Estok's Overall Evaluation
This is how I evaluated the entries overall. The first thing I noticed was that some entries were similar, they are more easily compared among themselves. The groups include:

Expected GameplayStandard RPG:          Revenge, Illusion, Premed, GraduationSci-Fi:                Scientist, Prison, RushUnidentified gameplay: Corn, Wedding

For this reason, I consider Corn and Wedding uncompetitive entries for this competition. The rest of this evaluation don't consider those.

Revenge vs Illusion

Among the standard RPGs, Revenge and Illusion are the closest in form. The most striking difference between these two is the sense of depth in the design of the story. The story that Revenge has was too simple and meaningless. In Revenge, the story you get is this:

There is a band of bandits that raided a village, the main character was a mother who suffered, who decided to revenge.

There is almost nothing interesting about the story itself. It was reactive, simplistic, and trite: someone did something to you so you want revenge, and the form of revenge is violence. In the presentation of this storyline, the author had shown no emotional conflict on the main character's motivation. The invaders are undisputably bad, and the main character is justified of her action. There is no dimension to the story. Altogether, Revenge a bad introduction for a story without any comparison.

The basic observable storyline of Illusion is this:

There is a conflict involving a standard army and a group of thirteen individuals. Twelve of them died, leaving one behind to finish the job. The identity of the conflict is a mystery, but the purpose of the struggle is to bring peace--where the definition of peace is questioned.

This story has more dimensions. First of all, it has a central meaning, a question on whether peace is an unreachable goal, and if one believes that it is unreachable, what is the source of strength to struggle. The character (the maiden) had suffered traumendous loss, just like the character in Revenge, however, there is an additional level of depth, because the Maiden chose to hide the loss. This gives more complexity to Illusion over Revenge. In terms of projected gameplay, Illusion also has an advantage, because on top of fight, it conveyed the gameplay related to illusions and hypnosis. If you compare the mode of gameplay, Illusion conveyed a playable character that is a specialist in stealth and hypnosis, on top of being able to fight by imitating the twelve others; in Revenge, the main character is just a warrior.

Illusion points to both a better story and better gameplay.

Premed vs Illusion

Premed was also readily comparable. Premed contains a better meaning to the story compared to Revenge, but still overshadowed by its thematic presentation. The only reason I believe that there is a meaning was the first sentence: "A young noble, long exiled from her homeland, must return to reclaim the throne stolen from her family and find the true meaning of her birthright." However, it was not a strong indication that there is an actual message of the story. You can write a story where the main character discover a meaning, but the story itself can be meaningless. Semantically, Premed is weaker than Illusion. The overall story also suffer some undesirable features, such as a main character that doesn't really know her past but is hinted by her dreams, a grandpa that had been preparing her for the unknown. These are too common and made the story less interesting. The situation where the bad guys came to give hints on what was going on is also a bad choice. The way mystery was introduced was not promising, and not very intelligent. It was almost forcing mystery down the viewer's throat. Compared to Illusion, Premed also didn't take much chance to express the character.

For instance, both Illusion and Premed presented a heroine with talents. Premed only conveyed it through the line:

FACTOID – Zulaikha has a keen mind. She can learn many techniques not written in books or taught by trainers. 

I have never seen any worst representation of a concept. This is a clear demonstration of the author's inability to incorporate information into a story. If you think that that piece of information is so important that you would completely destroy the flow by sticking it out like a sore thumb, you better find a way to include it in the begining of the story. If the beginning of the story doesn't have it, maybe the story isn't well-designed. In illusion, the talents of the heroine are shown, such as intelligence. Whether you think that the heroine is intelligent is a separate issue, but the fact that the author didn't just say that she is intelligent make the presentation better.

Illusion and Premed also shared the use of conversation. If you compare the use of conversation, you will see that the convo in Premed is almost used as a space filler. The dialogues aren't really deep, and mostly used to move the story along, but not very interestingly. The emotion of the heroine almost doesn't connect through the dialogues, although it conveyed the situation: "the past is catching me up, it is horrible and I don't really want to deal with it"

Now, the use of conversation is a choice. It doesn't require a conversation to show that the idea that there is a mystery coming up that is rejectable by the main character. The author probably partly used it as a way to introduce the grandpa, but there was nothing revealing about grandpa. It seemed that the author didn't think a lot how the story should start, and is stuck with the wake up from bad dream, light conversation, then go to school and things got weird sequence. It read like the author was simply following some kind of template, without independently analyzing what is best to deliver the situation.

