Hawty McBloggy Invites You to Play

The Xbox 360 Content Creation Challenge went live exactly one week ago. In case you missed it the first time around, DP Publishers along with Nokia are hosting a contest where you design your own original Xbox 360 theme and the top few winners will actually have their work published onto the Marketplace available for the masses to purchase and enjoy. The winner of this contest will win the grand prize of a pretty sweet package worth approximately $2,500.

First and foremost I need to say a few things. I have been so overwhelmed by the talent that has come out of this community. Anytime I have looked at a submission under my name, I have been positively giddy to be affiliated with it. While we are not dominating the leaderboards, I don’t think anybody can argue with the fact that we have the highest quality themes as a community. I suppose there is a (teeny tiny) possibility I am slightly bias, but I honestly couldn’t be more proud of what is under my name in that contest. So many of you are highly talented artists and incredible graphic designers. I am so, so proud of all of you for taking such an active role in this contest.

I know the grand prize seems far away to some of you, but I would like to remind you that voting is open for five more weeks. Only seven days have gone by! There is so much time to rally around your themes, don’t forget that. I strongly encourage each and every one of you to actively solicit votes for your work. I can tell you from updating the leaderboards each day that all of you see a healthy jump in votes on a daily basis. Some of the power lies in your own hands though. Each of you has a friends list you can spam. All of you have friends and families who would probably love to support you in this. Everybody either has classmates or coworkers who would be willing to vote for you. Optimize your chances of getting them to vote by sending them a link to register (tell them it takes about 15 seconds max to get completely registered) and also a direct link to your theme(s). So they click a few buttons and you all the sudden have a higher score. Easy! You cared enough to put a lot of work into your theme, continue to be active by soliciting those votes.

I am well aware of some frustrations and general drama that is swirling around this contest. I am kindly requesting everybody from this community keep a distance from that. I decided to be a partner in this contest to support the gaming community as a whole which I love dearly. Let’s stay focused on the spirit of the competition the way it was meant to be played. That means playing fairly, holding your head high, and ignoring the rest of it. I encourage each and every one of you to vote on absolutely any theme you like. I have actually made it my mission to vote for every single unaffiliated theme simply because they don’t have anybody cheering them on. I also vote for any theme that I would actually purchase, regardless of what community it comes out of. It is important to me that our community support the true talent in there, not just those that are participating under our name.

Please also keep in mind that while you may not win the grand prize and our community may not win the partner prize, there is a lot more to this contest than that. I spoke with DP on the phone yesterday and they told me that they will be tapping more people than just the grand prize winner when it comes to future opportunities. They are looking at all the themes, and they recognize that the true talent is not necessarily on the leaderboards. Know they are paying attention to all the entries (especially those of you that have submitted more than one theme and are proving you can design quality content on a consistent basis). More people than just the one grand prize winner will have a future opportunity with this company. So many of you could put an awesome successful theme on the Marketplace. When you feel like that grand prize is not attainable, please remember that you are showing your artistic talent to people who are paying attention. Someone from another community sent DP an email with a few concerns, and this is part of what was sent back to them :

Also, please note that we intend to work with more than just the artist who wins this program on getting material published to Xbox LIVE. There has been an overwhelming number of extremely high quality work submitted to date, so we will be updating our site in the next 24-48 hours letting people know that there will be opportunities even if they do not win the voting here.

When you have a few spare minutes, please take the time to make sure you have voted on all of the Hawty McBloggy submissions. You can give each theme one, two, or three stars and you can vote on how ever many themes you like so vote frequently and honestly. I am hoping to have some extra prizes to give away to people who voted (no promises at this point) so leave a comment after you vote for all of the themes below and let me know what your favorites are!

• Grunge Vector Shapes
• Futura Resistance
• Think Blue
• Universal
• Think Pink
• Think Red
• Iceberg Alley
• My dark side
• TeQ Headquarters
• Technology meets Nature
• Induction
• I heart xbox
• Deal in Lead
• Dusk till Dawn
• Serenity
• Simple black and white
• Feminine Silhouette
• I Heart XBOX
• Concept Sketches
• Startacular
• Fires, Planets, and Glyphs
• Wall
• Trees
• It’s so Kyoot
• Oxymoron Fractals
• Edge
• Sunrise

And don’t forget, the person with the most votes that affiliated themselves with my community still wins that Nokia N81 Phone I have been promised for participating. I knew right when they said what I would get for participating that I would be passing it along to one of you. You are the ones doing all the work! You deserve the super awesome prize. So please keep trucking along with this contest. Continue actively submitting themes, continue actively voting on quality submissions, and overall, just have fun.