100 GC Essay Contest (Little Upsilon)

Hello, I am sponsoring an essay contest on Simcountry. The purpose of this essay contest is to expand the open knowledge base of the Simcountry community in general and apply a degree of academic integrity to discussions regarding the game. If I receive more than 5 submissions, 100 GC will be awarded to the best essay. If I receive less than 5 submissions, 50 GC will be awarded to the best essay.

If you would like to earn some gold coins and show off your knowledge of the game, please don't be afraid to submit an essay.

Essays must be written with proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar, and all submissions must include an introduction (with a thesis statement), three or more body paragraphs, and a conclusion.

The topic of your essay will be simply "How to Profit in Simcountry." Throughout your essay, you will be expected to include an overview of how the following categories of sub-topics influence overall profit and propose an ideal strategy.

1. Corporation
An essay in this category will analyze game aspects relevant to the profit of an individual corporation, both state and private, and propose a strategy for managing each type of corporation. It will include, but may not be limited to, a discussion of:
Trade Strategies
Supply Quality
Quality Upgrades
Effectivity Upgrades
Corporation Salaries
Corporation Contracts
Corporate Welfare Index


2. Country
An essay in this category will analyze game aspects relevant to the profit of an entire country and propose a strategy for maximizing the overall profit of a country. It will include, but may not be limited to, a discussion of:
Government Salaries
Income Tax
Country Welfare Index
Education Index
Health Index
Social Security Index
Transportation Index
General Cost of Government
Country Supply Quality
Loans

Essays will be scored on a 100 point scale (with the highest score earning the reward):
Complete and accurate information is worth 30 points.
Sound math and reasoning is worth another 30 points.
A strong and concise thesis is worth 10 points.
Clear and logical organization is worth 20 points.
A readable and lively style is worth the last 10 points.
Length will not be a factor, but odds are if it's not more than a few pages, you probably don't have enough information.

Essay contest begins today and will end on January 12, 2011 at 12:00 A.M. Pacific Time (one month from now). Please submit your essay to my email at johnnyfire@live.com by the deadline. By submitting an essay, you grant me the right to publish your essay on these forums, on the Simcountry Wikia, and/or on the Church of Simcountry site.

If there are any questions, please post them here or contact me at my email, my account here, Scarlet Citadel on GR, or Scarlet Renaissance on LU. Spread the word!

Submit to your email? So much for:

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The purpose of this essay contest is to expand the open knowledge base of the Simcountry community...<!-/Quote-!>

Not so open if you're cherry picking what the community views. Why aren't you having them posted here on the forum? Even if the essay sucks there might be new information to the reader. That would also allow the community to vote for the essay they think should win.

I gotta laugh... It's like this: Everyone send me details of what you know on the economy of the game then I'll choose one of you to pay 100 gc and I'll share the information from the guy that I paid with everyone. (Oh, and if I don't get enough information I'm only paying 50gc)

LOL

umm... NO

It looks like Scarlet requires players to summit him college essays styles. I don't think I could do it because my elementary teacher died when I was in second grade. How about elementary school essay, Scarlet? JK Scarlet. No one will sit down to write essays to get 50 or 100 GCs of SC. If you can bring 1000GCs of SC to Walmart to exchange for some candies, GM will reward you $1000.00 per month

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Not so open if you're cherry picking what the community views.<!-/Quote-!>

If you knew what I know, you would find that idea amusing. Maybe somebody might surprise me, but I find the odds of that are very small.

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Why aren't you having them posted here on the forum?<!-/Quote-!>

It would give an unfair advantage to somebody writing after an essay has already been submitted. I will be posting all the essays on the Simcountry Wikia at the close of the contest and link to there from the forums.

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That would also allow the community to vote for the essay they think should win.<!-/Quote-!>

Is the community contributing to the prize? No. I can't afford much more than 100 GC. If there's somebody else that wants judge and will contribute to the prize, they can talk to me about it.

Cao Yi, actually, it's high school style essays. Maybe somebody will sit down and write an essay, I'm putting some GC up and seeing what happens. If nothing happens, then nothing happens.

EDIT: I will include an essay on each at the end. These will not be the standard by which other essays are measured and will clearly not be eligible for the prize, but will be there to add to the final pool of work (or make up the entire pool of work if nobody is interested).

A word of advice to anyone entering: The emphasis is on the "why" rather than the "what". I'm not checking the conclusions, but rather, the information and reasoning to arrive at the conclusion. Good information and reasoning will inevitably lead to a good conclusion.

In case my language was unclear in the initial post (I reread it and it seems like it might be misleading), you only need to cover either category 1 or category 2, not both.

I imagined no one entering. I was right. The email submission is a way for Scarlet to pretend anyone entered similar to his above post starting, "A word of advice to anyone entering: ... "

I think if Cao Yi's suggestion was taken, maybe he could gain some participants. 100 coins is crap. try 1000.

GAH

I'm feeling the love.
<3

Make it 500gc Ill send you every doc I have on my hard drive. over 41 pages of tips/tricks/etc..in all 12 point font..

:D