Project of the Month

This thread is meant to recognize excellent projects made by members of RMRK that exemplify what is best about RPG Maker. It thus acts to hopefully draw attention to the projects that deserve it most and secondarily to provide models for the types of games that all RPG Makers should aspire to create.

Selection:

Selection is a three-step process under the current model:

• Nomination
• Shortlist Generation
• General Voting

The first step is nomination period, and this is exclusively contained within RMRK+ in order that it doesn't get flooded. If you wish a project to be nominated and are not in RMRK+, then you are welcome to PM an RMRK+ member and draw their attention to the game in the hope that they will nominate it. Note here that projects which were on the short list the previous month are disqualified for the next month for reasons explained shortly.

The second step is generating the shortlist, and this too is located within RMRK+. Basically, all of the nominated projects are then voted on by members of RMRK+ where they choose their favourite three and they must give detailed reasons for their choices - this process is not anonymous to ensure legitimacy and it is private to RMRK+ to ensure honesty. The goal of this process is to narrow the choices down to only three projects for that month. The projects that make this shortlist are not qualified for re-nomination the next month in order to ensure there is not poll redundancy, but they are once again qualified for the month after.

The third step is general voting, and this is public, meaning everyone on the forum has the opportunity to participate. The candidates for this are the three projects that made the shortlist. The results of that poll determine the project of the month! Once selected, the project of the month is then tagged and stickied for the remainder of the month and may display the POTM banner forever, as well as being put on the list of POTM winners in this post. A project can only win once.

Spoiler for Original Method:

What's going to happen is the winner of Project of the Month will pick the next project of the month. They can do this in two ways. Either direct selection (i.e. they choose a single project and that project wins) or poll selection (i.e. they choose multiple projects, and a poll is set up. The project with the most votes wins. In the case of a tie, the previous winner will be the tie breaker. If this option is selected, the nominees must be submitted seven days before the end of the month).

The Criteria:

• A game cannot win twice
• You cannot nominate a game which you made
• It has to have enough material to have been moved out of New Projects section.
• It cannot be an abandoned project

Games with playable demos are preferred, but as long as there are enough screenshots and detail, you can be nominated. If the nominated user is not active, then I will first inform them on whatever other forums they are on, and if, by the end of the month they have not come back, I will set up a poll. Also, finished games are allowed to be nominated. Games that win will be placed with a sticky and marked with the tag [POTM].

More rules will be clarified if I see a need further on. The Winner of the Project of the Month is stickied for the remainder of the month.


Winners:

2007

April - Chaos Project , by Blizzard.
May  - Quintessence: The Blighted Venom, by Reives
June - Memento Vivere, by ShoSho
July - The Search for Thomas, by alexia
August - Forlorn Manor, by Anaryu
September - Cell Chamber - Chicane, by Calibre
October - Rose Memories, by Zhuge Liang
November - Dark Eternal II, by Zenogias
December - Steel Hearts, by sabao

2008

January - The Healer, by alexia
February - Ethereal Dreams, by Team Dragonfly
March - Vacant Sky: Contention, by Project BC
April - Soul Raves 1: Nocturne Gospel, by Caro Ru Lushe
May - Celestias Ferrum, by Chance Productions
June - Dark Horizon, by sithlord999
July - The Mirror Lied, by Reives
August - The Insanity: Mind of the Condemned, by NAMKCOR
September - Shadows, by Zylos
October - Project Leviathan, by Leventhan
November - Prelude of Identity, by MrMoo
December - Wings of Eternia, by HowlingWinds

2009
January - Seraphim Project, by Nessiah
February - Legend of Vanadia, by Aten
March - Monster World RPG, by MAX TEAM
April - Legend of Zelda: Necklace of Elements, by LinkMasTer
May - Final Fantasy: The Phoenix Prophecies, by madriel222
June - The Order of the Marten, by joy
July - Deira, by Deira Team
August - Nora's Dragon Stories, by Japur
September - Final Fantasy V-II: Sacred Chains, by Tezuka
October - Fall of the Living: First Outbreak, by ChainsawMelody
November - Desomiom, by Irock
December - Planeswalker, by NAMKCOR

2010
January - Ill Will, by ChaosProductions, Rei-, and Archeia Nessiah
February - Avarice, by Anaryu & Solitayre
March - Leomorn Sword, by derkunstler
April - Valithirian Arc, by Lucidrine (Fandrey, Azrael and Archeia)
May - Legend of Zelda: Realm of the Gods, by twilight1300

I like the idea! 

What of RPG Maker 2000/2003 games? You can't just leave those out because a majority of the users here use RPG maker XP. I am one of the very few here who use both 2000 and 2003.

*changed to RM games

The winner each moth will be stickyed for the remainder of the moth.

Tahnks.

Lol, I better get workin' then.

shouldn't the people of the forum be able to vote on the project of the month? because different people have different preferences on games.

example: im making a pacman game right now. some people might think it's a whaste of time because they only like a game with a good storyline. but some poeple might think a pacman game is a great and fun idea.

