72hr competition #3/Ironmapper comp - Charity?

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
Before you ask... yes, I know what time of the year it is, yes I know that another contest is going on, and yes, I'm probably insane.

EDIT: This idea should be looked at first, since it is by far the coolest.

Alright, so, I've been watching the Mojam steam and I thought, would there be interest in possibly doing a charity event that involves a speed mapping competition?


What I'm thinking is that it could either be an Ironmapper comp between 4-5 people (I know Aly and I want to have a speed mapping face off. YM, Mangy and Psy, for example could also be in the iron mapper) or it could be an open 72hr comp like the last few (Or a combo of both idea's).


  • The public could vote on in the days prior the gametype that we would all have to make, or on a theme, etc.
  • Obviously, the best time for this wouldn't be til June/July (I think) and if we were to do this, then perhaps we could get Valve involved. A lot of streaming would occur, etc etc.
  • I honestly don't know how the public would stick to a thing like this, but if Valve got involved somehow, then maybe would get better results.

I don't know. It was an idea, something that I thought maybe others might want to chime in on. We're a strong enough community to do this, and I think it would be a great thing if we could. (Perhaps pull in TF2Mods.net to do pocket modeling for us :D)

I'd love to hear if anyone likes this idea, would people enjoy being involved? Am I crazy? etc etc.

EDIT: Why am I mentioning this so early? If we want to do it, we'd want to get Valve and the charity in question involved (Childs play probably) and this would take time.

tl;dr: Charity speed mapping event with public involvement and money for childs play yay.
 
Last edited:

C00Kies

L3: Member
Sep 20, 2009
132
58
Sounds like a great idea!

You guys thinking of recording it too so at the end there would be some cool time-lapses?

Ether way, it sounds cool.

Edit: ^that could be vary interesting
 

Vincent

&#128296 Grandmaster Lizard Wizard Jedi &#128296
aa
Sep 5, 2009
912
684
So.. a charity event for something like Child's Play, were we stream an Iron Mapper (or host a 72hr contest) to get money for said charity. For publicity, we ask Valve to sponsor it? That is feasible.. but I see a few problems.

Generally when people do these fundraiser type events it's usually just one huge stream. A 72hr contest doesn't seem like a very successful idea for fundraising, although it would be fun for the community. An Iron Mapper on the other hand would be perfect, but I don't know about 4 people doing it.. at least all at once.

What gets a lot of people to actually donate to these types of streams from my experiences is when the people streaming say "If you donate we'll shout out your name, and you can vote for X". Just recently I watched a 4 day long stream of people speed running games and people voted on character names, 100% completions, etc. It made people want to donate, or at least gave them more incentive to donate. Things like a real hand made, steel, Links Master Sword were also up for an auction type deal, and that REALLY got donations to flood in. Also all these donations went to Child's Play if I remember correctly. They made something like 80,000 dollars for the charity.

My whole point is that this idea is great, but I don't see a feasible way to execute this idea in a clean way. Unless you do an Iron Mapper and get a lot of publicity. To be honest does the average person want to sit there for 4 hours watching two guys make a map?
 
Last edited:

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
Yea, that is why I'm putting this out there for discussion. I know that it'll be easier to have 1 stream going at once. If it was possible to stream 4 people at once at high-quality that would be great, we could have a 4 way competiton... (or a 2v2, mapper+modeler)

I'm open to suggestions, idea's, etc. I'm sure there are ways to make something like this really exciting.
 

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
I wonder if I could email them about it...


I mean, it'd be more "work" than a comm vs pro highlander event, since this would be over the span of multiple days, rather than a few hours...


... Maybe we should refine a couple of idea's down and then I can propose such an event.

I'll be honest, I'd expect a "no" ... but if charity is involved, who knows.


EDIT: Perhaps the map could be voted on by the community. It is a medium dev cycle 2-3 months, and the winning map stamp money goes to charity. The only issue is collabs are tough.
 
Last edited:

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Making a map is a big deal for Valve, especially from scratch. Would they really just do a project like that vs the man hours they already need to put in to other titles for their job?

Plus there's the whole issue of Valve not wanting to appear favouratist to any 1 community. Doing a mini-contest like this with Valve negates the possibility of doing something bigger with them in the near future.

If we involve Valve, it should be something big.
 

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
Get a sponsor(Valve or otherwise), get them to fund flights and hotels, fly out a select few of the best mappers. Put them in a room together with state of the art computers and get a camera man.

