Loopy has come up with an interesting method for players to submit customizations and conversions to his events and he’d like to share it with other T.O.s in the hopes of helping them out with this sometimes difficult task.
This year at the Goldensprue Cup, one of my big takeaways was a need for some kind of automated method for people to submit their custom models and conversions. This is a big part of the hobby for some players and I like to encourage it. It would have been great, however, if there was a public and easy way for players to submit and review one another’s models. This way, if there’s a question about models, it can be addressed before the event begins.
This is where the real strength of a tool like this lies. Your players themselves can look at the models and weigh in on the conversions. They can alert you if they see anything strange and you can head it off at the pass by either explaining why you allow it or talk to the owner of the models and explain why you either won’t allow it or explain under what conditions the model is allowed.
Besides, email can be a giant pain in the butt sometimes and it’s nice to have all the model submissions in one convenient place.
I have an RTT coming up this weekend and I decided to use Google Photos as my method of having players submit their models for review. I chose this because there isn’t any advertising and it has a very clean interface. I think people would find this easier than other services like photobucket. I’m sure that you could use some other system like a Facebook album or an Instagram hashtag. In both of these cases, I have found not all users are okay with having accounts with those companies. So, for this article, I’ll show you the method I used.
Create an Album: Go to your Google Photos account. If you have a Google account, then you have a Google Photos account as well. Go to “Albums” and click “New album”.
Add any photo: One of the weird things about this process is that you actually need to add at least one photo to the album in order to create it, so I usually pick a funny meme or something to add as the first photo. You may, instead want to use the logo for your event.
Name the album: I would be as descriptive as possible for the name of your album, including the name of the event, the date, and the fact that it is the model submissions album.
Sharing Settings:
Go to the hamburger menu in the upper right-hand corner…
Click “Sharing options”
Turn on “Collaborate“. You can also get the “Link to share” which is what you send to your users.
I suggest adding this link to your event description in the Best Coast Pairings app and whatever other social media you use to advertise your site online.
Using the album:
All users have to do is go to the album and drag & drop their images in…
Then, the users can click on their image and put a comment in to talk about the model and what it is supposed to be. Below you can see the discussion thread which exists for each photo. You can make comments and give your approval directly in this thread.
Here’s what my album looks like for the event I’m running this week. You’ll see that users have uploaded photos to the album and there are comments on the photos.
It’s that simple. I strongly recommend you give it a try for your next event. Feel free to drop any questions you may have in the comments below.
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