btw if you want to submit a news post for the results, that would be great. 

Quite honored, Thanks guys!
Away on vacation these days, cool surprise. Congrats to all the winners, finalists, and organizers! 

Make it more user friendly next time? I went to the website 3 or 4 times and every time it was just a bunch of empty pages saying something was coming soon. I have no idea where nominations or votes were supposed to take place. 

Hey Guys,

Let me just start by saying thanks for all the support you guys have given and the interaction with the process. It was really good to see so many nominations roll in and seeing your comments here has been awesome.


From very early on it was suggested to me that I use this years awards as a dry run for next year. As a first iteration I think things went fairly well, I learned a lot about what I think need to happen to make it run better next year.

I'll start the ball rolling with known problems with the process.

Lack of specific description around what exactly constitutes certain categories. This ended up hurting one particular mapper who had a very good chance of winning that category. Unfortunately my error was pointed out to me after we had already published the shortlist, and because of this he missed out.

Lack of testing UX for the website. I made the (incorrect) assumption that the links (and scrolling) on the website would work as well as it did in the mobile preview of my browser. My choice in theme wasn't great either.

Engagement. As I mentioned in post 109 engagement with the voting was down as compared to the nominations. It was good to see a variety of votes, but the margin of the winner was not what I expected. I'll publish the votes below.


Other issues that have been raised.

The landing page for the website not being clear enough with conveying the information that the user needs. (post #114)

Not having named the comments against the judges. (post #108)

The requirement for a google account for voting. (post #97)

Voting on one category rather than multiple for people's choice awards. (post #94)

Too short shortlist (post #92)

A counter on the website (post #73)

Everything before this seems to be ok / settled. So that's enough for post 1. Next post will be addressing some of this stuff. 

So let me post my plan for solving some of the problems.

Probably the biggest thing initially would be to get more experienced people on board. I need people with the following skill sets.

Somebody who would like to run outreach or social media. I tweeted out a bit, but didn't engage with other forms of media, this would probably be helpful.
Somebody with css and/or design skills to improve the website.
Somebody to help me with writing reviews / descriptions.

Regarding the names of the judges against the comments. I can change this in the future, but the reason why I did this was to have the opinions of the judges assessed as an aggregate, so if they receive any "hate" from anyone it would be directed at the group rather than any one individual. I'd rather not change it, and would probably only do so if there was overwhelming community support for this change.

For next years award I'll look for a better solution than having a google account for voting. It was quick, easy and "fit for purpose", but I underestimated the reluctance for people to use it. This could have contributed to the low People's Choice Award engagement.

Multiple categories for People's Choice Award(s). So I wanted to keep the scope of the website awards small, initially I only wanted to include the people's choice to minimise potential "hate" being posted toward the judges. The idea being that if people are unhappy, they can still have their say.

I'm willing to include more categories for the people's choice in the future, but I would like to hear from you guys regarding this. With more people on board helping me it should be easier, but I still want to keep the scope of the site manageable. Would you guys like more people's choice categories? If so how would you like to see them implemented?

Regarding too short of a shortlist, I tried to keep the shortlist fairly short so that there would be the two runners up and a winner. Either way, the judges need to cull the maps down from the nominations list to a shortlist. The only person that this really makes more work for is whoever is writing the previews (in this years case, me). So I'm not particularly opposed to making it longer, so long as there is somebody else on board to help me write up the website. Again if we could get discussion regarding this below.

Finally, the breakdown of votes for the maps:

The Forgotten Sepulcher - Sock, 6 votes
Mensis Keep - Breezeep, 3 votes
A Conspiracy of Cartographers - Kell, 2 votes
Shattered Soul of the Scarabrus - Orl, 2 votes
Wenl Mine - Megaman, 2 votes
The Pillar - Pritchard
A Warm Welcome Home - Bal
Blastocyst - Orl
Chasing Promises - Skacky
Manchester's Leftovers - Daya
Nyarlathotep's Sand Castle - Sock
Sacrifice Unto Serek - Muk0r
Temple of Azathoth - Yuki Raven

Thanks guys,

I look forward to hearing your feedback 

First off: good job. The winners are excellent maps, and so are the others that were highlighted in various ways on the site.

