Disney Dreamlight Valley's Dreamsnaps is a photography contest with no entry fee. They are giving away $1+ to everyone who bothers to submit an entry, no matter how invalid -- because there are no judges to reject invalid entries.
In a game with no referees, cheating goes unchecked and legitimate players have no recourse.
Dreamsnaps is a type of "cozy contest" where everyone can win a minimum of 300 Moonstones (the cash shop currency) simply for submitting an entry. This is not much, just a couple of dollars, but there are tens of thousands of entries, and the prizes for the upper quartiles can go up to several thousand Moonstones. It is not unreasonable to estimate that at a minimum, Gameloft is giving away $200,000 a week in cash shop currency, if not more.
Moreover, if players participate in voting on submissions, they can also earn up to 50 Moonstones per week for casting 10 or more votes. This is already on top of being able to earn 50 Moonstones per day from a little bit of hide-and-seek where you find a blue chest somewhere on the map.
Even without Dreamsnaps, Gameloft is already being very generous with players who can simply hoard free currency steadily and never buy any currency with real money to purchase items from the cash shop.
However, the quality of Dreamsnaps submissions has steadily become worse with entries varying from low-effort to no-effort, and/or trying to exploit the mechanics of the contest. Whereas in the past, these "invalid" entries were a rarity, in this particular contest they have become the norm with almost every voting round having one or both entries that are simply too far from the theme of "Royal Celebration".
In the slides below, we have compiled several entries that we feel do not fit the theme, which was stated as:
[DECOR CHALLENGE] Decorate your Valley in a manner fit for a festival of royalty. Make it lavish, make it elegant, make it you!
The sample entries in the slides were not cherry-picked from thousands of samples. Almost all voting rounds showed two invalid entries, and only very rarely was at least one entry even close to the contest theme.
We'll talk about the contest mechanics and how it leads to easy exploitation simply to collect at least 300 Moonstones per week. This amount of cash shop currency might not seem like a lot, but over several weeks it can really add up, and Gameloft is basically, giving money away for free.
The Dreamsnaps contests start with a theme and required elements which are detected by the in-game camera function.
In the final slide we have a screenshot of this week's contest, which is an Outfit Challenge. Notice there are two sets of criteria: Mandatory and Bonus. This is the same for Decor Challenges.
Problem: The game can detect tags but it cannot detect context.
So for a Decor Challenge, various decor items / furnishings can have the proper tag, but they might not be appropriate for the theme.
Further, the combination and arrangement of the decor cannot be checked. You can just dump whatever fits the criteria into a picture however you like and it will pass the "Mandatory" check.
Problem: Bonus criteria improve your score.
Some players have determined that adding more Bonus items can improve their score (above and their picture being upvoted), and thereby get them more Moonstones. Further, they can basically add items without context because there's no referee checking the validity of entries.
So for players who have discovered that Bonus elements give you more Moonstones, now it becomes a game of how many bonus elements you can jam into the picture. This of course can compromise composing a picture that is aligned with the theme of the week.
Dreamsnaps is clearly meant to be an artistic endeavour but it is steadily becoming a jigsaw puzzle exploiting the mechanics.
Problem: Players get a minimum reward.
Whether a player is lazy or just disillusioned with how their efforts don't yield more than the minimum reward anyway, it seems clear that many players are submitting whatever to collect 300+ Moonstones next week. After all, why not?
Again, no referee means they are guaranteed a reward no matter what. With literally tens of thousands of pictures entered into the contest each week, it is really not feasible for Gameloft to have employees scan the entries for even the most blatantly invalid ones.
And even this would be a subjective call by such an employee and sure to elicit complaints from disqualified players who may certainly challenge the decision even if they know their entry was invalid.
Having human referees just creates more and more expense for a system where Gameloft is basically giving away money. Players who buy Moonstones with real money can spend less, and players who are disinclined to buy Moonstones have even less incentive to do so.
Problem: Voting rounds are suspicious
Despite there being literally tens of thousands of entries, how is it that you can encounter the same picture two or more times? Does your submission get seen at all? And how many times in comparison with someone else's submission?
This adds to distrust and disillusionment with the system, which can lead to apathy and minimum effort. Why try when the system is flawed or rigged? Clearly you cannot rely on voting to fairly reward your effort.
Problem: How players vote.
Faced with such invalid entries, how does a conscientious voter decide? If you are lucky maybe one picture will be at least passably valid for the contest criteria and you can just pick that one. But what if neither picture reasonably qualify?
For players who have put in a lot of effort but reap basically the minimum reward, they suspect that voters are not doing a proper job and just voting whatever. Or there aren't enough votes being cast.
This may well be the case because it simply cannot be guaranteed that players will vote "properly".
Problem: Players cannot be forced to vote properly.
Players who are disinterested in Dreamsnaps voting and just want the 50 Moonstone reward can just spam click whatever and get their 50 Moonstones for the week. There is nothing to prevent them from doing so and nothing to encourage them to do more.
And when faced with so many invalid entries, there's hardly a reason to put in any effort to really look at the pictures at all.
Even if Gameloft wanted to encourage some kind of "proper" voting, how would they do it? For example, if there were a button to discard entries as "invalid", there is no guarantee players will not abuse it or not bother to use it.
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Clearly the state of the player base is that most players just want the "free money" and won't even cooperate with Gameloft to follow the intent of a contest that lets them enter with no cost and no penalty.
Why is this important? After all, if Gameloft has a badly designed system, why not take advantage of it? This is the typical exploiter mentality in many games where players who discover an exploit feel no shame at using it no matter the consequence.
However, there are consequences.
- Players who submit invalid entries are ruining the experience for other players.
- A mindset of cheating, exploiting, or taking advantage of a game company undermines the relationship between service providers and clients.
- Game companies rely on revenue and live service games exchange a quality experience for grateful revenue. By undermining the experiences they are trying to create, players disengage and revenue suffers.
- Without solid revenue, live service games are simply not sustainable, and ultimately shut down.
- When companies see how various events and mechanics are abused, they are less likely to repeat them and have fewer choices for producing fun content in an online and multiplayer space.
Gameloft isn't asking for much here: Have fun playing as intended. But players apparently won't even do that.
If game spaces are a reflection of the attitudes of the real world, then the real world is headed for disaster.
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