Different people do get to choose. The winner each month chooses the next. There's a different winner every month, thus different people choose. Voting would be too messy, because

a) we'd need nominees. There are lots of good games out there and we can't have a poll of 30 or more games each month.
b) how would the nominees get selected?
c) what's to stop a conspiracy? i.e. 10 people get together and decide to vote on a game because one of their friends is making it, even though it is a bad game.
d)it's be an overall messy situation.

The way it's set up is better because it encompasses a range of different games, plus since the people who choose know how to make good games, they will be fairly accurate judges of what is a good game and thus, our projects of the month will always end up being good and worth checking out.

i c

Hm. When does the chosen one submit their decision for the next month's?

anytime before the next month.

Its obvious that Chaos Project would be the first winner. However I don't think this'll last due to lack of finished projects. 

~Winged

as he said demos can also be picked to win...there are a lot of demos so this can last. + its only montly not weakly.

Not to be negative or anything. We only have about 12 complete projects here. So, after a while we'll run out of projects.

as he said demos can also be picked to win...there are a lot of demos so this can last. + its only montly not weakly.

It doesn't have to be finished. Promising projects can also be nominated. And there are enough games to last us.

Not to be negative or anything. We only have about 12 complete projects here. So, after a while we'll run out of projects.

That's over one year, you do know that right?

Ohh, I missed that point, sorry.

~Winged

It appears that Blizzard is unavailable to choose next month's winner, so I will make a poll in RPG Maker Discussion and I will put up a few games that I consider worthy candidates. This is partly because I think it's a little unfair for me to choose again, but mostly because there are too many I want to award it to. Anyway,

Check out the poll:  http://rmrk.net/index.php/topic,16083.0.html

EDIT:

I am thinking of modifying the rules a little bit. What do you guys think? Should I limit selection to unfinished games, or obscure games (with, say, less than 1000 views)? I kind of like it the way it is, but I am still unsure. And please vote everybody. I do not want a tiebreak decision!

I think the rules are good the way they are now. If finished projects can't win then maybe some people wont finish it becouse they can't win anymore and that would be a shame.
I think every game should have a chance. The one who made the PotM should just be active enough to nominate a new winner.

Hmmmm...I like the idea a lot. I'll have to look into getting my PC rid of Viruses. (I'm ready to strip my hard drive, to do what ever it takes to get rid off the 8 trojans that I have that are torturing me! They're evil! I HATE WINBLOWZ! Uhg...I don't even care if I lose my game that I was working on...the funny thing is, I don't even know ho I got it.

I am somewhat biased, but I personally believe that the number of views of a thread, as well as whether a game is finished or not, should have no saying in the viability of participation in the said event.

Foremostly, it would only be sensible if all existing projects are made and released at the same time for either rules; which they are not. Because the older projects will obviously have more (in most cases) progression and page views; but the project changes as do the members that view it. Hence, the argument that 'it already has enough attention' is inevitably inconsistent in terms of time frame. Taking from my biased example; Quintessence TBV has acquired 85%+ of its views from over 6 months ago, where it was (in my present opinion) crap compared to now. I have not had the time to promote the thread in the past few months as I have been doing work on it off the net; and I believe that such rule would be rather discouraging to many of those in a similar position. And same thing with finished projects; if one actually finishes a project, shouldn't they be promoted and set a sample to us who haven't? Through my times here I've looked up to many projects and learned much from all of them. A PotM, if not just an inspiration, should certainly something that one can identify as one notable of its title, instead of "the one that's left after the rest are ruled out".

I am somewhat biased, but I personally believe that the number of views of a thread, as well as whether a game is finished or not, should have no saying in the viability of participation in the said event.

Foremostly, it would only be sensible if all existing projects are made and released at the same time for either rules; which they are not. Because the older projects will obviously have more (in most cases) progression and page views; but the project changes as do the members that view it. Hence, the argument that 'it already has enough attention' is inevitably inconsistent in terms of time frame. Taking from my biased example; Quintessence TBV has acquired 85%+ of its views from over 6 months ago, where it was (in my present opinion) crap compared to now. I have not had the time to promote the thread in the past few months as I have been doing work on it off the net; and I believe that such rule would be rather discouraging to many of those in a similar position.

And same thing, if not more so, with finished projects; if one actually finishes a project, shouldn't they be promoted and set a sample to us who haven't? Through my times here I've looked up to many projects and learned much from all of them. A PotM, if not just an inspiration, should certainly something that one can identify as one notable of its title, instead of "the one that's left after the rest are ruled out".

Okay, well then rules will remain as they are. Thanks for the input everybody. And vote!

Blizzard quit. So, how does the next project get decided?

there is a poll in rpg maker descusion section.

Reives' project, Quintessence, was chosen for May's project of the month. Congratulations Reives!