The Daily Click

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The 2011 20 Event Competition has started!
News posted 5th January, 2011 by Jon Lambert
So the New Year has started and Gamebuilder and Clickteam are ringing it in in a big way, with the announcement of the 2011 20 Event Competition! As has been the case in previous iterations of the competition, this is a test of coding efficiency and robustness, and big prizes are up for grabs! Do you think you can make a game great enough to win? A snippet from the announcement: It's that time again for another 20 event competition! Last year it was a great success with 43 entries! This years prizes are: $250 + ($5 * Number of Valid Competition Entries). MMF2 SWF License OR $50 via PayPal OR $69 off any other Clickteam product 1 Year of Standard Web Hosting from www.atomicpages.net - quantity: 2 Click here to view the rules of the competition! Tweet

Posted by OMC

5th January, 2011

Restrain your finely groomed equines!

$250 + $5 times the number of entries? That's a lotta cash!

Posted by Pixelthief

5th January, 2011

I'm thinking about it, but I have no idea how I'd release something in build 249 now that I've upgrade. I'd be loathe to reinstall MMF2 just for this, maybe I'll just ignore that rule >.>

Posted by Hagar

5th January, 2011

"File and graphics must be released under the creative commons license."

Why?

Posted by Jon Lambert

5th January, 2011

They have to be released under the creative commons license because Clickteam uses the submissions as example files for people learning to use MMF2.

Posted by Phredreeke

5th January, 2011

Awesome, another competition with cash prizes to steal attention away from the console wars competition.

Posted by nim

5th January, 2011

I entered this last year and it was pretty fun. I'd encourage anyone to use this as an excuse to push out a game if they can get it under 20 events.

I didn't check many of the other games last year but mine was such a mess by the time I was done that it just wasn't worth commenting due to all the compression and hacks I'd used. At least this year it's only worth 2 points!

Posted by Hayo

5th January, 2011

It's a nice compo, just like last year, but I really wish they would be more open about what they intend to do with the submissions. People had questions about this last year and didn't get answers (apart from very Lombrosoesque answers, which caused me to lay down my GB adminship). If they are going to use the submissions for educational purposes, that's great, but at least say so. Most people won't have a problem with it.

Posted by Sketchy

5th January, 2011

2 months is a long time to write 20 events - even I can manage 2 1/2 lines of code per week, and I'm super-lazy. Think I might enter this one.

And yeah, everyone should have a go, if only to bump up the prize fund for the eventual winner.

Posted by Mr. Hexagon

5th January, 2011

Interesting...

Posted by Assault Andy

5th January, 2011

I love this competition because it's easy to finish a game. Theres only so much you can actually do before you are forced to stop.

I would encourage everyone to enter, especially with the nice prizes on offer.

Posted by Hernan

5th January, 2011

Hurray for being too lazy to update MMF lol

Posted by Ricky

6th January, 2011

It's not a matter of laziness. 250 is still in beta.

Posted by Sketchy

6th January, 2011

Apparently it's okay to use build 250, but you'll be judged on how the game runs in build 249 - so you're fine unless there are weird compatibility issues.

I guess you could always make it in 250, and ask someone with 249 to try it, just to check it's alright before you submit it.

Posted by Ricky

6th January, 2011

The smartest thing would be for each user to tell the judges what build it is, but that might be a bit of a pain for the judges
Comment edited by Ricky on 1/6/2011

Posted by Liquixcat

6th January, 2011

mmm free SWF exporter, oh and money....but mmm SWF

Posted by ~Matt Esch~

6th January, 2011

I am sure those people who have already experimented by selling advertising rights on their flash games are somewhat amused by the prize. That said, it's just supposed to be a bit of fun and helps the community by generating more open resources and quality examples. However given the intents and purposes of the competition (and hence the creative commons demand) there would be nothing stopping someone from taking all of the games submitted to the competition, porting them to flash and then selling the rights to advertise on them... I expect the creative commons thing came about because Clickteam want royalty free resources they can distribute, and annoying people like myself made a direct point about it on the last competition. I believe Clickteam to be genuine in their intentions, and I support the clarity of the license. As Hayo mentions, it would be nice for Clickteam to be open and direct about their intentions, but regardless, I as a developer care more about the further implications of releasing my work under the creative commons license. Clickteam's response is obvious: if you don't like it don't enter. It is just supposed to be a bit of fun afterall.

Posted by Jeff Vance

6th January, 2011

Shoot man,

Last time everyone said we should have the games under the creative commons license.

