PLEASE READ - Thoughts On Recent Design An Armor Contest
Hello Knights!
Yesterday we announced the winner for the recent Design a Dragonforged Armor Contest. Since announcing there has been a great deal of uproar from players across all of our Community channels (Forums, Twitter, FB, Tumblr). We have heard players shaming the winning design, wondering why their design wasn't selected or didn't win, accusing others of cheating, wondering if the voting was fair, or if the contest was rigged. This kind of behavior was also exhibited by many when the ten finalists were chosen. What was supposed to be a fun activity for the Community has now caused unrest.
In partnership with the Developers we chose to run these contests to give the players and opportunity to share your passion for the game, and to see your visions come to life. The first time we ran these contests, back in December, we were blown away by the amount of participation. It was incredible to see all your amazing ideas and designs. There were many who wanted to participate, who wanted to submit a design, but did not want to sign up for the forums. So for this second round, we added another way to submit entries (via email). We received over 2X the number of submissions for the Dragonforged Armor Contest as a result. A fantastic success!
Unfortunately, despite our rules that outlined the design needed to be original, we did receive a number of entries which had to be disqualified due to stealing the work of others and trying to pass it off as their own. Unfortunately one of these made it to the finalists, and had to be removed. This is our fault. We should have been more thorough in checking all entries, and we should have been more clear what was allowed/prohibited. For future contests we will ensure that we are very clear and thorough. We encourage submissions that are "inspired by" other pieces of work, of course. However, copying another individual or company's work, or straight up stealing it and trying to pass it off as your own, this is not only against the rules, but unpleasant and unsavory behavior.
With the announcement of the finalists many complained about why theirs wasn't chosen. Instead of congratulating their fellow KnD players who were chosen, some starting accusing others of cheating. Many felt their drawing was better than a finalist (or two), or they felt theirs was more unique or original. We need to make it clear that finalists were not chosen because of the quality of their artwork, but because we thought their IDEA was good and would be a great addition to the Knights and Dragons game. We had to choose TEN finalists from a pool of over 400 submissions. While we wish we could have chosen all of them, it simply wasn't possible.
And now onto the voting and selection of the winner. By allowing players to submit via forums AND email, we of course had to reconsider how players could vote for the winning design. Last time we forced players to vote via the forums. This was a good solution, overall, however we did see individuals creating multiple accounts just to vote. To prevent this, and allow players who aren't on the forums to vote, we decided to create a survey. In the creation of the survey we chose to use Cookies as a way to prevent users from voting multiple times. We could have selected to limit it to IPs, however we knew that many people would want to ask their family/roommates/classmates/colleagues to vote for their design (which we of course encourage), so we chose otherwise.
Unfortunately, despite being asked to vote only once, a number of individuals chose to cheat. A simple reset/clear of cookies, and they could vote again. For every vote received we can see Date, Time, IP, Location (Longitude/Latitude), Device/OS, and more. A couple of the entries received a massive number of votes (hundreds) from the same exact IP/Device/OS/Location, all within a five minute window. The system quickly flagged this as "suspicious behavior" and we felt that the only thing we could do was disqualify these votes, as we had no sure way to prove their legitimacy.
For future contests, if we choose to run them again, we will continue to look at ways to improve the voting system. We do not want to remove the "Community Voted" aspect of the contest, as we feel it is fun and important for you guys to have a say. However if we are unable to find a voting solution that consistently is fair and works, then we, the Community and Development teams, will look to select the winner. For the next contest voting, Design an Epic Boss, we will be locking it by IP (look for the voting to open up soon). We sincerely hope that all players will "play fair" and not try and cheat this system. We encourage all finalists/entrants to ask their friends and family to vote for their design, however we ask that you encourage them to do so in a manner that our system will not flag as suspicious. Have them vote from home, on their own time, and their own devices.
We write this post so that you, our valued community, can better understand the choices that were made, and why they were made. We also write it so that you have a place to discuss with us, and each other, how we can work together to continue to run these awesome contests in a manner that is fun and fair for all.
Thank you!
