Voting has been extended to the February 28. No more extensions will be made.

No more entries are accepted. Voting has started.
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As I mentioned in the ending post of the "make a comic" contest, I have another similar idea. Similar in that it asks for creative works of art, dissimilar in that it is not focused on visual arts, but instead on the textual variety.

What you need to do is write a story, fictional or real, cheerful or depressing, theme is unimportant. In English so that most of this international community can take part.

Beyond the language there are a couple completely arbitrary rules, though I believe they do allow for a fairly high degree of creative freedom and probably aren't too limiting.
* Your story can not be longer than the maximum length of a post-beta GOG post; 10000 characters including spaces, punctation, linebreaks, and the title. No minimum length, though please take note that an overabundance of abbreviations and acronyms may make your entry difficult to understand.
* Your story has to involve games as a central part; whether it's about how you met your girlfriend at that Warhammer convention, or how a squirrel got fascinated by the moving pictures on a computer screen in a university dorm room, found a way in, began mashing buttons, and eventually became a master at Quake.

The form of submission can vary, though it probably helps you if it's easy for other to take part of the work (submitting a link to a site requiring registration to download a password-protected rar archive containing an epub document might inhibit your score a slight bit as it takes quite a bit of work to get to your content). I am not trying to deny you the choice of submitting a scanned image containing random hand-written notes - it may even be beneficial in the context of your story - but chose your format wisely as it can affect your score. The simpliest way to submit your entry would be to merely paste your text into a post (hence the length limit), but while easy to find, it may not be as easy to read as a nicely-formatted web page hosted elsewhere.

All winners are chosen by the community through voting. When the voting starts, everyone gets 7 points to distribute at will across at most 3 entries, you are free to vote for yourself (it's fair, the other contestants can do it too). The five entries with the most points will get glorious prizes. In case of a tie, I'll do a revote between the tied entries. The voting rules will get reposted as that phase of the constest begins.

I didn't get to give away any non-GOG prizes the last time, so those are repeated. Some prizes are limited in quantity and can only be given to one or a fewer-than-all entrants though they may be a valid choice to more than there are copies, if such a prize is chosen by more people the lower-voted entrants has to chose something else.

Entrants and non-entrants alike may before voting phase submit more prizes in case they think the winners are worthy of more than I am offering. Please contact me privately, specify what you wish to offer, what position it's meant for, and I shall list it below.

And the prizes are:
1st gets to chose TWO of these:
* one $9.99 GOG OR two $5.99 GOGs
* one $5.99 GOG
* Sam & Max season 1 (Telltale)
* Sam & Max season 2 (Telltale)
* Sam & Max season 3 (Telltale) (limited:1)
* Strongbad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Telltale) (limited:1)
* Riven (disc, French) (limited:1)
* Deus Ex (disc, French) (limited:1)

2nd and 3rd gets to chose ONE of these:
* one $9.99 GOG OR two $5.99 GOGs
* Sam & Max season 1 (Telltale)
* Sam & Max season 2 (Telltale)
* Sam & Max season 3 (Telltale) (limited:1)
* Strongbad's Cool Game for Attractive People (Telltale) (limited:1)
* Riven (disc, French) (limited:1)
* Deus Ex (disc, French) (limited:1)

4th and 5th gets:
* one $5.99 GOG

You have until February to write, throughout January submitted entries can be edited or replaced, but an entrant can not pull out of the contest once they've entered. Then voting will be open until at least the 14th of February. I hope that gives you sufficient time, you're free to complain otherwise and ask if something is unclear. I can be reached here, on GogPM, and at <my gog username>@ops-area.net.

Teeny bit of a typo there

Well that was the shortest story I've ever written

Damn it. And I went through the text probably fifteen times since I wrote it, shortly after the comic competition ended.

Nice idea.

Although it would be nice to have a topic to shoot for, otherwise it can be hard to think of something to write about, and I'm sure we'd all prefer lots of submissions.

Oh and Aliasalpha - one rep point away from 1111! Will have to check if the "Top Rep" list has been updated recently...

1111 xD

Hmm, you're probably right. What's interesting about these competitions is that I am neither a writer nor a comic-book artist, even as a hobby, so it's not too easy figuring out what a good limit on time and content is... although I once heard that art cannot be created without limits.

Alright, I have an idea.

Wanna know something even freakier? Its 1/1/11 and I've got 1111 rep.Quite true, hard limits force creativity & efficiency

count em in. I swear no echidnas this time...

There. A topic. OP modified, and relevant part copied below:

* Your story has to involve games as a central part; whether it's about how you met your girlfriend at that Warhammer convention, or how a squirrel got fascinated by the moving pictures on a computer screen in a university dorm room, found a way in, began mashing buttons, and eventually became a master at Quake.

Congrats!

I'd give that post a +, but that might ruin things a touch!

Miaghstir: That should work, it gives a starting point but it's still broad enough for people to be able to give very different submissions.

Just one question: When you mean arbitary do mean vague?

The rules do allow for a pretty high degree of freedom, yes, but I'm not sure they're vague.

10000 characters is a hard limit, meaning if it's above that I'll disqualify the entry unless it's edited to be shorter before voting starts. Of course, counting will be tough if the entry is an image showing a scrambled set of quick hand-written notes, but I somehow believe that if the author is going that route, they won't get near the length limit. And yes, I will count, somehow.

If it's not somehow focused on games, same thing, it won't be eligible for voting.

There are no set conditions for winning (part of the "community votes" deal), but there are conditions to get into the compiled list of entries that the community can vote for.

D'oh! That wasn't there last night... Looks like I need a new idea.

Can I post a story I've posted before somewhere else?

As long as it's yours (not that I'd know otherwise).