listen, we did what we did because we wanted to and i think ive made it clear that we were unaware a reaction like this would take place. our logic was if its not agianst the rules its okay, and we realize it is much more complicated than that now. we did read the rules, and we saw that they didnt want trolls. but we didnt think what we were doing was trolling. we were considering letting otakon being the first con it premiered at, but in the end that just didnt happen.
most of the editors who you say make a video specifically for a con like otakon i would guess have been around a lot longer than us and are more experienced perhaps (and btw, we would love to make multiple videos and then do such a thing, but we had trouble this year getting all 3 of us together since 2 are at different colleges). we just never thought like that, thats all. and about thinking we would have a chance at winning what we did because of our previous videos reception...well the crowd did like it, but we got so incredibly overwhelmed in terms of the votes...we got owned. you can say what you will on this topic
"I just really have a hard time buying the "But Otakon is
soooo important to us" argument in this case. Otakon is really important to a
lot of other editors who have not already won at 3 previous contests with their entry and have held their entries until now, and at least to me it doesn't seem fair"
otakon IS important to us, and you're right we're not the only ones, but we still feel that we have a right to compete.
okay now i hope i didnt ignore anything important that you wrote, im having a rough day (damn tests). but correct me if im wrong here, in the end, you guys are mainly questioning our intentions here rather than our actions (we've made it obvious we are willing to act in some ways to reduce our level of 'trollingness'). if thats correct, theres not all that much left that we can say, except that when we make our video(s) for next year, this wont happen again.
we did not mean to cause this controversy, we did not mean to troll (we obviously had a narrow definiton at the time)
now hacker, you can believe what you want, and you can think that this was all planned and that whys its not adding up, but i think your math is off. if you think our intentions from the start was to win as many first places as we can, you are wrong. that was NOT our intention
we did submit to cons to get input, and i think we already accepted that we submitted to too many cons, i thought we resolved that? and ya know what? putting it up for download is a good idea, dont say we "still" havent put it up, since we have been focused on this issue since it started. we dont even know how to compress the video properly yet and we planned on sorting that out..well now but we have been preoccupied with the forum. what we did didnt seem to work well with the first vid, and i dont even know how we did that
hopefully i didnt end up contradicting myself in my dilerium, i dont think theres anything left to say.
ash, if we are in the same category, cool, if i win ill be happy, and if you do i will congratulate you.
Ashyukun wrote:
OK, no offense, but- if Otakon was that important to you (you're making it sound like it is the con you wanted to compete in and everything else is just secondary...) why did you submit it to so many cons beforehand- especially knowing (as anyone submitting should- it's in the rules we're supposed to read) that Otakon has anti-trolling rules? It would have made far more sense if Otakon were truly that important to have either kept it under wraps or simply just not entered it anywhere else. PCM isn't as much the problem here- it's a fairly small con, and they needed more entries. If it had just been entered there and won, most of us would probably not be having this discussion. But before that the video was entered into (and won) AniMazement and A-Kon, and at least A-Kon is a rather good-sized and well-known con- it's been around for 14 years, after all (sorry, I don't have attendance numbers handy).
Most of the editors here, when it comes to large, high-profile cons like Otakon, will make entries just for it, and then enter other contests with the video afterwards if it doesn't win and they still want to compete with it. I would hazard a guess that most of the videos from editors who have won in previous contests (period) that are entered at Otakon have never been seen by a large audience before. I know that's the case for several of the higher-profile editors, and it's at least in part to avoid the appearance of impropriety when it comes to trolling.
Was there any way to really know that video would do so well? In truth, no- it's impossible to predict what will happen in most contests. But after the reactions your previous video got, you had to realize that you have at least some semblance of skill and a decent shot at winning with the new one. I just really have a hard time buying the "But Otakon is soooo important to us" argument in this case. Otakon is really important to a lot of other editors who have not already won at 3 previous contests with their entry and have held their entries until now, and at least to me it doesn't seem fair- especially in a contest like Otakon where the chances of even making the contests as so low- for one of them to to potentially lose even the chance to compete before the audience because of it.
My opinions aside- I don't control what happens with the Otakon contest, only Matt to an extent does, along with the pre-screeners for the contest. If this video makes it through all the hoops to get into the contest, then that's the way things are, and if I lose to it (since depending on how my entry and this one are categorized, we could be in the same category), I'll not bitch about it too much, if at all. Things at contests don't always go along with what each of us individually consider right- but it's a part of life in general, and something we just have to accept and move on.
