THE DETAILS AND RULES OF THE CONTEST: 2006

These rules are subject to change. Changes will be posted here and to the Game Chef Mailing List and Forum. For discussion of the rules, or for questions, please see the Yahoo Group in the Discussion section, above.

0) Before you decide to make a game for this competition, you have to be willing to participate in giving peer feedback. This year's voting is done entirely via peer voting, and you must be able to commit to reviewing up to four games within the two weeks following the end of the contest. This is a requirement for participating in this year's Game Chef Awards.

1) Submissions to the contest must be made no later than 11:59 PM EST on Sunday Night, March 19th, 2006. If you're not sure when that is, post early. In fact you may want to post early so that you don't get messed up by server death as all are posted at the last minute (not to mention being in early can be a good tactic). There will be instructions for submission (basically sending your game to a certain email address) posted on the front page of this site by the time the contest starts. You can submit your game early, then go back and do some work, and resubmit your game. Note, though, that "the doors will close" at 11:59PM EST. Any game not in our hands will not be included in the reviewing/judging.

2) "Ingredients" for the Game Chef competition and any special rules will be posted here on the evening of Friday, March 10h at aprrox 9:00PM EST.

3) Please make use of the 1KM1KT Game Chef forum to tell us about your idea, to do followup work, etc. Think of it as a Design Blog. This lets us know who's in, and what to expect. You can also continue to use these forums to discuss your game after the contest as well.

4) Shortly after March 19th, within approximately three days, all of the submissions will be divided amongst the peers for review and scoring. From that point, every peer will have up to two weeks to provide feedback and score the games. This is a requirement for participation in the contest. If your feedback is not received within two weeks of "assignment", then your game will be taken out of the running for the contest.

5) Past Game Chef contest participants can participate in peer reviewing this year even if you don't participate! When the contest goes live, there will be instructions on where to email to tell us that you wish to vote (again, though, you have to have participated in at least one previous Game Iron Chef Event). You will be given approximately 3-5 games to review in two weeks. Please only volunteer if you are positive that you can commit the time to reviewing and scoring.

6) Submissions will all be reviewed by peers on the following four categories: Creative and Effective Incorporation of the "Ingredients" and "Rules", Estimated Effectiveness in Play (Playability), Completeness, and a "Swing Category" involving Style, Coolness, and other factors. Review assignments will be handed out a few days after the close of the contest once all games have been catalogued. Two weeks will be given to review and score the games.

The reviews and scores will be posted. From that point, the top entries (approximately eight) will be chosen for the "final cook-off": Two weeks are given to everyone to become familiar with the top entries, after which a final round of voting will occour. The winer will be chosen shortly afterwards.

5) All the work for the game will be done by one person. Joint efforts are not allowed.

6) Focus primarily on text and good rule design. No art or creative layout is needed- The game will solely be judged on the merits of the text. If you want to later add art or lay the game out professionally, feel free to do so in a later rewrite of the game. However, remember that legibility will make it easier for others to focus on and critique your work.

7) You can submit your game in just about any form: PDF, Word Doc, TXT (please make sure it's legible), HTML, etc. If you would like us to convert the document to PDF for you, just let us know at the time of submission and we'll do it. Again, the submission form email appear here once the contest begins, at the top of the page.

8) All games will be eventually uploaded to the 1KM1KT site, in their "Game Chef" area. If you submit a game to this contest, a copy of your game will reside there indefinitely. You can later update or rewrite your game, but you cannot have it removed from the 1KM1KT site, even if you later decide to publish. Think of it as a an archived copy, saved for posterity, for the benefit of yourself and future Game Chef contributors.

9) All games should be able to be intuitively considered a "Role Playing Game". If you get too far from what may reasonably be construed an RPG you may be penalized if your peers don't understand your work! On the other hand, you may get points for creativity from others for "pushing the envelope". Enter this "Grey Area" at your own risk!

10) Designer names and backgrounds will not be considered for these awards: That is, if known game designers wish to join in this contest, welcome aboard (feel free to use your real name or a pseudonym, your choice)! But absolutely no preference, brownie points or special consideration will given to a designer because of factors outside of the work that is submitted.

11) Once the reviewing begins, we're going to take Tobias' lead from the 2005 awards and create "Game Chef Destroyer" threads at the forums of 1KM1KT. This will be an area where you "take apart" other peers' games in an environment of friendly peer deconstruction and improvement/excellence. No malice or harshness, just a solid look at all the games to find missing areas, loopholes, etc. Please feel free to join in on this deconstruction, and keep it civil. This feedback is to help the designers improve upon their designs and cover any missing areas with patches.

12) Not a rule per se, but please remember to give feedback to others who are participating via the Game Chef forum (click on the Discussion menu item above), if time permits. They will try to do the same for you. This contest is all about peers banding together, sharing feedback and criticism, and submitting a solid game; it's not meant to be X number of designers, creating their game in a void without interacting with any of the other members.