In Illusion, the main point is about illusions. The conversation was used to show that the levels of illusions played by the maiden, starting from the seeming piece to accompany the monk. The levels of illusion are presented as the monk interpreted the meaning of the conversation deeper and deeper, to a point that he believed that the conversation was solely about the maiden, only to find at the end, that the maiden was really answering his quest, that the strings he heard, were really an echoing bell. There was no lies behind the lies. This makes the conversation more meaningfully integrated in the introduction.

In terms of gameplay, Premed had shown almost nothing, except a hint of some Jackie Chan action. If you compare Revenge and Premed casually, you will expect a lot more talking than action in Premed. On top of that, Premed is likely to be thematically cheesy because it is unreasonable that the heroine will be exercising much violence. Not that illusion hinted a lot of violence, but the fact that the antagonists have no moral trouble killing you makes an exciting difference.

Illusion has a better story, and the contruction is more dense. Gameplay-wise, Premed is probably not as good because it seems reduced.

Illusion vs Graduation

Compared to Premed and Revenge, Graduation showed the most meaning, the sense that after a transition had come, all you can do is to believe in yourself. One of those no turning back moment. But the presentation of that meaning is pretty unrefined. The development of the semantic felt like a hammer, because the character didn't convey the intelligence you would expect from a graduate. The way the main character expressed the meaning was artless, however, it serves as a point to highlight the hypocricy of the Aristarchy (i.e. the Aristarchy graduated someone that is more of a grunt than an elegant thinker). Or to better decribe it, the Aristarchy graduated a character that retained his wild side although it wasn't promoted.

In terms of characterization, this conflict alone pwns Revenge and Premed by far, you don't even need to read the rest of the stories. Compared to Illusion,
the two character are compariable: A 'noble' with a wild side, compared to a peaceful koto player hidding her identity in a violent conflict. In illusion, the violent aspect wasn't displayed, but only hinted by the fallen flowers, because the illusion of peace is something to treasure as long as you can, the development of the character is heavy tied to the situation. In Graduation, it was conveyed that there was an atmosphere to suppress, there is some kind of political struggle that can't be won by force, that that situation suppressed the wild side of the character. Design-wise, the two are comparable, almost identical.

In terms of character, the two almost neutralize each other. However, the heroine in Illusion as an additional property, which is kinship. In Illusion, there is the dimension where the heroine rejects the notion that the story was about her. She wants the story to be about the twelve, not herself. In the conversation, she would rather to be the one fallen, and that there is a meaning that she did everything to continue the dreams of the relatives. The character in Graduation didn't show any further dimension, that made the character less deep.

In terms of the story, Illusion gave more hints on what the story was about. There was an obstacle, thirteen characters met due to their common path against the obstacle. In the conflict, twelve of them died, yet their wills were inherited by the youngest member, who combined their strengths to come against the obstacles. However, the cost of the twelve was very deep to the heroine, that even if she was able to bring peace, it would still be only an illusion to her.

In Graduation, the story is hinted to be: There is some unhuman forces that cannot be contested by force. The aristarchy is the submissive way of dealing with it. The main character trained through the aristarchy, but the training didn't dampen the sense of justice. The character is ready to show others how to come out of submissiveness to do things right.

In gameplay, it is unclear what kind of game Graduation is. The main character is somekind of officer, so that is an offical way to deal with the 'problems'. However, the point is to do the unofficial things. There is a mix of official tasks and wild tasks. The mode of gameplay wasn't as clear, but it should be at least less predictable than Revenge. But the fact that it didn't hint what the gameplay is, is undesirable for the introduction. In terms of observable gameplay, we see politics, and combat in Graduation; and combat, stealth, hypnosis, and group tactics in Illusion.

So overall, the story and design are better in Illusion. The presentation of the introduction in Illusion also conveyed more applicability.

