GUI Champs 2008 - Coming Later Today

Published on October 13, 2008 By Zoomba In WinCustomize News

Today is the launch of the 2008 GUI Championships!

After many months of hard work rounding up sponsors, and building a completely new competition website, we are almost ready to go! As I type this, the finishing touches are being put on the GUI Champs site, which includes a completely new uploading system (much better than the current WC one). We're still on track for a site launch later today. So keep your eyes peeled to this space, and to GUIChamps.com for updates.

Prizes:

To whet your whistle, here are some of the outstanding prizes our sponsors have agreed to donate to the competition:

Wacom Cintiq 12WX Graphics Tablet (Courtesy of Wacom)
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 512MB Video Cards (Courtesy of AMD/ATI)
Corel PainterX (Courtesy of Corel)
SnagIt and Camtasia Studio (Courtesy of TechSmith)
DeviantArt Subscriptions
Object Desktop Subscriptions
WinCustomize Subscriptions
Cash Prizes!

Our total prize pool sits at $15,000 this year, blowing away our 2006 total! A huge thanks to all of our sponsors who have been fantastic to work with and incredibly generous.

Event Details:

WindowBlinds
- Most Original
- Most Usable
- Best Overall
IconPackager
- Most Original
- Most Usable
- Best Overall
Dreams
- Most Original
- Most Usable
- Best Overall
Best Overall Skinner
Best Overall Team

Judging:

This year, selecting winners will be a bit different. In 2006, it was popular voting to determine the finalists, then a panel of judges picking from that. For 2008 we're turning things around. All accepted entries will first be voted on by a panel of three judges:

Brad Wardell (Frogboy)
Angela Marshall (KarmaGirl)
Mike Crassweller (Zoomba)

Based on judge voting, 10 finalists will be selected, and then users will have several days to vote on their favorites. Users will be able to cast three votes per event, and will be allowed to distribute those votes however they like (i.e. 1 for 3 different skins, 3 for one skin etc). Final winners will be determined based on popular vote.

So get ready.. it's coming!

Comments

Philly0381

on Oct 13, 2008

A very interesting way of picking the winners, gives a chance for all members of the community to participate. I like it.

on Oct 13, 2008

Looking forward for some great action ...

JJ-Ying

on Oct 13, 2008

Great! Having pressed quite a long time to see updates and happy to know it's finally open! Just can't wait to see the submissions!

BTW, don't mean to judge the voting round, but IMHO, voting by users has ruined many chinese design contests and don't want to see it happens again, I like Yao Ming, but I never want to see he gets sooo many votes in NBA all star matches when most of votes are coming from China. Anyway, it's a huge event in customization field, let's enjoy the game and thank stardock for this great contest

Zoomba

on Oct 13, 2008

We have a number of safeguards in place to ensure voting is fair. We will have full audit trails on all voting and will be keeping a close eye on things for attempts at voter fraud. We also flipped the judging around this year because in the past the finalists selected by popular vote weren't necessarily the best they could have been. While we squashed vote fraud, we couldn't help it if a user promoted their skin well and got 10,000 people to vote for them (a legit method). So the finalists last time could be influenced by who was a better marketer, not necessarily a better skinner.

This year, we pick the finalists and then they're voted on by the users. This ensures that we really end up with the best skins possible in the top-10 for final voting. If it's a finalist, you know it's because it's an awesome skin. The three of us combined have years and years of experience reviewing skin submissions. The results this year will be much more consistent than in contest past.

messiah1

on Oct 13, 2008

This ensures that we really end up with the best skins possible in the top-10 for final voting.

Voting is always going to be subjective. You will never change that. Just because someone has been in the skinning arena for 10+ years, doesn't mean they will have an understood vote. I'm sure with Frogboy, Karma Girl and Zoomba picking the best of the best we'll see good skins to vote on, but there will still be whiners out there, it's inevitable. But, hopefully this years is much better than the shamble of 2006.

Zoomba

on Oct 13, 2008

Oh, people will still find something to complain about, but this way we can at least ensure more objective selections, not just who can get the most friends to register and vote. The results will never be 100% objective, because that's impossible with anything that isn't purely quantifiable, but by eliminating the popularity contest aspect from finalist selection, we can at least improve what the users have to work with.

elvee

on Oct 13, 2008

Looks like GUIChamps is up and ready to roll!!!!

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