Dreaming of Summer Wardrobe Contest Winners Announced!

10 Comments on “Dreaming of Summer Wardrobe Contest Winners Announced!”

1. 

   Reply

   Matt

   July 13, 2014 at 8:06 am #

   Here’s my feedback about the contest:

   1) Model the outfits during the livestream on both a male and female character. As a creator of a submission myself, I tried to make sure that the outfit would look reasonable on both a male and a female model. Since winning outfits make it onto the rift store, it’s difficult to judge which one you like best if you have no idea what it will look like on you (several of the costume items look completely different when you change the gender it’s displayed on). I feel like this would make the live voting process a bit more productive as well, especially when being able to see how a non-skimpy bikini version of an outfit would look on a guy’s toon.

   3) Randomize/remove identifying information from the entries. I like that Solaura took their screenshots from the loading screen and as such you couldn’t see any name/shard, so perhaps have that be a requirement next time (or have people use ctrl+u to remove all overlay/text when taking screenshots). Have one person (perhaps you, Khortish) be designated with putting together all of the entries and giving them to a separate panel of judges for review so that there cannot be any bias in knowing who an entrant is.

   3) Try and stick to the theme. I know that you state that you “deemed them to be appropriate for the Summer theme as a ‘darker’ side to the Summer relating to bushfires and the charred landscape that is left in its wake”, but did all four judges agree on that point? It’s a little dubious to assume that all of those dark outfits (7/10 of the finalists) were submitted with the idea of bushfires and charred landscapes in mind, especially with some of the descriptions you’ve shared (submitted by the contestants). While I agree that people can get creative and tweak the idea of “summer” to a darker theme, it was evident even during the live stream that the more “summer”-y outfits were the crowd favorites in this themed contest. Creative entries shouldn’t be discouraged, but should only make it into the finalist stage if they were submitted with a direct intention of being a “twist” on summer-and only a couple of the darker finalists look like that could be the case, whereas the others-while creative costumes in their own right-simply don’t fit this contest.

   Other than that, thanks for hosting the contest, it was a definitely a fun process putting together an entry and it looks like there were a lot of great submissions out there. Congratulations to the winners!

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     Khortish

     July 13, 2014 at 5:45 pm #

     Hey Matt, thanks for the feedback! Good points you’ve made there. Male/female side-by-side is definitely something to look at. The issue there is trying to get this done prior to the Finalists being picked (otherwise we’d still end up with the same problem of having finalists whose outfits don’t look good on the other gender). Unfortunately we can’t really expect players to produce both male and female versions of their outfits since store preview just isn’t enough (especially for dye customisation).

     Going ahead, perhaps I can try to pull together a store preview ‘mock-up’ of a version of each outfit for the other gender as entries come in during the contest submission period. It won’t be 100% the same but will allow the judges to have a relatively good idea of what the outfit would look like for both men and women.

     Sticking to the theme is definitely the big one I’ll improve on. Probably specific criteria and expressing them to players before-hand.

2. 

   Reply

   Malcolm Swoboda

   July 13, 2014 at 10:20 am #

   “For the Dreaming of Summer Wardrobe Contest though, any blame for having black outfits in the Finalists goes to me.”

   Thank you!
   Most of the darker costumes were NOT bad in themselves. However, most observers were quite confused how they would be chosen over others for this kind of contest. No, we’re not looking for dark outfits (not just in color, but I’m also talking about tone) for Summer, just as we’re not looking for bright and fun (not goofy, but ‘fun’) for a Halloween contest. Yep, rare exceptions in both cases make sense – but those should be specifically good exceptions.

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     Khortish

     July 13, 2014 at 5:48 pm #

     Indeed, will make sure this doesn’t happen next time. Although I only picked one black outfit for the semi-finalist voting, it was definitely my fault to allow black outfits through to the Finalist voting stage and the way the voting worked ended up pushing those outfits ahead by 1 or 2 votes.

3. 

   Reply

   Kelborn

   July 14, 2014 at 1:14 am #

   Most of the suggestions I would have had have already been said by Matt above. The only other thing I can say is a way to handle the color issues.

   Either a) ban certain dyes for a contest, or b) restrict submissions to a set color palette.

   An example would be for a Summer contest to ban Black dyes. For a Fae Yule contest, have entrants choose between green, red, gold, white, and blue hues only.

   I also want to stress the importance of having outfits viable for both male and female characters. I highly doubt that either of the 3rd place winning outfits will look half as decent on a male character.

   All in all, it was fun watching the Stream for the end of the contest, even though my entry probably didn’t even get as much as a cursory glance (I kind of derped hard on the shoulders/gloves for it).

4. 

   Reply

   Dehek

   July 14, 2014 at 1:50 pm #

   What’s with all the black? Are they going to a funeral?

