I am trying to get more print and play submissions for my website www.gamesinprint.com ; and am toying around with the idea of hosting a contest, in which the best submission (judged by myself) would get $100 straight up.
But to sweeten the deal I would raise the pot by $50 for every 10 accepted submissions.
So if I got 10 accepted submissions the total prize would be $150. 20 accepted submissions, $200. 30 would be $250 and so on.
I want to do this contest to spur submissions but I really don't know how it would be recieved. So I am coming to you, my trusted community, to see if you would be willing to give me suggestions and feedback as to whether or not this would be something you would respond to, and why or why not. Would $100 + $50 + $50 + $50 be large enough to peak you interest? What else would you like to see in a contest like this? ect...
I like the idea of several prizes, to encourage diverstiy, however I have a lot of categories and even a small payout like $10 would come out to be a lot of money. I am willing to payout quite a lot of money to encourage game submissions, but I want to make sure that I get the most for my money. So would it be more incentive for you to have steep competetion but the ability to win $100 - $250 (depending on the number of entries), or would you rather have an easier chance of winning $10-$20?
So knowing you are right that I need a way to encourage diversity I have come up with some ideas to maybe fund this, let me know what you think.
First, I would provide the grand prize of $100+; maybe a second place of $50 + and third place of $25 +
I could then require an entry fee into the competetion, and depending on how much you pay to enter the competetion I could offer incentives (kind of like kickstarter)
Entry with no "donation": would get your game into the competetion with the chance to win only the grand prize
Entry with $5 "donation": would get your game into the competetion with the ability to win any of the prizes and you would recieve detailed playtesting notes.
Entry with $10 "donation": would get your game into the competetion with the abiltiy to win any of the prizes, you could select 1 of the games from my website to download for free (with the authors consent) and recieve detailed playtesting notes.
Entry with $20 donation: Sames as $10 donation, but you can download 4 free games.
Entry with $50 donation: Same as $20 donation, except you can download all the games after the competetion.
Ect.
These donations and there rewards could obviously be different then the ones I posted but it gives you a flavor of what I am thinking. Also I would have to get concent from the games already submitted before I offered them as free downloads, but I would make it required that new submissions would allow their games to be downloaded by big donaters.
The donations would then be used only for the competetion. Meaning whatever money was put in, would stay in. If I got $1000 in donations, we would find a way to distribute that amongst the grand prize, second place, third place; and best of show per catagories. If we get a lot of donatations, the prizes (even the catagory prizes) would be substantially large.
Let me know what you think? Would you be interested in something like this, why or why not? ect :)