Just can't win -- Complaints if we do this, complaints if we don't do this.

Here is what Clickteam wants:
- A contest people can enter

- The entries for the contest can be dowloaded by others to learn from

- No complaints from people that some other guy took their game and sold it: We don't want to be in the middle of that problem between creator of a contest entry and some guy who turned it into a commercial product.

So what license allows us to do this?

So let me know what to write that accomplishes this goal and I will write it down.

All I would like to do is have a contest where no one complains about the rules and we get some open source examples for others to learn from.

Posted by s-m-r

6th January, 2011

Kudos to you, Jeff.

I'd say the final prize for your contest will be much greater than the revenue anyone can expect from any entries from this 20-event competition. Hell, any 20 of them. Over 10 years or more.

Haters gonna hate. Let 'em.

Posted by Fanotherpg

6th January, 2011

Thanks Jeff for clarification and I wish to show my support to the compo organizers by taking part in it, just for fun nothing more.

Posted by Hagar

6th January, 2011

It's not "hating", its called protecting your work. As Matt has wisely stated, everyone has the possibility of getting ripped off - I have no problem helping people or writing tutorials (I have done in the past) but I will not give someone my lunch money

.

A non commercial creative commons license would solve this problem, but I am not up enough on law to know if it would stop CT themselves using it. My guess is its ok along as its not used in advertising material as a lure to draw people in.

For example I could use the non commercial, non derivative works creative commons license - not to be used for commercial gain, and stops derivative work but is still fully open for everyone to look to see how it was created. Would this be ok?

To be honest I dont mind people doing derivative work but I would like us all to be protected from having our lunch money stolen!

http://creativecommons.org/choose/

Posted by OMC

6th January, 2011

If I were to enter this competition, I'd do it with this mindset:

Make something awesome using assets and ideas that you wouldn't be terrified to have stolen.

Posted by Mark McCauley

6th January, 2011

good show oldman , with the mindset of showcasing ones talent to promote oneself and earn recognition for ones endeavours, gain respect from your fellow clickers and just to be the best u can.

Posted by Jeff Vance

6th January, 2011

I guess the question is --

Is putting the source file up for others to download and learn from considered a "commercial use"? Since in the end a person might buy TGF/MMF because of it?

If we can still put up the files for others to download and learn from I have no problems having people use the license that forbids "commercial use"

Of course enforcement of the license is a whole other issue

Clickteam or Gamebuilder wouldn't be able to be involved in the enforcement if some other person did use the file for commercial use.

Posted by ~Matt Esch~

6th January, 2011

Jeff, it was never clear what Clickteam really wanted to do with the source, I for one speculated that portions might be distributed as part of the royalty free libraries, available for commercial and non-commercial use. Fortunately you can choose which version of the creative commons license you want to use. I think the version of the creative commons license you are most interested in is the non-commercial use version.

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

As long as both entrants and downloaders are made aware of the licensing conditions everything is settled and you can smile again. You could write the attribution conditions yourself and add them to the rules if you don't want people demanding large attributions, if any visible attribution at all.

As far as your questions about commercial use go, the license implies that the work isn't used primarily for commercial advantage, which means you don't receive money in direct compensation for distributing the work, or part of the work. If it makes Clickteam a few more sales that wouldn't be considered a violation of the license. What you need to think about and state in the rules is

~ Which version of the license it must be submitted under. It will probably take away a lot of pain to say everyone just submits their work under the non-commercial creative commons license

~ How attribution is demanded. Again, it might solve issues with the people you are trying to help with this source code to say no visible attribution is required, though I don't know what others are going to think about that.

~You must include the license information with the distributed work.

"The following source code is licensed under the Creative Commons non-commercial license:

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0

The copyright holder does not require you to attribute the work, but if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one, and this notice must remain intact."

I hope that clarifies a few things, good luck with your entries

Comment edited by ~Matt Esch~ on 1/6/2011

Posted by s-m-r

6th January, 2011

Even if it's not integrated within the contest, one could easily use a CC license themselves. You wouldn't need Clickteam's permission to do so. It would then be on CTs side to determine how they would distribute the software. There are plenty of freely-downloadable tutorials on the CT website in the support files, so I would imagine works featuring a CC license could still be used as resources for those who want to improve their skills.

That's actually an excellent idea, hagar. I do it for my writing and my artwork all the time; I'd never thought about doing it for my software, to be honest...That's what I'll be doing from now on.

Posted by Jeff Vance

6th January, 2011

I am going to have the GameBuilder guys add that a person can use any of the Creative Commons license they want their entry to be subject to.