For the writing, Illusion exhibits rereadability. I think I mentioned this sometimes. It is the property of a writing that contains more information as you read it more than once. It is the basis of a replayable story with real replayability. The material in Graduation exhausts much faster than in Illusion. Premed and Revenge don't even exhibit this. If you have an eye for it, the construction of Illusion is perceptually a lot deeper than Graduation.

In fiction, the job of a writer is not to describe a scene, but to create a scene, and use the scene to convey a message. Compare the first scenetic portions:

GraduationCut to a beach – everything is silhouetted by the orange light of the huge sun starting to sink below the waves. An androgynous (because they're silhouetted) anime-style figure with shoulder length hair and sharp features sits with their back to the lower left side of the screen, knees drawn up and one arm casually draped over them. The figure is looking out over the waves, the wind gently ruffling their hair. Sounds of surf, breeze, and background music. The sun is slowly sinking as the scene progresses.IllusionAn old monk under an eave was listening to the rain.In the sound of the rain, came a set of quiet ripples--footsteps of a traveler, light and calm; crests of the waves, casting aside a thin layer of new ash. Cracks of the tiles did not make a sound under the gentle steps.The traveler came under the eave, to share the only dry floor in the mountain. Against what remained of a temple wall, the traveler rested a package, two notesof contact, six feet apart. 

In Graduation:
- The use of silhouetted as a way to convey imcomplete perception
- The silhouette is attributed to the setting sun, however, it is a thematic construct, not a semantic construct, because clearly the two sides of the character wasn't caused by a transition.
- A calm scene to contrast with the comming storm
- The mentioning of androgynous to hint the two sides of the character
- Hair length and ruffling to convey the existence of the wild side
- Mention of the sounds to enhance the scenetic description
- Mention of light and sun to set the mood
- Setting sun as a sign of transition--Day: Aritarchy; Night: wild

In Illusion:
- A channeling of sensory, hearing, a foreshadow of incomplete perception
- The channeling of sensory is attributed to blindness. While the maiden make no comment about the blindness, but admire the hearing, the soldiers simply ignored the monk for being blind. This is a semantic construct
- A calm scene to contrast with the comming storm
- The notion of deduction, logical mysteries to be discovered
- A sense of caring to the world in pain through the scene of gentleness across cracked tiles (i.e. the meaning that the comer is not to add to the wounds)
- The crackled tiles also serve as a contrast later on
- A moment of peace within chaos: Crests of waves casting ashes
- Rain as a symbol of cleansing (washing away ashes), listening to the rain as a metaphor of reflecting on tragedies (and later on we know that the monk was listening to the moaning of the bell, which is parallel to the maiden's song and all the rest)
- The meaning of connection, a goal to be shared: sharing the same eave in the mountain. This is a foreshadow to the goal of the monk, to find a bell, and how the maiden was actually giving a bell. The meaning of sharing refuge (from chaos) starts here.
- The moment where the monk hear the package of the maiden is parallel to the later situation where the monk hear the weapons of the horsemen. The monk is interested in the koto, but not the weapons. There is a meaning here.
- The notion of companion is not arbitrary. You will find that the presentation has a strong meaning about loss. The sense of loss started with the ash, and the eave served as an analogy that parallells the imagery of peace within chaos, where two individuals of similar path came together due to the rain, with one of them as the seeker of peace, and the other one as the provider. The two individuals drew a connection due to the rain, a reminiscience of how the thirteen came together. This scene set the stage for the intro to talk about the monk, sound, illusion, peace, kinship, inheritance of will, all at the same time.


Others
Do other entries later. Note that these are just the preliminary evaluasions. These aren't the evaluations on individual entries.

I wish I could redo mine with a different story. The one I entered doesn't really start rolling until later, and probably wasn't the best idea for a contest judged on introductions.

Re: Entry 6

Quote:Endless run on sentences and a painful use of language make this an atrocious piece to read. The choice of wording and use of language make each sentence confusing to read and difficult to understand. This most evident during dialog where the decision to have speakers refer to themselves in the third person makes it hard to tell whether or not you are reading connected lines of dialog or the author merely forgot to put the quotation marks in the right place.

