Winners! - Halloween Horror Story Contest

David [Hi-Fi] Moore

Hi, all and happy November.

We’d like to send out a big thanks to everyone who participated in the Halloween Horror Story Contest! It’s time to announce the winners!

But first, two things to point out:

There were reports of ballot stuffing in the MPQ contest. Although it had no real effect on the outcome of this contest (entries were limited and D3 Go! made the final decisions), we will be changing the way winners are determined for future contests. We haven’t quite figured out how yet, but we’d like to avoid further exploiting of the upvote system (as it goes against the whole “togetherness” idea of the forum contests).

Secondly, some Magic PQ players pointed out that the MtGPQ rewards weren’t comparable to the MPQ rewards. We agree. Those rewards were determined many months ago (for a previous contest) when the game was still very new. They could use some spiffing up. So, the MtGPQ rewards will be increased by 50%. There are some complications around gifting specific Magic PQ cards, but we will also look at that possibility for any future contests.

Now, onto the winners!

Marvel Puzzle Quest

1st Place (1 winner): IamTheDanger

Congratulations, IamTheDanger! IamTheDanger’s winning entry featured: "Antman & Deadpool”

Runner’s up (2 winners): notamutant and CT1888.

notamutant s’ entry featured: “Deadpool & Gwenpool”

CT1888s’ entry featured: “A moonless night...”

Honorable Mentions (7 winners):

Malorick, OJSP, Pinko McFly, HaiKulture, Rael01700, [Doc Cold 1], Punter1

***

Magic: The Gathering - Puzzle Quest

1st Place (1 winner): kuraikarp

Congratulations, kuraikarp! Kuraikarp’s winning entry featured: "Progression”

Runner’s up (2 winners): TaiMaiShu and SpaceDuck.

TaiMaiShu s’ entry featured: “Horror story haiku!”

SpaceDuck s’ entry featured: “Kiora”

Honorable Mentions (3 winners):

yunnnn, THEMAGICkMAN, Fiddler

Winners, please send a Private Message to Hi-Fi to receive your rewards. We’ll need to know your in-game name for MPQ or your UserID for MtGPQ.

You can view all of the entries here:

Official Forum Halloween Horror Story Contest! for MPQ

Official Forum Halloween Horror Story Contest! for MtGPQ

*Thanks to everyone that contributed a story and special thanks to fight4thedream for organizing and running the contest!

Moon Roach

Gosh darn it. There were only 10 entries in the MPQ competition. I knew I should have entered with my all-time scariest horror story, encapsulating terror and dread in only 2 words: "Boss Rush".

mmraie

Interesting ballot manipulation in the mtgpq section, yunnnn won by quite a few votes when i checked last night.

Have a mind to elaborate on that?

majincob

mmraie wrote:

Interesting ballot manipulation in the mtgpq section, yunnnn won by quite a few votes when i checked last night.

Have a mind to elaborate on that?

No manipulation, the original rules stated that D3Go would take the most popular ones and pick the one they thought was best.

shteev

It's a fix, I tell ya!

Banning my halloween story indeed. I spent ages on that. Sure, it was a little postmodern and meta-textual for some tastes, but I don't expect everyone to recognise my genius.

[Doc Cold 1]

Wow, thank you this is the first time I ever won something in the top 10.
But I have not gotten the rewards yet or will it come later?

fight4thedream

"&#91 wrote: »

"]Wow, thank you this is the first time I ever won something in the top 10.
But I have not gotten the rewards yet or will it come later?

Congratulations to all our winners and participants!

Rewards should be distributed within the next day or two. If you still haven't received them by the end of the week, please contact either me or Hi-Fi. Also remember to PM your in-game name to Hi-Fi.

Best,
fight4thedream

[Doc Cold 1]

fight4thedream wrote:

"&#91 wrote: »

"]Wow, thank you this is the first time I ever won something in the top 10.
But I have not gotten the rewards yet or will it come later?

Congratulations to all our winners and participants!

