Judge Info (General)

Good morning awesome judges!!

Thank you for being part of our event this year. The AMES Competition has been noted many times over the year as being one of the most authentic experiences for students (making it a teacher/student favorite) and you guys are literally what makes that happen. We’re thrilled to have you here and very excited for your feedback! Your work here makes a difference.

This is the ‘official’ judges’ packet for the 2025 competitions. I’m sure there’s something I’m missing, so if you have any questions please either email me or hit me up on the discord.

So first up is three links:
Game-Specific Contest info/links: https://ames.team/judging-resources-game/
Film/Animation-Specific Contest info/links: https://ames.team/judging-resources-animation-film/
Sound/Music-Specific Contest info/links:

Prompt this year was “The Masks We Wear”

So the way this works:
Projects are rated across the five criterion (Varies by category but includes “Theme” and “Craftsmanship”). Each category gets a 1-10 rating for a total of 50 points possible. The spreadsheet will auto-tally and average so aside from the actual “assigning points” part you shouldn’t have to do much. There’s a column for each judge (it’ll be your initials), just find your column and go for it. If you don’t have a column please shout and I’ll get that added.

Keep in mind that we have two divisions (and may separate into three now that some middle schools have joined the fray… CURRENTLY I have them bracketed with the High Schools and labeled but that might change):
Comprehensive: These are the “normal” High Schools/Middle Schools. They run 180 hour programs (one hour a day) and their students usually average approximately 35 hours of class time to work on the projects (plus whatever they do at home).
Skill Center: These are “extended preparatory” programs that usually pull students out of their regular schools for an enhanced, dedicated program. Officially they’re 540 hour programs (3 hours per day) but due to transportation logistics it’s a bit short of that, they usually average a bit over a hundred hours of class time during the project cycle (plus whatever they do at home).
You’ll definitely notice a quality gap between the two, and it’s why we typically end with the skill center programs.

Some quick recommendations (feel free to use/edit/ignore):
I like to play ALL of them so I get a general feel for the overall quality of work before I start scoring them individually. Obviously that makes it take a bit more time, but I feel like I get better results that way.
When in doubt, use the lower score. The logic behind this is that if I’m being nice and I give an early project an 8, and there’s a few projects that do that criteria better (but aren’t equal), I don’t really have anywhere to go from there. You CAN do things like 8.5 (the spreadsheet won’t force integers) but it gets messier. Easier to round down to the 7 and then I have three spaces above that to “fit” other projects.

Teams/Students do *NOT* receive their actual numerical scores, only overall place values. ON REQUEST I give teachers an overall “this was the strong scores and this was the weak ones” heavily abstracted for a project, but the numbers are ‘internal deliberation only’.

This works as long as you’re internally consistent with yourself. If you’re rating everything the same way, and each other judge is also internally consistent, individual things get smoothed out with the ratios. For example, if I’m kinda harsh and give comparatively low scores across the board, and you’re kinda generous and give comparatively high scores (but we’re both consistent within ourselves), maybe the top film is a 5 for me and 9 for you… and the low is 3 and 7 respectively – the end result is that the “top” averaged a 7 and the low averaged a 5 and we still clearly have a winner and loser. As long as “7” always means the same thing to you, we’re good.

We’re doing “pre-scoring” – the idea is that this gives you guys a chance to review as much as you want to before they’re formally ‘debuted’ at the competition. Up until deliberations (see below) you can edit your scores as much or as little as you want, and be detailed or not in how you watch things.

On Competition Final Day (May 17 for Film, May 31 for Game) students will take the stage, do a SHORT presentation (it usually amounts to an introduction and “play game”), then judges feedback. We usually go ‘american idol’ style by default (the person sitting to the right generally starts, and we just work to the left) but every panel has been a little different and if you guys want it to be more of a conversation or talk out of order, etc – whatever works best for you 🙂 After your feedback, the team sits down and we rinse/repeat until we’re out of contestants. Order will be the same as in this document (so if you’re taking notes, you can sort using this and it’ll match the films you see during the show).

Verbal feedback: I’ll give you guys a timing guideline just to keep us on pace, but overall: Keep in mind these are students working in a class where there’s still other activities going on, testing schedule disruptions, etc – while I’m 100% in favor of “scores should reflect industry” because at that point it’s all relative, feedback should be in the “accountability with kindness” category… If the kids are awesome, tell them that. If a part of the game doesn’t work it’s 100% correct to call something out (that’s why we’re here) and DEFINITELY talk about how things could improve… try to keep it balanced (‘compliment sandwich’ isn’t a terrible mentality) but definitely don’t be like “oh it’s PERFECT!!” but on the other hand don’t go full-on Gordan Ramsay/Simon Cowell on these kids 😉 When I’ve paneled I’ve aimed for “I thought X and Y really worked well.. Z fell a little flat to me and I’d have tried W instead…” kinds of patterns. I haven’t looked at these at all but teachers shouldn’t have let anyone into the finals that outright sucked so you *theoretically* shouldn’t have to stretch too much to find something to compliment them on.

At the end, we’ll take a quick pause, we’ll go somewhere (Green Room) and do a quick discussion. I’ll read out the top placers and OA’s (see below), if you guys agree with the list we go back in, if you don’t we will discuss until we get to a consensus then go in. USUALLY it’s a formality (it takes longer to read results out than the deliberation takes) but some years there’s considerable deliberation.

OAs: There’s a separate category of awards, “Outstanding Achievement in…”, that’s the second tab of the spreadsheet. Those don’t have formalized criteria, and they’re kinda “bonus” awards… the way we do those is the “best” one gets 3 points, 2nd best is 2 points, and 3rd is 1 point – the film that scores the most points wins the award. (C1 is my “sample judge”, I’ll fill in the first one in each category so you can use it as a reference, then delete C1’s points right before we tabulate). If you don’t feel like there’s a deserving candidate we reserve the right to just not award that one, so if it doesn’t make sense just leave it blank.
I think that’s my entire ‘brain dump’ but please shout. I’m sure I missed something.

IGNORE EVERYTHING BELOW THIS POINT!!! IT’S OLD AND I’M ONLY KEEPING IT AS A REMINDER/TODO REFERENCE!!!!

Dates: 

  • June 1st 8 Pm – The judging has to be done and turned in.
    • Use these 2 links – Fill out the score sheet using the rubric supplied. 
  1. Rubric –  AMES Showcase Project Rubric 2023 (VGD) – Google Docs
  2. Judging Spreadsheet –  2023 AMES Showcase Scoring Sheet – Google Sheets
    • Please also write the feedback per game, keep it and be prepared to talk about it at the competition after the project is shown. 
    • OA’s (Outstanding Awards) will be easier this year. Each instructor submitted which one of the OA’s they wanted to (they had a max of 2 submissions). We’ll fill out the spreadsheet with what schools are up for those OA’s
  • June 3rd 11:30 am – Contest!
    • Meet at Puget Sound Skill Center: (location link below)
    • Parking will be a challenge due to a carnival. Give yourself some time to find some. Plus side, there will be fair food…mmmmm fried dough.
    • After the students have presented, there will be the outstanding award ceremony, and then a Q&A.

There will be a green room for the judges to get ready beforehand. Jim will manage the slide show, and I (and possibly another person) will be MCing. 

Ok, feel free to pop in the discord and ask questions, or shoot us an email.

Jim will let me know if I forgot anything:)

Thanks for helping out folks, your work is appreciated.

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