The run-on sentences reflects the actual way Japanese sentences are structured. The subject of the sentence is often omitted, when it is translated into English, a run-on sentence is the appropriate form to reflect the actual flow of the sentences. You have to understand that the writing runs on a very slow pace. You are not supposed to read fast. You need to stop and think. The wordings aren't normal, because they aren't decriptions, they are clues. The use of third person reference is also a choice considering authenticity. It is how they refer to themselves, if you don't see this, you missed the use of language itself to reflect a particular cultural theme. If the lines were put in modern English structure, the associations would be completely destroyed. It would sound like a piece dubbed over in commercial English. This is the reason why many people would rather read subtitle and listen to the native voices, instead of listening to the dubbed version. The dubbed versions lost the tempo in the original piece. I am not sure what to say. When I look at it, I see Japanese everywhere, it was obviously written in a way to preserve a cultural voice. Compared to Revenge and Premed, those pieces didn't have an embedded cultural voice. Do you recognize that many lines were direct translations? What part in Revenge sound remotely cultural to you? It sounded like a commercial from Hollywood, where the cultural tone was completely ignored by commercialization.

I don't see how you can get confused about the dialogue. It was a simple exchange: one block from the maiden, one block from the monk. Monk, then the maiden, then the monk, then the maiden. How is it possible to be confused? You were reading too fast. It is not a piece where you can safelyskip a few words and still understand, like other writings that contain so much fat.

Quote:There doesn’t appear too much if any story presented within the introduction which seems to consist of dialog between an old man and young woman playing music. The way the piece is written makes it difficult to determine much about the story beyond that, except for that the event are some how linked to two soldiers.

The entry actually said a lot. If you are able to see the dialogue but you don't understand the story, then you were reading the dialogues as if they were just casual conversations; Despite the maiden hinting three times that there are hidden messages, and how the monk repeated penetrated to get a deeper meaning. I guess you treat storytelling techniques too lightly. You are not a kid. I am not a mother telling a bedtime story. The common ways you see about storytelling almost treat the audience as intellectually bankrupt individuals. It is like spoon-feeding the audience. It is just sad. Discoveries, mysteries, the satisfaction of solving riddles--these are qualities of more complex designs, reflect through the presentation of the story. Not all stories are aimed for kids looking for a simplisic story. And Entry 6 didn't try to spoon-feed.

Quote:It is difficult to see what kind of game this entry would make and its value as an introduction is minimal at best. It doesn’t present the reader with any information about what the game nor any information on the characters or events that are waiting to unfold. It seems like a piece cut out of larger work, but without the larger work it is effectively meaningless.

You are correct that it is out of a larger work. But the piece itself had given information about the characters, the conflict, and the gameplay. It is far from uninformative. You can't read it with the low level of consciousness as you read other things. It isn't fast food. In my opinion it serves well to tell you that the story itself won't be fast food neither.

Re: Entry 3
I gave you a margin of interpretation because I rather see more than see less. The reason I mentioned hypocrisy because none of the characters demonstrated a depth of intelligence that one would expect from a graduate. The behaviors of the characters don't match truely refined people from the inside out. They were like rebellion teenagers dressed in graduating gowns, showing an attitude while saying,

"I have finally suffered through the training, it was all nonsense to me. Now I am an officer that the society had recognized. As far as I know, I have earned my right to spread my wild wings."

The motto you used did not directly point to justice. "That which ought by rights to be" simply means that "I am right because I believe so." It is an arrogant statement that matches the interpretation of a hypocritic society: They are submitting to the stronger force, yet they see the pride in doing so. What the society called justice, is just a cover of cowardice. That is hypocrisy.

"You can't run away – they'll always find you. And you can't fight them either, they're far stronger than any human. They are the chaotic essence of freedom - if you try to force them to obey your will they will tear you apart."

This lines shows the contradiction between the teachings and the character's belief. If you don't have complete control of the meaning of a piece, then the true meaning leaks through the writing. You think you said one thing, but your hand spoke otherwise.


* Naruto is only interesting in the begining. Its condition right now can only be decribed as pokemonized.

Quote:The PC is supposed to be a graduate of the equivalent of a military highschool, and now is moving on to an apprenticeship on a spaceship which will be performing diplomatic and other missions assigned by the Aristarchy. The speaking character OTOH is supposed to have been a teacher of the PC's, and a symbol of who the PC will be at the end of the game when he/she is a mature Aristarchy officer.