Judged awards come down to taste and different folks will have different ideas about what the winners should be, but I don't have much about the results per se that I would feel like griping about. I guess I'll mention that I do think it's crazy -- like bark-at-the-moon gnaw-your-own-toes Crazy -- that Sepulcher didn't compete for best visuals. But otherwise, super reasonable picks.

Comments about stuff other than specific results:

1) I'm the guy (or one of the guys) that mentioned that the shortlists were too short. Also I don't think there was a clear distinction between "shortlist" and "honorable mention". Both problems could be solved by combining those lists. I doubt that anyone cares about how many "runners-up" there are in a category. Or at least, speaking only for myself, I just want to see good stuff recognized and it is also nice to have one of those picked out as the best. The size of the shortlist would ideally be driven by where a "quality dropoff" is more than by a set number.

2) The vanilla-compatible category had problems. IMO there shouldn't be a category driven by technical concerns, as that makes things harder for the judges and the audience probably isn't concerned about that. A "vanilla feel" or "classic" category that goes purely on aesthetics could be better.

3) "Best gameplay" was also sort of a headscratcher for me, when nominating stuff. "Gameplay" is a vague term, and maps can excel in many different ways. E.g. exploration, combat setup, puzzles, or new mechanics introduced in a mod. In the end IMO this makes the category so broad that picking one winner feels arbitrary. Maybe there's a way to split this up, not sure. Classic vs. experimental, or combat vs. exploration, or ... anything that makes the category smaller.

4) I really liked having the various posts on the site about things other than the pure results. I don't think I have any constructive criticism about the site here -- obviously the presentation could be better in some ways, which is true of about any website, but I don't have a silver bullet change to recommend. 

Oh, and about the people's choice thing:

Personally having only one award there didn't bother me a lot; I was just initially confused/surprised since it had been called "people's choice awards".

With the tiny shortlists I did feel like having a people's choice vote in each category would be one way to recognize more of the best maps. If the shortlists are larger that might be less of a motivation. 

After having seen the low amount of votes, I think it might be wise to keep just a single category until we see an increase in voting activity.

Personally, I didn't vote because I hadn't had time to play hardly any maps from 2017. Otherwise I would've voted.

So, maybe next year concentrate on reaching out to people first etc. and if those measures increase voting activity to high enough levels to warrant more voting categories, they can then be added next year. 

Wait... if my math is right, there were only 23 votes for the people's choice?! I know the Quake community has become quite small over the years, but damn! As you're very much aware, your social networking skills leave a lot to be desired. For next year, I hope you find the right guy for that because you seriously need to rally the troops and probably go about it way more in advance. Did you even post at QuakeOne and other dedicated sites? Other id games' communities might be interested in participating too, so don't forget to post at Doomworld et al. You may also need to form a partnership with QuakeCon or something (does QExpo still exist? I can't find any reference of it beyond 2016). It would surely bring more exposure to the awards.

Regarding the names of the judges against the comments.
I understand your reasons for not disclosing them but they said pretty interesting things and I would have liked to know which comment belonged to whom (maybe you could share the info privately? I promise there's no hate mail to be received from me). I trust that the judges know enough of how the occasional troll/hate posting goes around here to be able to get over it. At any rate, you should ask them how they feel about appending their names to their comments...

I'm willing to include more categories for the people's choice in the future
I'm having mixed feelings about this. On one hand, I agree with Johnny Law that ideally there should be a people's choice in each category but on the other hand, Esrael has a point. Let's keep a single people's choice for QAwards 2019 and, if participation increases significantly, then you can implement Johnny's one-people's-choice-per-category for QAwards 2020. 

Sorry for double-posting but this literally hit me just a few seconds after I clicked on "submit"...