   A lot of the semi-finalists outfits looked more summer related, than some of the finalists.

   Kudos to the first place winner!

5. 

   Reply

   Ketta

   July 15, 2014 at 10:34 pm #

   I really appreciate that you’ve given such a thoughtful and detailed analysis of the event. You’ve pretty much covered all the issues I had with it.

   It was incredibly frustrating to see that the majority of costumes selected as finalists were not even remotely summer themed. They were all pretty good, and I have no problem with black (I wear black in the summer…so either I’m a freak or those who don’t approve of black in summer are too narrow minded, heh). The frustration was with those selections that were heavily armor-clad, skimpy that implied high sexuality rather than summer fun (as in, fun for all ages..and no I’m not a prude), or just zero effort at anything remotely summer.

   Even though you admit the guidelines weren’t strict enough, it was obvious to me and many others what the intent of the contest was, so how was so highly misinterpreted? I honestly won’t lay much blame at your feet for that.

   My submission was very similar to the cowgirl-themed entry, sans boots and hat. Hats take away hair styles and boots in the summer…well, when I think of summer, boots are tucked away in the closet (but that’s just me). With no shoe options, I refused to be painted into a corner to HAVE to choose footwear. While I didn’t expect to have my submission chosen, when I saw the cowgirl-themed one (I used to same top and shorts, dyed differently), I had to wonder…was it simply not chosen due to lack of head and footwear? I didn’t want to cover up my cute red pig-tails, and boots make for stanky feet. I know you probably can’t answer this, but it leads to my next comment…

   Judging. The whole point of it is objectivity, an understanding of the criteria, and knowledge of the environment (i.e. the game). To curb any sort of bias on a personal level, names and other identifiers should be removed. But you know this already…I simply wanted to lead into an idea for future judging.

   Perhaps a broader pool of judges could be selected from the player base, gm’s and mods, and the devs. Players could sign up to be judges, but only if they aren’t participating and they have to agree to a set of terms (like those mentioned above). Not sure how to execute something like this, but thought I’d throw the idea out there.

   Finally, one thing I didn’t realize is that our outfits would be modeled by another avatar than our own. It’s the first contest of Rift’s I’ve entered, and I designed my outfit to fit my character. Her hairstyle was just as much a part of the costume, as was the backdrop I took her screens on. With an appropriately-themed squirrel and some summer-fun gear like a backpack and fishing pole. Was the information that they’d be modeled by a different avatar somewhere that I missed?

   Thanks again for hosting this, I know it likely took a lot of your time and sanity. Despite my disappointment, I’ll be trying future contests due to your analysis and willingness to help future events like this improve. 🙂

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     Khortish

     July 15, 2014 at 11:45 pm #

     Hey Ketta, thank you for the feedback! Much appreciated!

     I did notice your entry and thought it was done quite well – even had it in my initial semi-finalist folder, but that folder filled out quick and as there was a large amount of outfits that were pretty similar to each other; this made it hard to choose between them. Just the tiniest things can push them ahead.

     Having a broader judging base would be good as well but without knowing those players it can be harder to determine if they would collude with entrants. Removing names/etc wouldn’t help because they could just tell each other what they look like if they were really interested in cheating. There’s then also issues with whether it would be appropriate to include Wardrobe Name and Description alongside the entry as this may help shape the entry so judges have a better grasp of what the entry is attempting to portray. I did like Greenscale’s feedback on the Rift Forums where he suggested having all Judges be Trion staff to avoid the whole concern over judges helping friends/guildmates.

     I also didn’t realise that outfits would be modeled differently. It’s a good point and if RiftGrate works with Trion again for future joint wardrobe contests I’ll be sure to mention it.

     In any case it’s definitely quite the learning experience but hopefully with this experience under our belt we’ll be able to organize contests better going ahead. 😀

6. 

   Reply

   Kiara

   July 29, 2014 at 8:44 am #

   There’s been some good and appropriate feedback given, and I don’t have much to add. The only feedback I’ll offer is that in the future, Trion should definitely state up front and very clearly when the prizes for the contest would be delivered, and the community sites that work with Trion for contests like these should insist that they do so.

   As of today, two and a half weeks since the winners were announced, none of the winners have received anything and there’s been no clear communication from Trion as to when the promised prizes will be delivered. Obviously, this has nothing to do with Riftgrate, but it looks bad on Trion’s part, and is very frustrating to those involved who spent time and money putting entries together before the entry deadline. Without a defined timeline that includes a definite date when prizes will be delivered, I wouldn’t be entering any future contests.

   Thanks for all the work you’ve done on this Khortish. 🙂

7. 

   Reply

   peter

   July 31, 2014 at 4:59 pm #

   I like that this time round there was at least one Eu player.
   seems fair