This notion was not handled well. The whole piece had shown nothing related to military except the vague mention of the uniform. It almost sounded like the military training existed to further a selfish purpose, because the character you described had no sense of brotherhood or any cause outside themselves. Your characters appeared individualistic and superficial:

"Oh, but where are my manners? I should congratulate you! It's a bright day for you, basking in the triumph of graduation. Do you feel grown up in your shiny new uniform?"

This line conveyed the implication that the person inside the uniform does not meet the quality symbolized by the uniform. To be precise, the character in uniform hates the superificial meanings that the uniform symbolized:

"Enjoy it. But don't that edge we carefully honed you to through hours of training. How does the saying go? 'It's always brightest just before the storm?'This uniform, it's like a lightning rod, a lure, calling the storms to us."

This line expressed the distaste toward the institution: "This uniform is irritating me. I know what they taught me in school. I have gone through it to get the legitimate power I have now. Having this uniform right now gives me all the justification I need to unleash the storm inside me."

"A storm is coming, can you feel it? Are you looking forward to it?"

The character is not looking forward to the graduation, but to the storm. The training was a mean to express the storm within. All the training and schooling were just a hypocrisy to go through before the character can become a storm.

This is the meaning of your piece. Now we see that somehow the author doesn't necessary understand what she wrote herself. If you compare this interpretation to your own understanding, suddenly it makes more sense and became more interesting. It is about a character that is determined to bring true justice in a sea of hypocritic cowards.


Re: Gameplay

You actually needs to know what the gameplay is for this competition. You are correct it is not the responsibility of a writer to design the gameplay. But the contest didn't state that this is a contest for writers. Applicability implies that the contestant needs to know about the gameplay and how well the story fits the gameplay. You are correct that a lot of information will be conveyed by other means. But you know that part of the judgement is Applicability, how did you suppose a judge was going to evaluate on that based on a piece of writing? A casual thought tells you that this contest is about game design also.

Quote:Establishing immersion and suspense was a higher priority.

If you think about immersion and you believe that you have done a good job establishing it, here are some questions:

- Why didn't the piece mention anything about the spaceships? Isn't that pretty important? the whole game will be on a spaceship, why isn't it introduced or foreshadowed?

- Does the line "Falling is Flying" conveys a central theme? Is this a recurring focus of the story?

- The characters are spaceship officers. How does having wings related to the situations? Why did you not describe the gameplay if the characters prossess such traits? It would be a distraction if the gameplay itself has nothing to do with wings. "Gameplay could be any mix of adventure, RPG, and Strategy elements such as would be appropriate for a Star Trek game." How does having wings change these? It is a pretty valuable perspective to convey in an introduction.

