iSoaker.net :: Soaking the world!

Now that the water blaster review contest submission time is over, we look towards the future. What sort of water blaster or water warfare-related contest type would interest you? What type of contest would you make you wish to submit an entry?

Some ideas:
Water Blaster Photo Contest (i.e. best photo of a water blaster)
Water Warfare Photo Contest (i.e. best action shot / water warfare picture)
Water Warfare Short Story Contest (i.e. best real or fictional water warfare short story <1000 words)
Water Warfare / Water Blaster Poetry Contest (i.e. best water warfare-themed poetry)
Water Warfare Themes Art Contest (i.e. best drawn or digitally created water warfare-themed art)

Something else?

Sidenote: Contests that could be fun, but are not quite appropriate for here would include Best Modified Water Blaster or Best Homemade Water Blaster. Sorry, dudes, but someone else would need to run those type of contests.

I'm open to running one more contest this summer and wonder what, if any, would interest the membership. Of course, I don't have to run a contest, but thought it'd be a fun thing to do.

Soak on!

Hmm... What about a battlefield design contest? There would be a nearly infinite number of ways to do this, the best being to go into a 3D modeler and taking pictures and providing the file on. Of course, one could also try to make a flat one in paint. But easier ways of getting a good 3D field design could include going into games and creating something, such as map editors on first person shooters, or even games like Roller Coaster Tycoon or The Sims. =) Unfortunately, there could be some potential difficulty with this, primarily with distances, and the 3D fields would require many screenshots. Fields would be voted on several factors, such as realism (i.e. a CTF game between 2 nearby mountains would not go through), cover, layout, interesting elements, etc. Dispite the likely issues with such a contest, I thought I'd mention it.

I think that to win, you must put alot of thought into what you do. So I think that you should choose
Water Warfare Short Story Contests or The Water Warfare or Blaster Poetry. That would be somthing neat!
And you should offer a cool old NIB soaker for a prize to skyrocket enteries.

Definately the war photos. Thats what the site needs the most.

A dream battleground design contest could be fun, but potentially quite hard for many to do even if they have a great idea in mind. Perhaps one day when creating good 3D content is more available to most.

Poetry and short-story contests can be good, but I always worry about true interest in writing. There are those who love writing things and do so even without a contest. Though I put up the suggestion, past contests based on non-review written submissions have only gotten lukewarm responses.

Battle photos / action pics is what I presently lean towards. I'm wondering whether to perhaps just have a water warfare/water blaster-theme image contest. In that way, blaster pics alone would be valid entries as well as shot pics, battle pics, or even artistic drawing. Not 100% sure, though, but I lean towards this one.

As for contest deadlines, when would you like to see a contest run? When should the entry deadline be? A couple of weeks? End of the month? End of summer?

I don't think a contest should end at the end of summer if the prize is a water gun. Give the winner a few weeks to enjoy their reward. As for ideas, I think a voting-based picture contest would be convenient and helpful to the site. Pics might be of wars, shot pics, etc.

If we go with battle and shot imagery, videos are most practical for those situations, especially with shots. However, they can't capture the detail a picture does, but pictures require very good timing and having the camera taking the time to focus and snap the picture doesn't work that well. Personally, I'd prefer to do a video to increase the variety of what can be shown. On the other hand, people seem to be lazy, as only 1 entry was submitted for the review contest a while ago. =)

While I thank you guys for the feedback and ideas, I think I may have to hold off on running a contest for a little bit. Certain developments will be soon eating up my free time and money in a HUGE way. I may reconsider later, but for the next few months or so, I wouldn't be able to handle as much (I'll explain soon, but not quite yet). My apologies if I got anyone's hopes up.

Of course, members are still by all means welcome to send in things for reposting on iSoaker.com should they have the desire! If I do end up running a contest later this year and someone submitted something earlier that could be used for the contest, I'd be open to allowing that member to use their previous submission as an entry if they wished; of course, if a member ended up wanting to create a new entry, they'd be welcome to do so, too!

Soak on!