As far as I can read all of these allow the 1 and only goal Clickteam has ever had for these entries.

The ability for others to download and learn from the source. That has always been the one and only goal of the contest.

To generate some smaller games (hence the 20 event limit) and people can look inside and see how others did things (hence the learning)

Posted by Pixelthief

7th January, 2011

Im making good progress on my entry! Used up about 10 lines of code in frame one, out of 4x20 = 80 lines of code total ^__^

Posted by Jon Lambert

7th January, 2011

just remember that those events can't interact, so it's four separate groups of 20.

Posted by Ski

7th January, 2011

"Jeff, it was never clear what Clickteam really wanted to do with the source, I for one speculated that portions might be distributed as part of the royalty free libraries, available for commercial and non-commercial use."

Actually if you did your research Matt, you'd find right from the beginning when Kisguri started the competition it has always been about sourcing simple examples for people to learn from, along side a bit of fun for clickers of all talents.

And stop with the Knit picking. You do it everytime like an old man, and it's complete nonsense. We're looking at a simple, fun competition, and that's all it ever is.

Posted by Hayo

7th January, 2011

All we ever stated was "PLEASE BE OPEN ABOUT THIS, THERE IS NO REASON NOT TO". People generally don't have any problem with the educational use of their stuff. It is the fact that it is not clear (meaning it is not stated in the post on GB, don't ask us to "research") that makes people wonder if there isn't something fishy about it. This might cause them not to enter a perfectly fine competition (which happened last year). It's not that humping complicated.

Posted by Ski

7th January, 2011

"This might cause them not to enter a perfectly fine competition (which happened last year)"

Ugh what? There wasn't a 20 event competition last year, it was 2009, results at the start of 2010. And there were around 43 entries.

Again, people are fabricating potential problems for little reason whatsoever.

Posted by Hayo

7th January, 2011

Well, fine. I cheer on this compo, I just wondered about that one little thing, and probably will do so forever?

Posted by Ricky

7th January, 2011

All this talk about licencing makes me feel like I'm the only one here who makes my games simply for the fun of making games.

Posted by Sketchy

7th January, 2011

I know what you mean.
It goes against the whole spirit of Kliking; They're all sellouts! etc...

I blame the Flash exporter, and specifically the over-hyped Mochiads, which have people believing every game they make is a potential goldmine - when in reality, they're worth about 70p in most cases.

Posted by Hagar

7th January, 2011

I think everyone knew what Hayo meant. Rules should be rules (i.e. should be robust and not comments from Kisguri from years ago) research should not be needed. The end goal of the competition should be the first paragraph of text in my opinion.

All people want is something like this:
"We are holding a competition to help improve the knowledge of starting out clickers by everyone releasing the source of their competition entries under a creative commons license. Note although you can license your game as you wish Clickteam has the right to distribute it freely and openly for education purposes".

Not very hard really, took me < 20 seconds, clear to the point and keeps everyone happy.

@Ricky: I think we all do it for the fun, but I can see these games appearing as flash games everywhere.

Posted by Hagar

7th January, 2011

Lol I am never going to release my games for money or use mochiads - I work for the fun of it. But the possibility of people making money out of my work (even if it is 70p hehe) annoys me.

Posted by Hayo

7th January, 2011

Thanks Hagar, that's exactly what I wanted to say. It's times like these where it hurts English is not my first language, even though I get the feeling some people just misunderstand on purpose.

Posted by Jenswa

7th January, 2011

Don't you mean native? Just like the native americans

Anyway to clarify creative commons: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ BY attribution, Non-Commercial and No Derivative Works.

With that license, people are only allow to share the original work if they give credit to the creator. They can't make money out of it nor can they use assets for other works.

PS: editting comments is difficult because of mixed up markup.
Comment edited by Jenswa on 1/7/2011

Posted by GamesterXIII

7th January, 2011

Where are last years winners?

Posted by Jeff Vance

7th January, 2011

Hard to find --

http://www.gamebuilder.info/world/content/wow-45-entries

Hopefully people don't turn these into commercial flash games and open a whole can of worms.

Posted by Assault Andy

7th January, 2011

Last year I released my entry under "Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia".

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/au/deed.en

I put the information along the bottom of my game in the main menu and in the Readme.

Some people may prefer the license that Jenswa linked to, and if I do a game this year I will probably use that license instead.

Posted by OMC

8th January, 2011

You know what would be a super cool feature for MMF2?

