The folks at Valve can’t possibly judge all of these TF2 fan films by themselves – so they want you to help out.
Back in the beginning of the month, we reported on TF2‘s “Replay Update,” a patch that added replay-capture and video-editing functionality to Valve’s popular online FPS. The update coincided with a competition – the Saxxy Awards – to find the best amateur filmmakers in the ranks of RED and BLU.
The submission deadline has long since past, which means now it’s time to votefor your favorites. Given the size of the TF2 community, one can only imagine that sifting through all of the entries would be a ton of work, so Valve has decided to farm that job out to its players.
The process is actually pretty painless. You go to the voting site, log into your Steam account – like you weren’t logged in already – and are immediately presented with two randomly chosen videos in the given category. Choose which one you like better, and move on to the next set.
I’ll be honest – most of these videos are actually pretty terrible, from what I’ve seen. Some are nicely put-together, but Sturgeon’s Law is well at work here. Hell, more than a few don’t even seem to fit the required category. Do you have any idea how long it took to find a video that was remotely worth embedding?
It’s no wonder that Valve wants players to do the work of separating the decent from the crap before it steps in to administer final judgment.
