Free Company Recruitment Video Contest! (EU) ~ WTF?

Ok Rant incoming!

We entered this for a laugh, waited longer then the finish time and then see that from our Server "Cerberus" only 2 Free Company wins (when there meant to be 10??) and these two didn't even post in the EU forums they posted in the French??? WTF!

There is currently Three FC sat wondering WTF is up with this contest... 3 much better (personally in my opinion) vids that have been totally ignored.. Come on What the hell going on.. really...

Its like Pocchory only looked at the French ones and not the EU forums! Honestly I think there needs to be a rethink on all this and actually see that there are 3 other Videos whom should been in the win list..

Primal Legion: [FFXIV-FCPV] Primal-Legion (Cerberus)
Jonestown:[FFXIV-FCPV] Jonestown (Cerberus)
Seventh Heaven:[FFXIV-FCPV]Seventh Heaven (Cerberus)

I agree. My FC are slightly stumped by these results. If you notice the winner's list, several other servers have 7-10 slots filled for winning positions. Not to mention we followed the very vague guidelines as best we can and thought we give something a little more diverse.

Please for those reading this view the videos yourself linked above. And compare them to the two winners found here: http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...73#post1881373

By no means are we trying to attack the 2 "official" winners on Cerberus server, instead we are questioning was ours, by comparison, worse? And why not fill the 10 slots a little more with a little more consideration SE into the effort we made? Especially since so many other servers seem to have more slots filled.

From the contest rules:

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Guidelines for Music and Sounds

You may only use music as it is incorporated in FFXIV;
When showing gameplay, you may not replace the FFXIV music with third party music;
You may not play FFXIV music alone (i.e., without accompanying gameplay footage), or with third party materials;
You may not use the song track entitled "Answers."

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Epic fantasyish music not from the game = disqualified.

Also wasn't 10 winners but up to 10 winners. :)

Granted. But I did use recorded in-game sound effects. It seems these music rules were more for SE sake rather than for the betterment of actually making a recruitment video for players that can watch and enjoy and judge for themselves who to join.

They are all good, too bad the rules weren't followed.

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Originally Posted by Lilith-Darwin

Granted. But I did use recorded in-game sound effects. It seems these music rules were more for SE sake rather than for the betterment of actually making a recruitment video for players that can watch and enjoy and judge for themselves who to join.

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Agree with Lilith here, yes they say use in game music, but we filmed ours with no music at all form in game.. would have made for a boring vid if we left it soundless...

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Originally Posted by Lilith-Darwin

Granted. But I did use recorded in-game sound effects. It seems these music rules were more for SE sake rather than for the betterment of actually making a recruitment video for players that can watch and enjoy and judge for themselves who to join.

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More for the sake of not infringing on other company's or peoples copyrights for the 3rd party music used. Plus I have to side with SE on this, They wanted everybody to use what is available in the game.

Professionally speaking, cutting footage with embedded music would sound very choppy and... amateur. Arguably in my case I do this for a living so I have the hardware, software and know-how to make something as we had for our FC, so in some way we had an unfair advantage. Additionally our leader is a graphics designer by trade who did the end titles and credits. However, surely SE would recognise our participation regardless and how really these videos represent social involvement and purely speaking, we did this as fans of the game.

In regards to Jonestown and Primal Legion, I thought they were really good considering their limitations in hardware and software, but creatively speaking I do think they were note-worthy and interesting.

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Originally Posted by Lilith-Darwin

Professionally speaking, cutting footage with embedded music would sound very choppy and... amateur. Arguably in my case I do this for a living so I have the hardware, software and know-how to make something as we had for our FC, so in some way we had an unfair advantage.

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nobody is saying any of these video's are bad. They just don't follow the rules. I have a feeling this is more to do about your pride than the rules being vague. If you do this for a living then you should know why SE structured the rules the way they did.

Thought you might say that, which is a fair point. However who the hell is going to care outside of the game what music we use, if SE are so concerned about it?

Pride, not in an egotistical way, passionate I would say of what we had made.

The Seventh heaven one was cool but at the same time, yeah you didn't follow rules and 2 I also didn't really feel like it was a fc recruitment. Watching that makes me think "wow that looks awesome I want to play xIv ARR" but it doesn't really move me to want to join yalls free company

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Originally Posted by Lilith-Darwin

Thought you might say that, which is a fair point. However who the hell is going to care outside of the game what music we use, if SE are so concerned about it?

Pride, not in an egotistical way, passionate I would say of what we had made.

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Its the fact that SE can't recognize submissions that involve copy written materials which they do not own. It easier on SE to avoid any legal backlash, or possible negative actions against their fan base if they create an environment where the materials and resources allowed are owned solely by SE themselves. Hence no 3rd party music.

Just follow the rules next time.

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Originally Posted by Lilith-Darwin

Thought you might say that, which is a fair point. However who the hell is going to care outside of the game what music we use, if SE are so concerned about it?

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The thing is that SE is a company and it is governed by copyright laws and rules. Just because this seems like a very insular contest, it doesn't mean they're not open to being sued by opportunistic individuals who feel their intellectual properties are being infringed upon. SE CANNOT condone such blatant copyright infringement or they risk putting the whole company in a bad position just for one small competition. I have to side with SE on this one because this is the way any professional company or individual would handle the execution and judging of their competitions.

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Originally Posted by MysticNeko

The Seventh heaven one was cool but at the same time, yeah you didn't follow rules and 2 I also didn't really feel like it was a fc recruitment. Watching that makes me think "wow that looks awesome I want to play xIv ARR" but it doesn't really move me to want to join yalls free company

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I don't mean this in a patronising way but do the other contestants' videos move you to join their FC? - My point being is we designed it to be mysterious and open for you to join to make your own journey in FFXIV ARR with a wow factor. We get the game as an FC and this is how we see it as.