If you could put a password on the build options. Like groups of code can be locked away. So people could distribute sources for people to learn from, but they can't build SWFs from them, for example.

I dunno, just a thought.

Posted by Hernan

8th January, 2011

You can already lock a group of code with a password. Locking a build option wouldnt be very useful if you can already see the source. All you would need to do is copy the code into a new mfa >_<

Posted by OMC

8th January, 2011

But if it locked everything down, you'd have to recreate it by hand and printscreen a lot.

Silly idea.

Posted by GamesterXIII

8th January, 2011

@ Jeff Vance - Thanks!

"The judges, given the short amount of time they have to review the games, will disqualify a game if it contains well known copyright restricted graphics, music or sound"

First game I downloaded from the previous competition and I immediately noticed both tracks used in the game. The first being from bahamut lagoon, the second being from Ys.

I guess using stolen music wasn't against the rules previously?

Posted by KetchupMaster!

8th January, 2011

One game was disqualified last time due to music violation. If nobody reported a violation though, then we wouldn't have caught it unless we recognized the music ourselves. We can't possibly try to find out the origin of every single track used in all 40+ games.

Posted by GamesterXIII

8th January, 2011

TBH thats a bit of a lame rule. I agree that it isn't cool to have stolen music, but if one person is disqualified for it either everyone that used stolen music should be disqualified or nobody should be.
Comment edited by GamesterXIII on 1/8/2011

Posted by KetchupMaster!

8th January, 2011

but that's impossible to check for every single game when there are so many...

we will try to be thorough about checking winning games though
Comment edited by KetchupMaster! on 1/8/2011

Posted by Muz

8th January, 2011

So much argument over licenses. I can't see a 20 event game being commercially viable, and even if it were, it wouldn't be easily scaled to a much larger game if it were designed for just 20 events.

Just enjoy the competition and make a variant of that game if you want to sell it.

Posted by Jeff Vance

8th January, 2011

GamesterXIII -- Community members were suppose to review the games and inform us of problems like that.

Why did you fail us on that?

Posted by Hayo

8th January, 2011

@Muz: I don't see any argument about licenses here.

Posted by Hagar

8th January, 2011

I did not see an argument either....

Posted by Ski

8th January, 2011

I just see Trolls.

Posted by Hagar

8th January, 2011

Nobody has "trolled" (trolling these days is just having a differing opinion...). All people want is for everyones work to be protected to the level they wish. I have no idea why anyone would be against that.

Posted by Hayo

8th January, 2011

This is just a case of folks expecting the worst of people. Nobody ever had anything against this competition or the educational purpose of this game, or at least I can't find a single post suggesting any of that.

Posted by GamesterXIII

8th January, 2011

@KetchupMaster

Which is my point. Theres no way you could possibly hunt down every song in every game to find its origins. Why treat the ones you know differently from the ones you don't know? It just isn't fair.

@Jeff Vance

I didn't participate last year or the year before, and I download maybe 1 click game a year because I don't enjoy them. If I would have participated and checked out the entries then I guarantee you I would have found out that the particular game I played had stolen music.

I probably wouldn't have reported it though as I still see it as unfair since nobody can possibly know every track in existence.

I'm also pretty damned sure that not many (if any) community members will, or did, download 43 entries and play them entirely.

Posted by Hayo

8th January, 2011

But what would your solution be?

Posted by GamesterXIII

8th January, 2011

Suck it up.

There is no perfect solution.

Posted by Hayo

8th January, 2011

Then stop whining about it.

Posted by AndyUK

8th January, 2011

Well obviously it's better to disqualify as many rule breaking entries as possible rather than ignore the rule breaking just because some might slip through. I'm sure the judges will do their best to weed them out. But lets hope no one makes the mistake of using 'stolen music'.

Posted by GamesterXIII

8th January, 2011

Heh. It still makes for an unfair environment since only some of the entries will be caught.

Maybe someone could compile a list of free/royalty music somewhere or something.

Posted by Hayo

8th January, 2011

There is a list of that at the Flashgamelicense site I believe.

Posted by Ricky

9th January, 2011

There is a disk full of royalty free music that came with your MMF2 CD. The jugdes wont mark you down for using those, unless they don't fit the game.

Posted by Jenswa

9th January, 2011

It seems like people have found a flaw in the system described as: we can't get everyone but we can get almost everyone. It just the way how the system works.

But what about fingerprinting the music? Or was it called watermarking? There are tools out there that can scan the music and tell you what piece of music it is.

Too bad I can't enter, well maybe next time.

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