This is specifically targeted towards the moderators but if anyone else has experience that is helpful I’d take it!
In the arcade category, there have been multiple coding competitions such as The Unique-A-Thon (Non-Official Game-Jam) and CODER KING, a competition, which I found were super fun to compete in!
These are great for making digital games, but I had the idea to start an arcade-based robotics competition on the forums. Contestants would have the same electrical components and use them to construct robots based on the prompt, with the best robot continuing to the next round!
The problem is that for every person to have the same opportunity to win, each person needs the exact same components. Obviously I can’t just go around asking for everyone’s addresses and shipping them parts, but I wondered if there was any work around.
The best I could come up with is sending competitors amazon gift cards and letting them purchase the parts themselves.
TL;DR:
Question 1: Is sending users gift cards even allowed?
Question 2: Are there any alternatives?
This is still just a brainstorm so I totally understand if the answer is a no, you have to be strict when you mix money and children on the internet!
I don’t think so, though it would be much better for me and all the others to send some money to my contestants
It seems you’ve hit the same dead end as I. Again I’m fixated on this concept for the forums or Makecode in general, but the combination of a real-world dependent competition and children on an online forum isn’t very achievable, at least without the assistance of Microsoft or the Makecode team.
Hopefully they can figure something out and bring this cool idea to fruition. K byeee!!!
Unfortunately, while we love seeing people work on hardware and this sounds like it could be super fun, it’s not something we’ll likely be able to do. The logistics and privacy concerns just make it unfeasible. That said, if you are able to create cool hardware projects, please do feel free to share them. It’s great to see, and I’m sure others would certainly be interested too.
Cool! Thanks for the answer, it wouldve bugged me to not ask and never know.