To the Cosplay Team and other decision makers at Dreamhack

This letter is addressed to you from the cosplay competition community of Sweden, in response to the rule changes to the competition at Dreamhack Stockholm.

For context - the competition scene in Sweden is very strong, and is made up by very enthusiastic and skilled cosplayers. For many years, despite being such a small country, we’ve been a strong presence and made our mark even in the international scene. For example, for three years in a row we have placed on the podium in the largest cosplay competition in the world, either in craft or overall. Swedish representatives good-naturedly strike fear in the hearts of other competitors. And we are proud to say that the Swedish way of crafting and making skits have also spread to other countries.

And most importantly, the way our competitions are run has been developed by these skilled and experienced cosplayers and judges. Our competitions are by and for our community, because all of us want what's best for our competition scene. And for the past several years, the competitions at Dreamhack have been the biggest highlights of the season. The DHCC is the competition we try our hardest to join, because of how great the experience always is.

That’s why we are all now very worried about the changes that have been made to the competition at the upcoming Dreamhack in Stockholm.

We understand that there have been changes internally in the team. But we’ve also noticed that the new rules for the DHCC are the exact same as the American rules.

This is not viable for Swedish competitions. This is creating huge issues for all of us, and as a result most of us will not even be able to participate.

The main problem is that the competition scene, culture and scale in America is vastly different than in Sweden. And the current ruleset shows no understanding of this.

We also find other problems regarding clarity and quality.

We will go through these in detail to really convey why we are so worried - and we sincerely hope you take your time to read through them all.

In the end of this letter we will also give constructive feedback on what you can do to keep Dreamhack being as amazing as it has been so far.

Our concerns:

1. You have changed the criteria to join the different tiers to be based on competition wins or Top 5 placements.

This is the biggest issue, and has catastrophic results. For several reasons.

Firstly, for us, competition wins are not at all a viable measurement of skill.

Our community is on a much smaller scale, and our competitions are very few. It’s very common to only join 1-2 competitions a year. And to add, the competition for these are fierce, the rules are strict, and the awards few. Because of this, it’s very hard to win or place top three. It’s normal and common to have never won or just won once or twice, regardless of skill.

With your criteria, you will have maybe three people in the Dreamhack Expert category, the entire regular Expert line-up (including previous national finalists and international representatives) in Artisan, and almost all of the actual Artisans with years of experience will be in Novice. This is actively making the majority of us decide to not join or drop out of the competition, because not only does this make us feel disrespected and like there is no point in competing, it also will be an incredible mess.

Secondly, we are not aware if we place in the Top 5 in a competition. In the majority of competitions we are only told 1st place. Only at a few Expert level, national or international finals competitions do we get to know 1st-3rd place, but never more than that. Not even at Dreamhack. The standard is Grand Prize and individual Judges Choices, and Judges’ choice prizes are seldom based on craftsmanship skill here in Sweden or the Nordics so they should not count. Also it is very unclear how prizes like eg. Best Wig or Best prop should count towards the number of wins. Another aspect is also the size of the competitions. We have a lot of small ones at small conventions where the craftsmanship skill level is equivalent to Novice, or sometimes Artisan if you are lucky. Should a win in such a small competition count? It’s a vast difference from the big competitions.

Thirdly, this does not take into account factors like professional education or years of experience. Is it valid that a professional tailor should join Novice because they after 10 years of cosplay decided to try competing for the first time?

2. We are no longer allowed to join with a cosplay that has won any award in any competition, or even placed in the Top 5. Except for the previous year winner of DHCC.

This completely changes the vital place Dreamhack had in the competition scene. The ability to reuse cosplays was one of the big draws and reasons for the huge turnout.

For years, the DHCC has been the one place where we have been able to reuse our expensive and time consuming cosplays. For example, the majority of the Expert tier is usually composed of finalists from the Swedish Championship, who have all won a qualifier. The ability to reuse previous cosplays who might have won an award has been immensely appreciated. And has been one reason the quality of the competition has been so high.

The fact that it’s any competition or any award/selection is incredibly strict and makes DHCC incompatible with the rest of the competitions in the country, and prevents us from joining. Because we now have to make an entire new cosplay and we can’t even reuse cosplays that are several years old, have won a lower category or much smaller competition, we don’t have time, money or resources to do the DHCC. Thus, people will choose not to join the DHCC.

This is completely opposite to even the global standard. The most common rule globally is that cosplays that have placed in the same competition are not allowed. So why is only cosplays that won the previous DHCC allowed? This is incredibly unfair and unsportsmanlike, the majority would even consider it cheating.

Also, a very common rule is that cosplays that have won any sort of prize in a big international competition are not allowed. By big international competition we mean those that require qualifying through a national qualifier or awards a big monetary sum, e.g. DotA international.

