Fallout Studios Forums

Fallout Studios Prize Fund

Is an allocation of money by the Fallout Leadership for the benefit and use of the community to provide an incentive to create, organize and take part in online multiplayer gaming competitions. Rather than providing, as traditional, a user or signature for the winner, competition organisors will now be able to request access to this fund in order to procure real life prizes for their participants. The motivation behind this initiative is to encourage gaming as a regular forum activity and to, potentially, attract a wider audience to join us.

The current fund will be able to supply a 1st place prize, in way of either a Steam gifted game or hard copy via Amazon or similar online retailer, and potentially 2nd and 3rd prizes in way of "certain" paraphernalia. However, the prize(s) of choice are for the competition creator to decide upon in conjunction with the FS admins.

We are prepared to support any PC game or modification competition as long it can be proven to have the active support of the community, but the competition format is ultimately your decision. 1v1, 2v2, round robin, league or another format, we will consider them all so long as you can divise an accurate and fair way to determine the winner we'll consider it.

We do have one golden rule, all competition participants must be members of Fallout Studios in order to qualify for a prize.

How to apply for the prize fund

If you'd like to start a competition then all you have to do is send a PM to one of the FS admins with the following information:

* The game or mod to be played
* The format of competitions, ie league, round robin etc & the rules
* Number of expected players
* Time frame, how long until the competition takes place
* The 1st prize you'd like to give to the winner
* Whether you wish to request 2nd & 3rd prizes

Once we have this information we'll consider the request and get back to you with our answer and if you're successful, confirmation of the size of your prize fund. After that it's all down to you to make the arrangements for the competition. Don't worry though, we'll take care of securing the prizes and arranging distribution to leave you to enjoy your gaming.

As far as we're concerned, once you have your prize fund confirmed, that is the matter finalized until after the competition, however, if we consider that the competition is not being dealt with in a professional and fair manner then we may to step in. But we consider this as an absolute extreme last resort and serious problems will have to occur before this happens.

Our prize fund is limited, so all requests will be dealt with on a first come first served basis. It may also be necessary to schedule your event so as not to exhaust the fund. When considering the size of the fund allocated to a competition, we will have to bear in mind the number of other accepted requests as well.

I'm interested to see how this will work
*pins*

I'd be more than happy to contribute to the "prize fund"... but I'm unaware of a safe manner to do this. Any ideas?

Hence why I suggested a donate function

Ion Cannon!, on 29 Jun 2009, 1:37, said:

Indeed, with our cohesiveness as a community atm, I reckon there would be almost no end to the number of people who would like to donate, even if it's only £5.

Just a question:

Can the competitions be in a team?...i mean, in games such as CoD4, BF2, etc (maybe ZH): 2 teams of 4 people each vs another team with 4 people too.
Them the prize would be share betwen the team members equally.

Gen.Kenobi, on 29 Jun 2009, 2:24, said:

Tempted to say "Duh" but i'll just go with yes. Or a prize can be given to each member of the winning team.

I know but tha would require more funds...more $$$$ money. Sometimes, for events in this magnitude are better individual competitions because they would cost less, that's why i asked.

Competitions will need to be approved by the admins and once that has happened prizes will be sorted out. Lack of money shouldn't come into it. This situation will be even better if the member donations is implemented.

Gen.Kenobi, on 29 Jun 2009, 3:24, said:

Yes indeed they can - in fact, I'd happily help set up, organise and monitor L4D and CoD 4 competitions myself .

You can do team competitions, but we don't have a bottomless pot of money so prizes will be less extravagant for team events. Four copies of L4D would cost over £100.

Either that or you'll have to just delay the competition until said funds are available. We don't want to stop any team games (as they're likely to be more popular than 1v1's) but people will either have to lower the expectations of the prizes or accept a delay in the competition.

Or just set the event to last over a greater period of time, so that while it's prizes may be a little larger, in turn you're getting far more than one night out of it - more along the lines of a league that lasts over a month.

To be quite honest it would be a far more worthwhile use of money to put it towards hosting and other physical costs and not towards 'prizes'.

Alias, on 4 Jul 2009, 1:25, said:

To be quite honest, I don't see why we should just be another generic forum and do what everyone else does. This is one of the many things which makes us unique. Why do you always seem to criticize everything fallout studios does? This is variety and is good for the forum. So stop acting like you know what should and should not be done.
Edited by Brad, 04 July 2009 - 00:40.

Brad, on 4 Jul 2009, 10:39, said:

Since when did I say we were? I'm just saying in relation to longevity of this community, server costs are far more important than 'prizes' for competitions. Since when did I say I 'know' exactly what should be done word for word? I'm merely stating my opinion on this matter: money used on 'prizes' could be put to far better use.
Not to mention, money donated for this 'prize fund' ultimately ends up in a few people's pockets: money used to help maintain the servers goes towards the community as a whole.
Edited by Alias, 04 July 2009 - 00:47.

We already take care of the physical costs of FS. This has nothing to do with that.

I know that you take care of the costs of hosting, but what if someone wants to help or contribute to the entire community, not just an eventual one or two people?

As Wiz siad, the prize fund is the excess which Fs has.
So the prize does not make any difference to what happens at FS.

And I;m not sure, so don't quote me on this, but Ion suggested a donation feature, which would pay for most of the prize fund.
I'm sure most members here would spare £5
Edited by Brad, 04 July 2009 - 00:56.

Alias, on 4 Jul 2009, 1:55, said:

Then they can do so, not all money is going to be going into prize funds.

By introducing these competitions it allows members to get invovled in the community. Like the gamedays these will be organised and run by normal members, or non-staff if you prefer. Sure the money will go to the winners of these competitions but the competitions will involve many forum members. This builds on the success of the gamedays. It also allows people who may not otherwise have been able to attend the gamedays to play. Although this depends on the competition and the date.

If you ask me I don't see how the money could have been better spent. And while it doesn't boost the entire community - As not all have the games - It affects a majority of the active members.

The administrators agreed the donation amont some time ago. This value hasn't changed from the people who donate. The money goes to an account that has been used to pay for the server, the new url, the new game servers and other costs. The surplus is used to support the prizes and anything else we find necessary to buy. Donations increase the amount in the account which is then used to fund everything we do. If you have some blindingly good suggestions, please don't keep them too yourself. I will say one thing, we cannot afford a hosting server of our own, we don't have that much to spare in the case of donations drying up.

Once the Shockwave update arrives, we could possibly use it to get a Hamachi premium membership for a huge, consolidated network. The Premium membership is quite cheap IIRC.

There is no difference between a 'premium' network and a regular user created network, it is just if you are a premium user, you can enter in any network regardless if the regular user limit is reached or not.

Alias, on 5 Jul 2009, 0:51, said:

Hmm, on their website Hamachi says the user capacity for networks owned by a Commercial license holder (premium member) is 50 people. Whether or not all the people joining past 16 people (the regulation for non-commercial licenses) would have to have premium as well, I'm not sure.