Rewards should be distributed within the next day or two. If you still haven't received them by the end of the week, please contact either me or Hi-Fi. Also remember to PM your in-game name to Hi-Fi.

Best,
fight4thedream

Thank you.

kuraikarp

Received! Thanks a ton!

CT1888

Got my prizes today, thanks!

Punter1

Also got my prizes, thanks! Appreciate the running of the contest, do more please!

However, a quick note to decry the use of the term "ballot stuffing!" Seems a negative thing to use when the contest was about encouraging participation. The MPQ game encourages Alliances and so why should it be looked upon negatively for an Alliance to support each other. The end result was decided by Jury anyway, so the campaigning for votes used didn't determine the final result.

It could easily have been noted internally that it wasn't a perfect system (only 10 entries says that maybe something else was missing too) but to call it out publicly when really nothing was done incorrectly, was less cool.

Not that I want to cry foul and that the system is rigged (the system is for sure rigged in my nightmare Trump Puzzle Quest...) but the fact that none of my Alliance mates managed to squeeze out a runner-up spot despite having strong entries (i'm fine to say mine wasn't as strong) does seem to suggest the Jury did penalize a couple entries for being more organised at campaigning than others.

Dayv

Punter1 wrote:

However, a quick note to decry the use of the term "ballot stuffing!" Seems a negative thing to use when the contest was about encouraging participation. The MPQ game encourages Alliances and so why should it be looked upon negatively for an Alliance to support each other. The end result was decided by Jury anyway, so the campaigning for votes used didn't determine the final result.

Organizing for upvotes pretty clearly violates the intent and spirit of the contest, in my opinion. If it were up to me (and it definitely was not up to me), I'd have disqualified all the "organized" entrants and rewarded double prizes to the few remaining entries.

Are you protesting because you really believe you were wronged, or because you thought you had a foolproof plan?

[speaking only for myself here -- I didn't have enough time to be involved with this contest at all]

Punter1

DayvBang wrote:

Organizing for upvotes pretty clearly violates the intent and spirit of the contest, in my opinion. If it were up to me (and it definitely was not up to me), I'd have disqualified all the "organized" entrants and rewarded double prizes to the few remaining entries.

Are you protesting because you really believe you were wronged, or because you thought you had a foolproof plan?

Certainly don't feel wronged. There was also no fool-proof plan (outside of personally being a 10th entrant into a 10 prize contest!). The contest rules were set out and the entries and results were posted within those rules so all is well.

As noted in my post, I didn't appreciate that asking for support from within my alliance for my entry was called out negatively. I think that could have been handled better (by not mentioning it publically would have been the obvious approach) considering there was no wrong doing within the rules as set-out. I'd even argue that asking for support of an entry is still within the intent and spirit of the contest.

Edit to add:

Wikipedia wrote:

Ballot stuffing, or "ballot-box stuffing", is the illegal practice of one person submitting multiple ballots during a vote in which only one ballot per person is permitted

There was certainly no evidence of this from what I could see, no-one created multiple new accounts to vote.

I'm pretty sure the issue was pronounced because there was only 10 entries and half happened to be from 1 alliance grouping. If there had been more entries then I'd assume most entries would have done exactly the same and requested support from their alliance mates and other forum friends. How you would have sifted through votes that were given within the "intent and spirit" and ones that were "organised" would have been a very interesting job!

Any interweb contest that looks for likes or thumbs or up-votes can suffer from the same issue. Those that are organised naturally drown out the ones who aren't, regardless of quality (to some extent I'd say). I can agree on you bemoaning this, and would be why I never try to chase those contests normally in the wider web world! As for a solution... errr...

Anonymise the entries? People can still tell you what to vote for.
Make it all jury selection? That's more work and then it takes away from the participation and community buy in
No "organising" of votes? How do you police that?

Rael01700

Hello
I already sent you a reply to ask for my reward for the Halloween contest but received no answer
Rael01700
Lock and load 1
Waiting for reply
Thanks