3. The Cosplay Rubric with it’s very specific point criteria.

Overall we appreciate the attempt to be clear and specific in your judging criteria. However, the way it is written and structured is out of touch with our cosplay culture, but also contains major risk of unfairness.

The Technical Difficulty rubric is counted by amount of techniques, materials, percentage of self-made pieces. This opens up to a number of issues.

Firstly, the consensus among all accredited judges is that the quality of the techniques is much more important than the amount of techniques and materials. A “simple” but well executed cosplay wins over a “complicated” but poorly made one. Because of the rubric, judges will have to give points in a way that lets a poorly made cosplay with many techniques win over a simpler but better made one. And this leaves a poor taste in the mouth of a cosplay community who values quality over quantity.

The rubric also does not take into account the difficulty of the technique or materials. On the highest level and podiums of Swedish competitions you regularly see fewer but professional level and specialist techniques.

We are also confused - what counts as a technique? As a material? Either it’s very strict (foamwork, sewing, 3d print) and all the hard work is lost, or it’s very broad (tailoring techniques, wig ventilation, foamclay, worbla) and every single cosplay will max out their scores.

The self-made percentage is, for a lack of better wording, strange. We find that allowing up to 40% bought pieces in Artisan and 20% in Expert is a lot. And modded pieces do not count to this? The Swedish standard is no bought pieces, and only a small percentage of modding is allowed in either Artisan or Expert. In practice, these are usually only things like patterns, base wigs, boots and pantyhoses. We find the high percentage, again, unsportsmanlike. Something like 20% and 10% would be more reasonable.

The crafting section could cause issues because of the wording. It does not fully account for variety, context (should for example a sewing focused cosplay with unfinished seams score a 5 or 6?) and is hard to interpret due to how very specific it is. Again it feels more geared towards appearance and details rather than construction.

Overall, the Rubric is vague in some places, and overly specific in others. The mentioning of specific numbers and other wording about the crafting comes across as focused on details and scale, which is not viable for our community that values construction and care. It shows a lack of understanding that American and Swedish cosplay culture is different. It seems more like a checklist to get a high score rather than judging guidelines, and makes us believe our costumes will not be judged fairly.

4. The no stagefighting rule

Honestly, we find this one extremely confusing. While we understand the interest in safety, the implementation is very strange. Firstly, we wonder why you feel the need to say no stagefights in what we understand is a Solo Catwalk competition. Secondly, we are worried about what this means for the ECG qualifier. This is not a rule that the ECG has, and will severely impact the quality of our performances/skits. Also, how in the world are you going to enforce the “one foot on the floor at all times”? This is incredibly open to interpretation. We do not want to get disqualified because of a split second interpretation while we are performing.

Feedback - what we ask, and what you can do

We ask that you acknowledge that the current rules that are copy-pasted from Dreamhack Atlanta, are not viable for the Swedish cosplay and competition culture.

We ask that you acknowledge that the previous longstanding rules and criteria were made with the Swedish community in mind.

We ask that you change the rules and criteria to reflect this - and recommend that you use the previous ruleset and criteria for Dreamhack Stockholm.

In addition, we ask:

-That the criteria for the tiers of Novice, Artisan and Expert is returned to as it was previously, and the removal of the award criteria. Previous years accounted properly for skill and experience. The 0 awards in Novice is still vital, and asking for WIP is fine.

-Again allowing the reuse of cosplays that have placed in the Top 5 in other competitions - with the addendum of costumes that have placed in international competitions to be disallowed, and costumes that have placed in the DHCC can not enter the same or lower tier again.

-To rewrite the Cosplay Rubric to properly address the concerns listed in this letter with unfairness, overly specificness, vagueness, and make sure the competition is focused on quality over quantity.

(One example: instead of 2 or 3 techniques, it could be “only one and/or very basic techniques”, “a few and/or standard well executed techniques”, “many and/or advanced/professional well executed techniques”. )

-And that you publicly, for example the in cosplay discord server, make an announcement that you have heard us and when changes are made.

To help you, and at your disposal, you have all you need to address this.

You have the work of the previous years that resulted in the highest regarded competition in Sweden. As well as the previous team themselves.

You have a whole community of cosplayers, judges and organisers, who have years of experience that can help you. The previous team, judges, or the people who competed before can help you come into contact.

So all in all, we ask you not to change the great competition that was into one that is infinitely worse, and to listen to the people in the Swedish Community.

Because unfortunately, as it is now, the Swedish Cosplay Community cannot participate even if we wanted to. And frankly, many do not want to either.

So unless things are changed back and addressed, and you announce that you have, we are afraid that DHCC will have few participants.

None of us are happy that it has come to this, since we love the Dreamhack competitions and the DHCC dearly. We are very engaged and enthusiastic, and only want what is best for both you and us.

And we hope you don’t see this as an attack, but rather what it actually is - an act of love, care and worry.

Regards

The Swedish Cosplay Community