Success/failure terminology

[Darren Grey]

Every year we get a lot of clearly unfinished games declared as "successes" at the end of the challenge. I can't help but wonder if a change of terminology might help... At the moment at the end of the week you must say if you are a "Success" or a "Failure". Personally I have no problems admitting failure - years of roguelike experience have driven the expectation of failure into me repeatedly - but perhaps others struggle to admit this? If you've been working hard for 7 days it's not easy to come out and say you're a failure.

I suggest that instead of labelling games "Success" and "Failure" we label them "Completed" or "Unfinished". It's easier to admit your game is "Unfinished", and the term might encourage those that don't manage to complete to carry on and make something complete outside of the challenge process.

For this to work we would need to change the labels on Slash's registration site and in the headings on the RogueBasin pages.

Thoughts?

[Eben]

I second this.

[Worthless_Bums]

I'm pretty much operating on the assumption that I'm going to fail spectacularly given my personal time restraints, but as a programmer saying any bit of software is ever completed irks me xD Still, unfinished is probably better than failure since it also stresses the state of the product and not necessarily the worth of the creator. And if it is changed it can be compared and accorded a completed or failed label as appropriate.

[chooseusername]

Every year we get a lot of clearly unfinished games declared as "successes" at the end of the challenge. I can't help but wonder if a change of terminology might help... At the moment at the end of the week you must say if you are a "Success" or a "Failure". Personally I have no problems admitting failure - years of roguelike experience have driven the expectation of failure into me repeatedly - but perhaps others struggle to admit this? If you've been working hard for 7 days it's not easy to come out and say you're a failure.

I suggest that instead of labelling games "Success" and "Failure" we label them "Completed" or "Unfinished". It's easier to admit your game is "Unfinished", and the term might encourage those that don't manage to complete to carry on and make something complete outside of the challenge process.

For this to work we would need to change the labels on Slash's registration site and in the headings on the RogueBasin pages.

Thoughts?

Is the game complete, or was the challenge seen out to completion?  Is the game unfinished or the challenge unfinished?  You'll get the same sort of people who don't know what complete is, making the same sort of judgement.

When you're done here, I have a large object I want pushed uphill.

[chooseusername]

I'm pretty much operating on the assumption that I'm going to fail spectacularly given my personal time restraints, but as a programmer saying any bit of software is ever completed irks me xD Still, unfinished is probably better than failure since it also stresses the state of the product and not necessarily the worth of the creator. And if it is changed it can be compared and accorded a completed or failed label as appropriate.

Darren's taking care of that.  Don't think of it as an unfinished game, now you can think of it as a completed challenge! 

[Darren Grey]

The challenge is to complete a game!

[Slash]

I'll summon Jeff to see what he thinketh

[JeffLait]

I'm in the camp that regardless of the name we'll get just as many things marked complete that do not seem to be so to an external observer. Personally I have no problem with some people falsely declaring complete our success when they shouldn't. I model off naniwrimo, where you can quite simple submit fifty thousand "a"s and get marked as a successful novel.

That all said, better name may reduce the"run aways" at the end. I like Darren's names: success and unfinished. As Darren says, you don't finish the challenge if you don't have a finished game!

[Zireael]

Complete and unfinished sound better than success/failure, definitely.

[guest509]

It might not make a huge difference but there's no downside to giving it a try and a HUGE upside.

[kratorspore]

Yeah complete/unfinished are more specific to the rules in a way. You might have a complete game by the end of the comp but a failure of a game