Flux
26-05-2009, 07:01
Contest entry/rules here.
http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/writing/
http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/writing/legal.html
winners announced here.
http://www.blizzblues.com/us/creative-writing-contest-winners-17367766623.html
There was a lot about this contest that intrigued me, beyond the fact that I'm a fantasy writer myself who has turned out several diablo-themed short stories in the past.
Here's the official judging criteria:
Judging.
Sponsor shall choose the winners from all entrants who have submitted an entry prior to the Deadline. Winners shall be chosen by Sponsor at its sole discretion based upon which entrants display the most original, authentic, and accurate, and compelling submission. The decision of Sponsor is final. Prizewinners will be notified by e-mail within fourteen (14) days thereafter. To claim a prize, winners should follow the instructions contained in their notification.
Obviously they can choose whichever story they want for whatever reasons they want. But it seemed to me that certain stories would have a better shot at winning.
They gave a very generous 10k word limit, which enabled a writer to work in quite a bit of story. I'd have expected more like 1-3k, which would greatly limit the scope and depth of any submission.
They gave no content or subject limitations. Anything set in their game worlds, past, present, or future. I imagine they got quite a few cross over stories, and my personal feeling was that the winner would be something cleverly-gimmicky. WoW set in the real world, Taurens in Times Square, modern day fans sucked into one of the blizzard worlds. etc. I figured that ruled me out of winning, since I'm not interested in writing/reading that sort of stuff, but I thought I could at least get one of the 2nd places and at last have a full set of the (largely mediocre) blizzard novels thus far published.
What really intrigued me was how they'd handle it if someone was too insightful. What if someone wrote a great story that was 90% identical to Blizzard's own plans for future game expansions? They couldn't let that one win, since then all the fans would see it, and then when the game came out in a year or 3, we'd all think bliz ripped off the author. or feel cheated since we already knew the story. With the 1000s of entries it's inevitable that some people wrote stories that are very similar to what blizzard had in mind for their own games/movies/novels/etc. Whether those stories are any good or not, awarding them prizes seems to be ruled out, for reasons I just stated. (One work around seems to be that blizzard isn't necessarily going to post all/any of the stories. maybe jsut excerpts, saving the key plot points from public view.)
The other side of that coin is that you could view this whole effort as a massive open source game plot generator. Blizzard puts up some prizes that cost them next to nothing, and in return they get 1000s of new game story ideas. part of the submission rules are a surrender of all rights to your own story, characters, plot events, etc. So blizzard is fully within their rights to take your story and make it the plot of starcraft 3, D3X, or whatever. Or take major elements of your invention and use them in their multi-million selling games without throwing you a red cent.
I'm not complaining; it's clearly stated as such in the rules, and copyright laws prohibit of us making money selling their own story set in a blizzard game world anyway. But as with the previous case, that would seem to preclude you winning anything, since they're not going to post your winning story that gives away the plot of their future games.
So, in my estimation, the best way to win the contest was to write a story set in one of their mythologies, but one that didn't advance it greatly, or introduce new characters or events. But that was still interesting and informed of the game fiction, and thematically appropriate, etc. And was a good story. That's partially what gave me the idea to write my story (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=727451) as a retelling of an event in the game mythology, but with enough of a twist in the PoV that it would stand out. And if I only knew if I'd submitted it in time to qualify (I think I did not) I'd know how that worked out.
As I write this post on May 25th, Blizzard has only posted a list of the winners, and no excerpts or full stories. I'm curious to see how much of them they do post, if the winners post their stories online anywhere, and what sort of approach they took; straight in-world fiction, speculative, crossover, etc.
http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/writing/
http://www.blizzard.com/us/inblizz/contests/writing/legal.html
winners announced here.
http://www.blizzblues.com/us/creative-writing-contest-winners-17367766623.html
There was a lot about this contest that intrigued me, beyond the fact that I'm a fantasy writer myself who has turned out several diablo-themed short stories in the past.
Here's the official judging criteria:
Judging.
Sponsor shall choose the winners from all entrants who have submitted an entry prior to the Deadline. Winners shall be chosen by Sponsor at its sole discretion based upon which entrants display the most original, authentic, and accurate, and compelling submission. The decision of Sponsor is final. Prizewinners will be notified by e-mail within fourteen (14) days thereafter. To claim a prize, winners should follow the instructions contained in their notification.
Obviously they can choose whichever story they want for whatever reasons they want. But it seemed to me that certain stories would have a better shot at winning.
They gave a very generous 10k word limit, which enabled a writer to work in quite a bit of story. I'd have expected more like 1-3k, which would greatly limit the scope and depth of any submission.
They gave no content or subject limitations. Anything set in their game worlds, past, present, or future. I imagine they got quite a few cross over stories, and my personal feeling was that the winner would be something cleverly-gimmicky. WoW set in the real world, Taurens in Times Square, modern day fans sucked into one of the blizzard worlds. etc. I figured that ruled me out of winning, since I'm not interested in writing/reading that sort of stuff, but I thought I could at least get one of the 2nd places and at last have a full set of the (largely mediocre) blizzard novels thus far published.
What really intrigued me was how they'd handle it if someone was too insightful. What if someone wrote a great story that was 90% identical to Blizzard's own plans for future game expansions? They couldn't let that one win, since then all the fans would see it, and then when the game came out in a year or 3, we'd all think bliz ripped off the author. or feel cheated since we already knew the story. With the 1000s of entries it's inevitable that some people wrote stories that are very similar to what blizzard had in mind for their own games/movies/novels/etc. Whether those stories are any good or not, awarding them prizes seems to be ruled out, for reasons I just stated. (One work around seems to be that blizzard isn't necessarily going to post all/any of the stories. maybe jsut excerpts, saving the key plot points from public view.)
The other side of that coin is that you could view this whole effort as a massive open source game plot generator. Blizzard puts up some prizes that cost them next to nothing, and in return they get 1000s of new game story ideas. part of the submission rules are a surrender of all rights to your own story, characters, plot events, etc. So blizzard is fully within their rights to take your story and make it the plot of starcraft 3, D3X, or whatever. Or take major elements of your invention and use them in their multi-million selling games without throwing you a red cent.
I'm not complaining; it's clearly stated as such in the rules, and copyright laws prohibit of us making money selling their own story set in a blizzard game world anyway. But as with the previous case, that would seem to preclude you winning anything, since they're not going to post your winning story that gives away the plot of their future games.
So, in my estimation, the best way to win the contest was to write a story set in one of their mythologies, but one that didn't advance it greatly, or introduce new characters or events. But that was still interesting and informed of the game fiction, and thematically appropriate, etc. And was a good story. That's partially what gave me the idea to write my story (http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=727451) as a retelling of an event in the game mythology, but with enough of a twist in the PoV that it would stand out. And if I only knew if I'd submitted it in time to qualify (I think I did not) I'd know how that worked out.
As I write this post on May 25th, Blizzard has only posted a list of the winners, and no excerpts or full stories. I'm curious to see how much of them they do post, if the winners post their stories online anywhere, and what sort of approach they took; straight in-world fiction, speculative, crossover, etc.