My fc that I'm in (which was a winner) showed us fighting with words that popped up saying when we run events and then ended with each officer's doing something with their name so people can contact us. With the rules you had the freedom to use music from any where in the game, just had to be music from the game. that was the restriction. I'm not saying our video is going to have people coming to our doors but at least it was obvious that we were promoting our fc and not just the game itself

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Originally Posted by lostsilentdreamer

Its like Pocchory only looked at the French ones and not the EU forums!

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Oh the irony of this post...

I don't understand what happens here.
Someone got mad because his video was awesome but disqualified because was done disregarding the contest rules?

Didn't read the rules.
Complains.

http://i.imgur.com/Ji25z9Y.gif

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Originally Posted by Lilith-Darwin

Professionally speaking, cutting footage with embedded music would sound very choppy and... amateur.

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Nothing said you had to use the music embedded with the footage that you were recording, just that you had to use music from XIV: ARR. Of the few that I watched, one used the Titan boss music (I believe) overlaying their video, which had nothing to do with Titan. It was just about using resources only from the game, you could still use them however you wished.

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Originally Posted by Lilith-Darwin

Professionally speaking...

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I generally don't comment on things like this but I hate when someone pulls out the "I do this for a living!" when complaining about not winning this type of contest. As a pro failing to both use music legally available to the client and to include their trademark information is inexcusable. Blaming them for passing on your work in these terms is just sour grapes and an inability to admit your mistakes.

This may be fan work and that reasoning may be fine for many of the others but by waving that pro-flag around you raise the level by which you should be judged. As a pro you should be more aware than anyone that a company of any size must be careful in how they follow copyright laws, fan created or not.

As a professional, regardless of rather the project is for hire or for fan-driven passion, you don't get to leave your responsibility of knowing better at the door.

Contests have rules in order to set the bar, low or high, as to what is expected of from participants. You don't enter a pie-eating contest with a goat in tow just to feed the pies to the goat and expect to win, be lucky if the rest of the contestants don't throw you over the table and PETA mail you a 'get well soon card'. Further, as has been said ad nauseaum, Square is smart enough to know that you don't go stepping on toes if you don't have to. Besides, it's not like XIV doesn't have a big enough library of music to draw on for any mood imaginable.

The results posted state that the developers tried to join FCs based on the videos posted. If your FC rejected a Dev, do you think they voted for you to win?

Some of the Coeurl FCs with awesome vids are not the "friendliest" to new players. The ones I see that won, even though the vids may not be the ones I liked, actively recruit any and ALL players and try to help the lowbies more then those already sporting a relic or two. Maybe this is more the type of thing the Devs were looking for, even though they never posted you had to act the way your vid claimed you did.

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Originally Posted by littledemon

This may be fan work and that reasoning may be fine for many of the others but by waving that pro-flag around you raise the level by which you should be judged. As a pro you should be more aware than anyone that a company of any size must be careful in how they follow copyright laws, fan created or not.

As a professional, regardless of rather the project is for hire or for fan-driven passion, you don't get to leave your responsibility of knowing better at the door.

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Bingo. I didn't want to launch into him / her as harshly, But the fact is, if you are a pro, you should know better and have no room to complain when this happens.

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Originally Posted by Rath

The results posted state that the developers tried to join FCs based on the videos posted. If your FC rejected a Dev, do you think they voted for you to win?

Some of the Coeurl FCs with awesome vids are not the "friendliest" to new players. The ones I see that won, even though the vids may not be the ones I liked, actively recruit any and ALL players and try to help the lowbies more then those already sporting a relic or two. Maybe this is more the type of thing the Devs were looking for, even though they never posted you had to act the way your vid claimed you did.

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I didn't know the dev's actually tried to join these company's. that's kinda cool. My favorite is from my server so far from the ones I have watched. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hu3vNGHOfdI This made me wanna join them and I'm in a Good FC that's been together since 1.0 launch.

You Might have won, our Free Company is on Diabolos, and at first, i thought we lost. but then i found my free company, and 2 others from our server, on Ultros instead of Diabolos.

Diabolos server wasnt even listed. serious typo's....

Is it third party music is its free? discuss...

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Originally Posted by Haibel

I didn't know the dev's actually tried to join these company's.

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They didn't. From practically-the-same-thread-except-NA-not-EU:

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Originally Posted by Hvinire

In terms of Square Enix staff attempting to join free companies, that comment was made in jest, and something like that had no place in determining winners from the pool of entrants. The winners were hand-selected and voted on internally by our staff as indicated in the rules:

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Originally Posted by Pocchory

Selection
The FFXIV Development and Operations Teams will select winners based on creativity and overall execution according to the criteria listed above.

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While I can't comment on the selection of any particular winner, some entries were disqualified by not following the rules stated in the contest, so despite their perceived level of quality they could not be considered.

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Originally Posted by lostsilentdreamer

Is it third party music is its free? discuss...

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3rd party means anything not from the original source. So yes, even free music. Was this a real question?

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Originally Posted by KyroeFelix

3rd party means anything not from the original source. So yes, even free music. Was this a real question?

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What defines a 'real' question?

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Originally Posted by Cons

What defines a 'real' question?

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One that's actually trying to gain information. That one...seemed like a troll.

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Originally Posted by lostsilentdreamer

and these two didn't even post in the EU forums they posted in the French??? WTF!

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Hmm, france is in europe

The EU forum is just for everyone who don't speak french or german