Let the public vote on theme, gamemode etc, possibly doing something like mojam and having half the mappers do the top voted options and half doing the bottom.

Offer individual streams of everyone's screens with the hand filmed stream as a tie it all together stream, with occasional screen overlays like mojam is doing.

Space ut over several days with sensible sleep breaks (ie no one stays up overnight working)

At the end of each day or perhaps more, get all of the maps on a server (or two) and get them tested, publically.

Then you have yourself a cool event.

(Feel free to monetize and insert charity stuff where you want)
 

Terwonick

L6: Sharp Member
Aug 25, 2010
278
190
Worth a double post...


Perhaps a community vs pro's mapping event? Valve Team vs TF2M team?

you'd have to make sure the voters and judges don't learn about who made what map or you may get people who are biased and can't vote fairly.

We'd have to allow individuals to submit maps alongside their team's map. Or else the people who did not make it on their team would feel left out. Collabs allowed right? Then you could have a TF2M team, Valve team, and a few other teams too!
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
The trouble with involving only some of the best mappers is that... who really gets to go, it doesn't really involve the whole community like an event should and there will be arguements and hard feelings even if it comes down to a vote.

A large portion of the reason for events is that anyone has an opportunity to prove themselves and participate. Getting already famous mappers onto an otherwise exclusive project does the exact opposite.

Are we trying to show off or involve the community?

If it's really necassery to involve Valve and you don't intend to talk to Valve for at least a year (again) because of their non-favouratist policy, then try and get one of their level designers into the contest so that people have the chance to compete against a Valve employee. Assuming you can get a Valve employee away from their desk for 3 whole days.

Another option is community contributors vs non-community contributors. It should probably exclude model collaborators because that narrows down custom content possibilities since pretty much all the decent modellers in the TF2 scene have either made a weapon or contributed at least 1 model to an official map.
 
Last edited:

YM

LVL100 YM
aa
Dec 5, 2007
7,135
6,056
All right, fly 5 members from the forum picked at random. That would definitely work better.


Why is involving the entire community a sudden requirement? When did that become a thing? Frozen suggested some staged ironmapper like event to raise for charity not an event to 'raise community moral'.

If you want to make involving the entire community a requirement of the event then obviously what I've suggested is a useless idea, but dismiss my proposal on it's merits rather than some non existent requirement you've dreamt up for events.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
...dismiss my proposal on it's merits rather than some non existent requirement you've dreamt up for events.

None of our events have had requirements beyond sticking to a brief. That's the whole point. I wasn't aware i was dreaming that community event "constant" up.

No, there's nothing stopping us from doing something exclusive. But it depends on what you want to achieve with this event. Are we contributing to the community creatively or are we just showing off our Valve contacts and performaing a publicity stunt.

EDIT: Perhaps this is an assumption on my part, but defining the event as "a public event" implies to me the possibility of the fact that anyone has the potential to get involved. Sending 4-5 already successful mappers to Seattle, who're already in contact with Valve, strikes a socialist nerve in me that says this is contrary to our community spirit.
 
Last edited:

Fruity Snacks

Creator of blackholes & memes. Destroyer of forums
aa
Sep 5, 2010
6,394
5,571
The way I had it in mind was, we hold this contest to attempt to raise money for charity and just make us more known, I know that a lot of people know of us, but I still run into tf2 players who don't. And these aren't new-to-the-game tf2 players.

Perhaps an open community 72hr contest where we could bring in a valve mapper would work. I know Ikka said he liked that sort of thing, so maybe I'll ask him first. But I still like the idea of a charity event.

If we can't do a charity, I'd be willing to host ironmapper competitions... and I'm still having a face off with Aly in a 72hr competition.

EDIT: i'd like to add I still haven't asked valve yet. For all we know they have (1 already seen this thread, if so hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii) wanted to do something similiar, but just no one asked to do it with them, and they don't want to ask a specific community for the favoritism reason.
 

grazr

Old Man Mutant Ninja Turtle
aa
Mar 4, 2008
5,441
3,814
Maybe some of my confusion is the result of the fact i'm not sure what you mean by iron mapper? Does that involve being given a game mode and then competing against a specific individual for best attempt at that game mode?

As for charity, what did you have in mind? That we would create a donation pool or that Valve would contribute to a charity at the end of it? My first thought was that the event would be like the artpass but instead of the mapper getting 3k the 3k would go to charity (stamps excluded, not sure how that would be considered in the purchase contract, it'd be nice for the mapper to still get a reward for his hard work too). But then whether that'd happen for a 72 hour project is another thing altogether.