I ask this because Illusion also dealt with strategy, and in that piece the gameplay is conveyed. When the maiden said, " disturbed the [your] meditation", &#111;n &#111;ne hand it is a common Japanese greeting, &#111;n the other hand she really was making an apology–not for her own presence at the temple, but her luring of the flags up the hill. If you read it right, you discover that the clue that led to the monk's reinterpretation at the end, was the fact that the maiden lured the army by impersonating twelve dead comrades. Sound in the introduction wasn't a thematic enhancement, it was the mean by which the heroine exercises genjutsu (now that I know you know what it is). The small round bell fell in midair because there was never a maiden at the temple. The old monk had been talking to a bell the whole time. Where is the maiden? Apparently, the flags were lured away for a reason. <br><br>It is a dilemma. A good introduction needs to tell the whole story and the gameplay. The contest didn't ask us to design the whole story or the gameplay. But those are what needed to have a good introduction. <br><br><b>Re: Rereadability</b><br><br>Rereadablity is not an interesting issue. It is a must. It is the lifespan of a writing. Considering game+, the height of complexity and depth is to deliver the exact same scene with a new dimension of understanding. There is nothing cool about different scenes saying different things. It is cool that the same scene says different things depending &#111;n how much the viewer had gone through the story. It is a much more satisfying design because the viewer knows that they had learned a new dimension, a dimension that the author intended to deliver. This is a pretty essential technique to reward a reader. When the reader reads it a second time, the reader feels a sense of accomplishment, and hopefully a sense of appreciation that the author embedded rewards through out for understanding the story. It makes reading a much more interactive experience. <br><br>Rereadability is not just an interesting consideration. It is a major measurement of depth of a piece of writing. It is the difference between a writing that reads like wallpaper and a writing that reads like a gem. Writings that are expected to be read &#111;nly &#111;nce are like wallpapers: you read it, you peel it off, nothing interesting behind, you go get the vacuum. Otherwise, it reads like a gem: you read it, you set it down, you read it again and got more, you wonder whether there is more to it, you read it again and you get even more. Now that is interesting. <br><br><!–QUOTE–><BLOCKQUOTE><span class="smallfont">Quote:</span><table border=0 cellpadding=4 cellspacing=0 width="95%"><tr><td class=quote><!–/QUOTE–><!–STARTQUOTE–>My usual opinion is that any sentence the reader doesn't completely understand the first time is a failure to communicate. But I can see how you and other literary critics might find a more difficult text which reveals secrets when reread to be more rich/profound.<!–QUOTE–></td></tr></table></BLOCKQUOTE><!–/QUOTE–><!–ENDQUOTE–><br>A fictional writing that can be completely understood the first time you read it is like a date that offers you sex the first time you meet her. It is just cheap. Play a little bit more with the reader won't kill you. Illusion wasn't meaningless by itself. Its literal meaning:<br><br>An old monk was listening to the rain when a young woman came. The monk asked whether the woman was a koto player, and the woman decided to play a song in the rain. The bell in the courtyard echoed the song, answering the monk's wish to hear a bell in his journey of fifty years. Then the monk said, although it seemed that the woman was answering his wish, the woman was actually saying something else. The monk partically said, "you ran away, didn't you? If you miss them so much, maybe you should go back to them." And the woman practically said, "You are right there something sad happened. I tried to bring some happiness, but I brought more sadness instead." Then the woman suddenly disappeared into thin air and left behind a bell. Some horsemen suddenly showed up searching for a group of people. The old monk thought about the situation, and realized that the woman had told him the opposite of the truth. And the reader is invited to invert the conversation to get the true story.

Re: Entry 6 and Coming Storm

The song in the entry described a rain that made the flowers fall. If you understand that the falling flowers represent dead comrades, then you understand that the maiden was downplaying the violence of the situation. The heroine was luring the troops up the hill, but discovered that there was a monk at the temple. In the conversation, the heroine found that the monk was a traveling monk, who had been sickened by the fightings and chaos on the lands. The heroine understood that she was bringing a lot of stuffs that the monk wouldn't want to see, but the horsemen were already coming. On one hand the heroine engaged in a conversation with the monk, on the other hand she used the fallen bell as intended to lure the horsemen up. Everything seemed pretty quiet and calm because moments of peace should be treasured, even though it was just an illusion before something much more violent. It is often tranquil before a storm, that was the metaphor. The storm refer to the bloodshed that was imminent: The horsemen were lured away from somewhere, where the final fight would be. When the horsemen would have returned, the heroine would probably get killed too.

So the storm was the bloodshed yet to come when fragrance of flowers would fill the wind. It was an euphemizing moment before a bloody event, just like the beguiling tranquility before a coming storm.

The heroine did not know the outcome of the battle. But she wished that the monk would understand her motivation behind the violence. The round bell summarized the conversation: If she would succeed, then the bell in the monk's hand would echo in peace. Otherwise, the bell would echo in the illusion that the thirteen had believed and sacrificed, although the heroine would have no regret to have believed in the illusion.

By reciting the correct version of the song, the monk had accepted the heroine's action as an origin of peace. Just as the old monk was trying to find a bell that would echo in peace, the heroine wished for an understanding and acceptance of her action.

It wasn't about storm, but the coming of a storm. And the coming of a storm is an illusive moment of peace. So the idea here is to display such illusive moment. Otherwise it would be about the storm, not the moment when it is still coming.

If the main theme of the game, story and the contest wasn't about illusion, the writing itself probably won't be so heavy loaded with layers of implications. So the entry was substantially designed to reflect the topic.


Re: The right to criticise

Quote:As for the other entries, well, since I didn't participate myself, I feel rather embarrassed to criticise, since you couldn't criticise back.