About rallying the troops, I wanted to add that you may wanna ask ArrCeee and other prominent Q1 youtubers to do some promotion for the awards. 

I didn't vote for the peoples' choice awards because there was absolutely zero incentive for me to do so, and I suspect it was the same thing for a lot of people. When you have a list of 70 maps that are entirely different from one another, no categories, only one map selectable and only one winner with no runner ups then there really is no point in voting at all because we all knew which map was going to win. This award was utterly pointless as it was. Not surprised with this turnout if these numbers are indeed for this award.

I definitely think that:
1- There needs to be the exact same categories as the judges' awards for the peoples' choice awards.
2- People should be allowed to vote for more than one map per category, the winner being the map that receives the most votes. 

People should be allowed to vote for more than one map per category, the winner being the map that receives the most votes.
I don't think emulating The Voice is a viable option: maps will then not win on their own merits but on the size of the mappers' social networks. 

Before skacky's comment is dismissed with "uuuhh... dont complain... *drools* if you didnt vote..." - I agree 100%, and I voted!!! 

Classic otp putting words in peoples mouths. Never change, friend! 

He certainly never, ever said those exact words on the quake awards channel of the episode jam Discord, my mistake. 

Before this turns into a shitshow I'd like to ask that people keep this civil and that we keep the suggestions practical.

@post 125, I probably did say that. And the intent is to use "negative reinforcement" to get people to engage with voting. It's effectively the same thing as saying "you gotta be in it to win it".

I'm not going to dismiss Skacky's opinion over a flippant comment.

Skacky, the focus on the awards (for me at least) was the judging by the judges. The public voting was to give the public a say as to which their favourite map was. It was the people's choice. In the future, maybe we'll include voting for categories for the public.

I wanted to keep the scale of these first awards fairly small and scale them up in future years if need be. I'm already on this track, and if it looks like the bulk of people want more categories, then we can do just that. I am very cautious about the scope of the awards becoming too large, so even if this is what people want, it might not be a quick or immediate change. 

anyways, thanks for the feedback @Johnny Law, @Esrael, @Mugwump, @Skacky and @otp

keep the feedback coming in guys :) 

ok sorry it was just the drool you put in his mouth as a constructive form of criticism. 

@Mugwump that was already the case given it was dead obvious which map was going to win. I'm not salty over Sepulcher winning it because it is a great map (though not my favorite by any stretch), but the way that award was conducted just did not work at all. 

What if the community nominated each category and judges picked winners from that pool?

Other than this notion I'd agree with every things Johnny brought up in #117. Especially this: I'd remove the technical requirements and encourage more descriptive categories:

Best Vanilla style map
Best Experimental map
Best Use of Secrets
Best Use of Combat

This kind of stuff. I came around to the Awards and for a dry run this turned out well.

I'd be happy to help with social media outreach next year or writing. When I take my time, I can write... uhhh .... good. 

Yeah it's hard to predict what will be going in a year from now, but it's likely that you could rope me into taking screenshots or doing write-ups.

P.S. a potential new category that occurred to me: best collection or episode. E.g. it would have been cool to recognize that retrojam 6 or jam 9 was amazing as a whole package. 

Just consider only whole releases instead of single maps, like the Cacowards. 

That would exclude some great maps like Sock's Grendel's Blade... 

Grendel's Blade is a full release, consisting of 1 map. 

"Whole releases" as in map packs/episodes/jams would be given awards as a whole. That doesn't exclude single map releases, since in that case the "whole release" is a single map.

I think that would have to be introduced as at least one additional category if all the categories weren't just changed. This year for example we saw the Best Gameplay award go to a jam map. If this category still exists in the next Quake Awards, and jam maps are to be considered, it wouldn't make a whole lot of sense to give the award to an entire jam containing maps by different authors which potentially greatly vary in terms of merits.

I think a best episode/map pack award would be cool.

I also agree with renaming Vanilla Map to Vanilla Feel (or id-style), and that splitting Best Gameplay into Best Combat and something like Best Exploration/secrets.