Contents - Cultural View

Java 4K Game Programming Contest 104
A minor amount of controversy erupted due to entries that judges had failed to score. Entries like JM4K and
IsOlation Net where either too complex for the judges to launch, or contained networking components that they
couldn't test. After this year's competition, the rules were changed to require that games be self-executable. In
addition, contestants were warned in advance about the difficulties in judging networked games.
List of Games [2]
List of Scores: (DHTML [3] ) (XLS [4] )
Year 4 (2006)
Year 4 marked a period of transition toward making gameplay a priority over graphics and technical
accomplishment. Many of the games were fairly simple in design, but aimed to make up for it with engrossing or
addictive gameplay.
For the first time in the contest's history, a special forum was setup on JavaGaming.org to host the contest. In
addition, the JavaUnlimited.net site became the official site for entries and judging. While judging was originally
going to be handled through JavaUnlimited by the Javagaming.org community, pushback from several members
resulted in falling back on a more traditional judging system.
After the results came back, Miners4K by Markus_Persson was declared the winner. Second place was given to
Kevin Glass's Roll4K, and third place was given to Goomba4K by Woogley.
The results of Year 4's judging were significantly better than those of Year 3, in part due to the rule changes which
forced the entries to conform to easily executable formats. However, this did not completely eliminate judging
issues. Some controversy erupted when two entries (Xero and JSquares) were given lower scores due to technical
glitches. Several recommendations were posed to prevent this from happening in future contests, including trimmed
mean scoring and verification of judge's scoring before acceptance.
List of Games & Results [5]
Year 5 (2007)
Year 5 launched in December 2006 and lasted until March 1, 2007. It saw some great games, with much less focus
on 3D and pseudo-3D graphics. Most games were 2D, with Pipe Extreme and Trailblazer being the only notable
exceptions (one could argue that a few others are 3D as well, but distinctly less so).
Just like year 4, a forum was hosted on JavaGaming.org to host the contest. JavaUnlimited's system was used for
hosting the games again, being considered the official site for the entries. A site update was planned for
JavaUnlimited, but did not occur. Originally, the plan was to have a public vote and a judging panel. One month
after the contest closing date the organizer without further explanation dropped the judging panel, which caused
some unrest in the forums, accusations of censorship, locked threads and two participants withdrawing their entries
from the contest (bringing the total down from 65 to 58) [6] . Voting was limited to javagaming.org forum
participants, and within the alloted time, 25 people voted. About two months after the contest closing date, the
official results were announced.
The winner was Metro4k by Blaine Hodge, followed by Jojoh's Roadfourk and Ulf Ochsenfahrt's aichess4k. Metro4k
is a Sim City-like city simulation game, Roadfourk a racing game, and aichess4k a chess game featuring an AI
opponent.
Unlike previous years, year 5 saw no game take the "last place", because the approval voting system used only gave
votes to around half the games.
• List of Games [7]
• Results [8]