Armor Games held many contests before and they were all based on NG score, locked after 1000 votes. When I first heard of Rock Out contest I thought it to be the same and got really motivated after seeing the ultimate crappiness of flash entries by that moment. I was absolutely sure that I would be able to make a game that would score better and get into top 10. And actually did it. Judging by the score I was supposed to be #3-5, there were three games with the same score of 3.75: my Velocity (that ended up #18), Incubus Pulsum (#2) and The Pick of Destiny (that did not even get into top 20). There were only 2 games that scored higher than 3.75.

So here we come to
The First Reason why Rock Out Contest is a failure: They could not use NG score system, that worked so well before, this time.

They say that the scores were manipulated. Which means that there were mass votes to lower the scores of competitors. Judging by the fact that AG admin kept tracking scores of all games on this page I presume they were going to use those to determine the winner at first. Were the scores so fucked up to discard this method? I have no idea...

So how was the top 20 formed? When I asked about that I was told that they used combination of things to determine the winner.

"Prizes will be awarded based on the following: Score, # of Views, Originality, Playability, Graphics, and Addictive Game Play." is what The Rock Out page on AG site says.
Since score criteria was discarded and # of Views only tells us how long the game was on the portal and if it was shown on the FrontPage thus only Originality, Playability, Graphics, and Addictive Game Play are left. Can they be measured in numbers? NO! All those are very subjective and vary from person to person. For instance I hate Incubus Pulsum and still consider it the worst game of all that had a chance to be among winners, but thats just my opinion It can not really tell you the real value and quality of the game. The only thing that could was the score.

Here is the top 10:
(the first score and votes are current and the second are from AG Rock Out page)

1. Ongaku (3.99 / 3,929 votes; 3.98/1000 votes)
2. Incubus Pulsum (3.59/3000; 3.75/1000)
3. Headfirst To Hell (3.66/1170; 3.62/1000)
4. 1812 Overature (3.72/1500; 3.65/1000)
5. Monsters of Rock (3.39/324) again nice graphics, silly ddr concept.
6. Transmigration (4.06/2529; 4.02/1000) [!!!!!]
7. Insurgio (3.37/258) barely after judgment, wtf is this doing in the top 10?? Oh wait. It was submitted 07/16/2007 PAST THE DEADLINE
8. -Play the Game- (3.39/335) Past the deadline again 07/16/2007 | 05:42AM EST
9. BoM Beat Battle (3.62/494)
10. Galactic Invasion 20XX (3.53/305) Well at least it's not a fucking DDR-thing, though I did not notice any synchronization with music. How do they tell a rhythm based game from a game with music?

I presume that combination of things was just several people deciding which game goes where. And this kind of judgment is subjective and unfair by definition.

The questions left unanswered: how come this combination of things made Incubus Pulsum the second, me #18 and kicked The Pick of Destiny out of top 20 while we had the same score. And there are games with the same gameplay as Incubus Pulsum but better graphics.
What is wrong with this combination of things that it placed Transmigration to the #6 positions? Along with Ongaku these are the only two games that were not crap and actually deserved the price because they were awesome and original (not sum ddr crap), and not because the other submissions were even crappier.

They can come up with something like: this is not really a top all the 10 games are equally good and receive the same price but that just would be silly and make the contest fail even more.

But was there any way to judge the games fairly after the ng score method was discarded? No, I dont think so =\

Well since the games were judged by what I presume was personal opinion I would like to share mine. Which bring us to

The Second Reason why Rock Out Contest is a failure: Low quality of entries & lack of ideas

This one has nothing to with its organization. Its about you making crappy games. More than a hundred of worthless flashes. Some had really nice graphics wasted on a stupid idea, copying each other. Whats up with all the DDR games? What were you thinking? Who would enjoy pressing buttons without any real reason. Of course there are exceptions: Ongaku for instance is a very good game, I actually felt the music wile playing it and it was beautiful too.

And before you would start arguing about this I would like to share a secret with you. If the game scores less than 3.65 its a crap not worth attention. My judgement is based on experience as a player (Im visiting newgrounds everyday since 2001) and as a game developer (lol, my MMM is still in top 50 :P ) And dont tell me that the score is low due to abuse and mass votes to lower the score, it did not really affect the cool games - Ongaku and Transmigration, did it?

IMO all those who made primitive DDR, copying each other have failed. Haven't you seen what decent music based games look like? How about these:

Short Circuit
Cosmic Fozmik
Punk-o-matic

So my verdict is: the only two games that were worthy of a contest held by two biggest flash sites were: Ongaku and Transmigration. Also Headfist to Hell has very nice graphics but the concept is still kinda silly.... nonetheless it looks like a lot of effort was put into it.

Whatever....