jens wrote:
after all these questions now I'm a bit confused. What means "playability" regarding with the entry.
Hey,
Ben already touched on this, but I figured I'd my thoughts as well. Grading MOCs is inherently subjective, and I'm sure all of the judges look at each of these things slightly differently, so this is just what I think when I grade based on "creativity, playability, details".
For me, when I think of creativity I'm thinking both about the overall idea of the MOC and also about its construction. In the first part, it's like "have I seen many MOCs like this, or is this just another _____ that I've already seen a bunch of different versions of before". For the second part I'm looking for creative construction techniques - things that make me say "I want to try doing that in my next MOC".
When I think "playability", I'm basically thinking would I want to play with this MOC. Or, if I were a minifig, would I want to inhabit this MOC. In part this has to do with "features", but to me it's more about depth of construction - some MOCs are very flat, and you would get bored of them in five seconds, whereas you could spend tons of time exploring other MOCs if you were fig-scale. Of course this varies from category to category. For instance, you don't have a lot of "features" to a custom fig.
Details is, to me, all about those finishing touches that turn a rough MOC into a finished creation. This could be different things in different categories--in the castle interior category it's about the furnishings, torches, wall hangings, candles, etc; in the battles category it's more about fig placement and "action"; in the custom fig category it's more about the execution of the customization (is the painting clean or smudged, are the decals straight, do the sculpy molded elements look like real LEGO elements or do they look like lumps of clay, etc).
For more insight into how I look at judging (and these are my thoughts only, and in no way reflect on discussion with the other judges), for the past two contests I have posted extensive commentaries after the winners were announced:
CCCII and
CCCIII
Bruce