Criteria for the Interior Design Contest?

[Myon88]

Not to derail the discussion, but I've always been puzzled at what the point of the 'can't edit your house' rule was in the first place. I mean, I highly doubt it was just meant to be some kind of arbitrary test of discipline for people who like to decorate a lot or something. I assume the screenshots are what are being evaluated and those are locked in at the time of submission, like sure you can put in 4.4 furniture later, but it isn't going to improve your chances.

There must be some kind of practical reason for it. Like perhaps they wanted to be able to see it in person to check if something wasn't photoshopped, or if an entry was particularly good they wanted to go in and grab extra pictures for media use or something. I don't know though, none of the reasons I can think of sound very compelling, anyone care to venture a guess?

[InkstainedGwyn]

Not to derail the discussion, but I've always been puzzled at what the point of the 'can't edit your house' rule was in the first place. I mean, I highly doubt it was just meant to be some kind of arbitrary test of discipline for people who like to decorate a lot or something. I assume the screenshots are what are being evaluated and those are locked in at the time of submission, like sure you can put in 4.4 furniture later, but it isn't going to improve your chances.

There must be some kind of practical reason for it. Like perhaps they wanted to be able to see it in person to check if something wasn't photoshopped, or if an entry was particularly good they wanted to go in and grab extra pictures for media use or something. I don't know though, none of the reasons I can think of sound very compelling, anyone care to venture a guess?

Pretty sure they actively checked houses out, or at least, I'd hope so. When limited to only a handful of photos, there's no way to show of some styles of houses, especially if you like to have rooms & the like. My .02 is that they just handed the project off to a bunch of interns and told them each to check out 200 houses and then pick their favourites, and rules weren't even talked about. Which, of course, I don't agree with - as with HyoMinPark, if they're not going to abide by rules they shouldn't institute them.

[Jojoya]

Not to derail the discussion, but I've always been puzzled at what the point of the 'can't edit your house' rule was in the first place. I mean, I highly doubt it was just meant to be some kind of arbitrary test of discipline for people who like to decorate a lot or something. I assume the screenshots are what are being evaluated and those are locked in at the time of submission, like sure you can put in 4.4 furniture later, but it isn't going to improve your chances.

There must be some kind of practical reason for it. Like perhaps they wanted to be able to see it in person to check if something wasn't photoshopped, or if an entry was particularly good they wanted to go in and grab extra pictures for media use or something. I don't know though, none of the reasons I can think of sound very compelling, anyone care to venture a guess?

They want to be able to enter the house/room to make certain the submitted screenshots are for the player's own housing and not from someone else's. Otherwise you get people submitting screenshots from someone else's house and all they have to do is say "I redecorated since entering the contest". This way they know that what was submitted was from the player's own house.

The contests are generally run by the Community team, not the game masters or the developers (though the judges could be from the other teams). I highly doubt they have access to game logs that would record if changes were made to a house and what those changes were (assuming those records are even kept - imagine the data storage that would be required if SE kept a separate history of every single housing layout/setup after every minute change made). If something was not clearly visible in the screenshot then they likely wouldn't know a change had been made but they could at least verify that what was in the screenshot was part of the house/room.

We can only hope that future contests are organized and run better.

[Luna_Ariana]

Heyhoo schön dich kennen zu lernen Felinchen!

About the Winning Twice part please keep this in mind: THEY choose you win another therefore it is NOT you to blame! So no need to worry for this at first.


But since you are one of the Winners who won Multiple Times maybe you as the Winner can ask them how they will handle the Prize in that situation.

[Felinchen]

I did say that in the german forum already. And the dev that answered, said regarding the multiple time winners, that they will see in the future what they can do about it to avoid getting the rewards twice then... Not very helpful at all.
Of course I am very happy and honored that they chose two of my entries to win, but I can understand that it is disappointing for others.

And thank you Luna, nice to meet you, too.

[not_ya_wify]

I made this thread a while ago and I don't feel as upset anymore but as someone else said, I was pretty salty about the results. Particularly because one of the individuals who won 4 times is not only stalking and bullying someone from the decorating community but we know that ALL of her designs are 1:1 copies of Japanese designs she's taken from housing snap. Obviously the people who judged wouldn't know those were blatant copies unless they patrol new entries on housing snap every single day like some of us decorators do. But I was still angry this person won in every category whereas really skillful designers who make their own designs didn't win.

It's over now. I'm disappointed and feel little hope for future contests.

As far as disqualifying people who already won goes: I wouldn't do that. Imagine how disappointing that would be if you were in their shoes. They should be grandfathered in.

But for the next contest, I would just get rid of those rules like no gpose, no characters etc. Those rules weren't enforced and frankly don't make sense. I can see that square would want ideally screenshots without filters and make sure the houses look at least mostly the same when visiting but they didn't enforce the rules which really sucks for those people who abided by them. The no gpose isn't even so bad but I actually didn't decorate my house and FC for 3 months even though I really wanted to. Then I didn't win in either of those categories and was very upset that I could have decorated this whole time. It would have made no difference. That rule was awful. They basically took my only reason to play away and it was for nothing.

As far as duplicate prizes go: I honestly don't care about the prizes at all. I wanted to win because I was hoping that more people would come visit my house in person and leave a guestbook entry. But ultimately, even the apartment I won with has had 0 new guestbook entries since the contest, so I guess that didn't help at all.

It would be nice if we get duplicate prizes if we could sell them or give to friends. I honestly will maybe use one of them but not the other 5. They're not that cool.
If someone wins several categories they should get honorable mentions or something and let someone else win.