I've been mulling an idea in my brain for a few months now, and this competition seems like a good place to give it a try.
Here's the idea.
1. At the start of the competition, people can optionally pay $25 into a pot. I'd collect the cash (probably through PayPal, though perhaps a check or something could work as well). Obviously, $25 is pretty arbitrary. It could be $10 or $50 or whatever. We can sort the details out as we go.
2. The people in this category might have some sort of extra accountability requirement that they need to follow during the competition, like required weekly updates, or X number of daily updates, or something of that kind. (Or not.)
3. At the end of the competition, you must declare whether you won or not. If you won, you must submit your game in a format that is distributable to the crowd. (This can be pretty flexible. We don't need your source code. An EXE or a free account on the finished web-based game or something. Just something so we can play it.)
4. Regardless of whether you won or lost, you'll get a copy of all of the games in this category. Sure, they'll mostly be kind of silly, simple, cheesy games. That's OK.
5. If you lost, you don't get any money back. You can consider it a purchase of the games you receive from #4.
6. The collected money is divided out to the winners equally. If you won, this is payment for the game you made! Congratulations, you sold some copies of your game to real customers! Depending on the number of people who sign up, and the number of people who complete the game, as long as you win, you'll get at least your own money back (plus the games in #4 for free). But if 8 people do this, and 4 drop out, you'll actually make a profit!
For me, what I think this would accomplish is that it would give us all more motivation to finish our games. If you put a small amount of cash down on it, you'll be more motivated to finish it. If you think you might end up with some extra money, you'll definitely be more motivated. And to top it off, you'll be able to brag about how you sold some copies of your game!
I'll handle the money, and I'd pay any overhead charges (like from PayPal). You'll just be responsible for getting the money to me, and for building your game.
So. The question is, if this were an option in this upcoming challenge, would you participate or would you pass?