Wow, that was a random image, so here's another.
Now, down to buisness.
I make the following statements without direct offense towards the winners of this competition and the admins judging it.
As far as the previous affiliations regarding Stardock members and participation in the contest, the rules clearly used to state (before they were suddenly changed a couple of hours ago) that "friends of friends" were prohibited from entering the competition, and I think that MasterBarron would quality under that category.
I also find it slightly peculiar that the winners of this competition also had the highest status as customers of Stardock. Both patrick24 and MasterBarron are direct members of Stardock (and while this may not be considered employment, they are definitely affiliated with Stardock and the admins). The 3rd place winner is not a subscriber, but is considered customer level 4. Doesn't it seem a little strange that all the winners of this competition have had extensive contact with Stardock?
The dreams were also unsatisfactorily judged in my opinion. Patrick24's UFO dream (again, no offense) seemed quite simple and his star field dream was clearly superior to this his winning one. MasterBarron's color scheme was slightly unusual (yet I do admit the volumetric ship was pretty cool). As for the 3rd place dream, I don't think that a "first time dream" should warrant a higher status in the judging lineup. I, have personally only created three dreams, yet I didn't mention my status as a beginner dream designer. If I had, would I have had a better chance of winning? That doesn't seem very fair.
This whole contest has lacked professionalism; the results were delayed and there were several judging miscommunications. The lack of entries was almost appalling and honestly, I am dissatisfied with the performance of the judging. The dreams were not judged based on the four categories stated in the rulebook,
Image/Video Quality
Seamlessness of loop
Originality of Animated Wallpaper
How well it uses the alien theme.
These dreams were obviously judged on additional categories that were not mentioned here and if it were up to me, there were more preferable candidates for winning. Although I admit that my entry still might not have placed (and that I am by no means envious of the winners), I believe that some of the other entries should have won, for example, AlienRig had great detail / lighting effects and Patrick’s star field is just awesome (I use it as my own current dream). The ufo dream is almost too subtle as a dream. The AlienWhere dream is too plainly colored. And the last dream: the 1st time dream, I would never use that as an actual dream for my desktop since there is too much rotation. A dream where every pixel changes is
WAY too distracting for actual use and shouldn't be actually considered.
By stating all these flaws in the competition, I am not opting for a change in the results, but hopefully, these suggestions can be used to avoid future problems with future contests hosted by Wincustomize.
Congratulations to all of the people that did manage to win fairly or otherwise,
and I hope that Wincustomize's next dream competition is more successful and judged better than this one.
