree. The practicals of my suggestion are very vague, require more work and obviously it's up to the jury.
roope wrote:Especially for rookies (a category that some have suggested removing) a nomination, even without a slightest hope of winning, can be a big thing.
Yes! I remember it was a big deal for me when nom suggested me for rookie and I got nominated in 2010 8). Rookie nominations seem to encourage new mans to stick around.
then again i don't know anything
maybe easier not to think abouut alöl things thought than not things thought ... or something..=?
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by John »

roope wrote:About the KOM, I don't think it would really work anymore. LOM had a quick revival and just didn't work, dunno if KOM would do any better.
Haruhi wrote:I don't think KOM would work at all. Like roope said; when i attempted to revive LOM there was pretty close to zero interest, even though i advertised it in EOL and on lauta relatively frequently. Can consider it though; i guess. Either way GAA is too prestigious to simply replace. The biggest issue with KOM is the fact that after winning; people were disqualified for a while - it helps spread the awards out but made it uninteresting when the top players can't be nominated each month.
I've never paid much attention to LOM to be honest but if I remember correctly designers had to actively submit levels through email to some kind of jury, right? If so, there's a big difference between LOM and KOM. First of all there are a lot more players out there than there are designers. Second, LOM needs active participation while you might become KOM simply by opening EOL and winning a few battles (for example). Furthermore, LOM is kinda narrow, you submit one(?) level and that's all being judged. KOM could be awarded for greatness in battles (like GAA Battler), popular level designing (like GAA Designer), for just being a guy who spreads joy in the scene (GAA Community Award), or maybe even for someone who's helping new players in the Internal Section in lauta a lot. This big span of different categories is the solution to Haruhi's problem of the same people being nominated again and again. A battler won last month, fine, then let's look at people "enriching" the community next.

It's not that I am pro-KOM though, I just don't see the point in forcing a new GAA every year when interest is this low and categories are hard to fill. It's more that I'm looking for alternatives to reward outstanding individuals in the scene.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by roope »

While I do agree that it's good to take those kind of things into consideration, I think you're being a bit too negative about the state of the GAA. Like said, this was obviously a down-year for many, many reasons: the 3/4 year day delay, a few day notice about the show, and the show starting early on Saturday being the biggest factors.
Also I guess we're living in some kind of a transition phase - those older community members that have been playing once in a while and actively participating in GAA have become less active in Elma-related stuff, while many of the new people in EOL just don't know about/haven't gotten into the community outside of EOL. I asked a few rookie nominees to come to IRC when the award show was on - and they didn't even know about GAA, IRC, or that they were even nominated. IIRC it's been like this for the past few years too. I'm sure that for example ziiber (one of the rookie nominees this year) would have been eager to participate in voting and stuff (replacing the old guard that is making it's leave), but the information that this thing is going on just didn't reach him. So more advertising needed, I guess?

Anyway I'm positive GAA will be just fine, especially now that we're finally seriously discussing about tweaking the categories to fit the current situation. :)
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by Igge »

I think the problem nowadays is exactly what roope is touching in his post above. The community is too spread-out nowadays. We have the ircers, the eolers, the lauters, the somewhere inbetweeners etc. I think one big step (read huge step [read kopaka-killing step]) would be to somehow integrate lauta with elmaonline.com.

It's sad to say, but I don't see moposite playing an active part of elma anymore. The very few pages of that once oh-so-influential site are now so badly kept and scarcely updated that they might as well be moved to elmaonline.com (and to some extent already have been). There's no denying the active elma community is nowadays revolving around EOL, and therefore I think integrating mopolauta with elmaonline would be the most logical move right now (sorry Kopaka). As people are already coming to elmaonline to just look up EOL-related content, we might as well keep the discussion there.

The next step would be to also integrate IRC with EOL and elmaonline. We have a chat in EOL, so why not make it based on IRC and make it possible to post to the elma chat from IRC as well? Perhaps we'd start to see more "off-topic" content, but maybe it could be split up into different channels in the game too (but this is a thing for elma2 I guess, since mila has abandoned ship).

Anyway, I just think the problem is we're spread too thin for the small community we are. I think we need to make elmaonline.com into what moposite.com was 10 years ago; a place for every single kuski to gather and frolic in all that is elma.

Hmm, perhaps this should have been in some other thread, dunno. I think I'll start one.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by ville_j »

roope wrote:While some mash-up category could sound like a good idea to remove the not-very-competitive categories, I'd personally dislike trying to compare for example some art and a site together.
I don't see how this is different compared to Contribution category for example, where you are voting for different kind of stuff, under the Contribution perspective. And what I tried to say with the new Creativity category is that you shouldn't be comparing site vs. art, but the creativity itself. There really isn't any reason why site should have its own category, with that logic there should be own category for programs and whatnot too. Maybe Site category could also be just removed and nominees included in the Contribution category (as it kinda is already), if want to keep Art strictly separate category, but I would love some Creativity category for sure.

Also I think GAA is doing just fine, this year was a bit of a let down though. But I don't put the blame on GAA format, it's the people. This year's delay is kind of understandable (even though it was ridiculously long), it just shows that the people behind the curtain need to change and that is happening. Maybe someone should also ask the winners' opinion why aren't they interested in the show and giving speeches. I don't see why anyone would be more interested in KOM than GAA. Or maybe the reason just is that they are not aware of the show or are unable to show up.
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Re: GAA category discussion

Post by roope »

Ville_J wrote:
roope wrote:While some mash-up category could sound like a good idea to remove the not-very-competitive categories, I'd personally dislike trying to compare for example some art and a site together.
I don't see how this is different compared to Contribution category for example, where you are voting for different kind of stuff, under the Contribution perspective. And what I tried to say with the new Creativity category is that you shouldn't be comparing site vs. art, but the creativity itself.
I guess for me it's easier to compare how much have things x and y contributed to the scene (even if they are very different things), instead of comparing their creative values :P
I do understand your point that they are not that different things, but at least for me it still is. Maybe it's easier for a more creative guy like you?
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