I think that this is a really bad idea. It doesn't matter who you are. Reading and writing are two very different activities. We have always heard these pathetic comments:

"Who are you to criticise my work, when you haven't showed any of your writings?"
"I have been writing for x years, how many years have you been writing?"
"I have a degree in English literature."
"I can casually write x words a day, how many can you write?"
"Show me an example if you want to criticise."

The credential of a criticizer is not an argument against the content of the criticism. The purpose of a criticism is not to benefit the criticiser, but the receiver.

Actually some voters still 'owe' the competition some evaluations. For example, S/S rated 9.Rush above 5.Revenge to be the same, it is interesting to know why, and that Biege rated 5.Revenge to be dead last, which is also interesting. 5MG rated 4.Prison over 3.Graduation. I guess no one wants to say anything because no one can handle criticisms and would rather hide behind politics of pacifism.

For example, I can say that 7. Premed is arguably better than 5.Revenge, because there is actually a story in 7. It was also surprising that 7 is rated less creative than 5. It is hard to find a simpler story and character motivation than 5. On top of that the use of wording didn't match the theme of the story. It was a piece about the ancient time, and you dare to mention cameras and the scrolling screen. It was surprising that TechnoGoth described those as 'seamless' inclusion of directives. Those additions were completely destroying the piece, not to mention that the messages displayed were very profound nor not obviously conveyed by the visuals. It was like a low budget political propaganda:

Your view fades and “In the night they came!” appears on screen and then quicklyfades, a replay of the charging of the barbarians and then a pan around the carnage in the village, with no sound and displayed at a faster speed. “Ambushedus in our own homes!” pictures of houses burning and people franticly trying to grab weapons. “They showed no mercy!” replays the bearing down on the children.

This is a complete lack of style. This is the kind of stuff you get when you copy Hollywood movie trailers. Hollywood is an important word here. Foreign movies don't do this. This is not a style choice (or a very bad style choice) because it does not enhance the thematic presentation of the entry. It was a disaster to the emersion as a piece of writing. Besides, the scenes it repeats were the scenes that the viewer had just seen. This should show you how little there was in the entry.

Reading through the entry, my reaction was, "What the hell, there was no story and the cutscene was beating it to the death trying to deceive me that there is a story. There were only pretty unattractive thematics, showing no depth in another character or the situation. The barbarians were like morons, and the woman wasn't anymore complex neither. I guess this is what you get when you play around with the camera with absolutely no clue what the story is about."

"Why do we have to die?""Only through sacrifice can you see courage; only through courage can you see a hero...""But why do WE have to die? You could let her die too, let us all die together. But you  didn't because you just like her, you *beep*head.""She does have some attractive qualities..."    "Where should I sit around this strings box thingy?"    "The other side."    "Like this?"    "The other other side.""I don't get it.""Attraction is hard to explain. It is like  poetry, like mist--beautiful and hard to grasp...""Can you just change the script? I mean, since  nothing have really started yet.""What's wrong with the script?"        "Will this guy work?"        "He is way too tall."        "There is no old guy that short.          They only exist in animes."        "Then I guess we have to CG the monk."        "That's what I fucking told you."            "Um... what am I donating for?"                  "You are not donating anything.              This isn't for the charity."            "Is ten dollars enough?"        "Someone get the blue screen."        "Ryoukai.""What the *beep*? I've just asked you:  'why do we all die except her...'  Can I know what the *beep* you filming?""The present--the moment that is transient  and eternal--the beauty of a blooming flower  etched forever in my memory..."    "This dress is making me itchy."    "Nononono, don't move! Shit!""And what the *beep* is this for?""Maybe the DVD.""Are you gonna beep me out?""Sure."

[Edited by - Estok on September 28, 2005 6:02:04 AM]

Quote:Actually some voters still 'owe' the competition some evaluations. For example, S/S rated 9.Rush above 5.Revenge to be the same, it is interesting to know why, and that Biege rated 5.Revenge to be dead last, which is also interesting. 5MG rated 4.Prison over 3.Graduation.

Looking at the way other people voted, I was worried that maybe my standards for the stories weren't in line with what was intended by the contest. My votes were based on how intriguing the game seemed from reading the introduction.

Quote:I guess no one wants to say anything because no one can handle criticisms and would rather hide behind politics of pacifism.

Interesting way of putting it. I intend to post some review over the weekend. Focusing on round two at the moment.