Rules for the First Ever World BioQuest

This competition is governed by QuestaGame's Terms of Service and the Terms for the World BioQuest Competition. We've done our best to make them easy to understand, so we recommend you give them a read. All competitors should also ensure they have read and understood the Safety Check.

How will scoring work?

Scoring for the World Bio-Quest is based on QuestaGame’s in-game ‘gold’ rewards. There are two main ways to earn gold in QuestaGame:

  1. submitting sightings, and

  2. identifying the sightings of others.

Gold is awarded for sightings that you submit, based on the rarity (by location and season) of what you find.

Certain gold bonuses in QuestaGame will not count towards your World BioQuest score.

Bonuses that will not be included in scoring:

  • Quest bonuses,

  • Head-to-head challenges,

  • Player of the day

  • Clan of the day, and

  • Equipment bonuses

Bonuses that will be included:

  • Correct ID bonus

  • Field notes

Competition Period - Start and End Time

The competition starts at 6am, Saturday, 20 May in Sydney - which is 4pm, Friday, 19 May in New York, 9pm Friday 19 May in London, and 1:30am, Saturday, 20 May in New Delhi - and ends 72 hours later.

Winners will be announced when all eligible sightings have been processed.

Sightings - Eligibility and Scoring

For this competition, sightings must be taken and submitted during the competition period.

QuestaGame will accept just about any sighting of a living organism. However, it won’t accept sightings of humans, domestic animals, cultivated plants, inanimate creatures, or animals that live in cages or other forms of enclosure. (This, by the way, is but a minuscule fraction of a minuscule fraction of all the life that exists on earth).

IMPORTANT: Plants are not yet scored on rarity and therefore will not be counted as part of the competition score.

You can submit up to 5 images for each sighting. However, you will only receive gold for one species per sighting.

QuestaGame won’t accept a second sighting of the same species if it is within 1 kilometre and 24 hours of the previous sighting. So for example, if you submit a photo of a monarch butterfly resting on a statue, QuestaGame won’t accept another sighting of a monarch butterfly within 1 kilometre of the same statue, unless 24 hours have passed.

IMPORTANT: For their protection, sightings of species considered to be threatened will not be awarded any gold.

The easiest way to submit a sighting is to use your phone’s camera. However QuestaGame does accept sightings that use photos taken on non-mobile phone cameras (so long as you can work out how to upload them to your camera). The system does confirm the date stamp of the image though, so if that metadata is missing, it won’t accept the photo.

Photos obviously have to be your own work. If you are suspected of using someone else's images you will be warned, and repeat offenders will have their account deleted.

Identifications - Eligibility and Scoring

To receive a score, identifications must be made on the BioExpertise Engine - http://bee.questagame.com

Identifications must be given during the period from the start of the competition to the time when all eligible sighting submissions are processed (i.e. when there are no more unidentified sightings from the competition period). This means you will continue to receive scores for identifications even after the 72 hour period is over. 

The score is the equivalent of gold awarded for correct identifications of other players' sightings.

When you identify through the BioExpertise Engine (http://bee.questagame.com/), you earn 15 percent of the gold earned by the sighting submitter. Rare sightings, therefore, earn more gold for the identifier. 

Gold is only awarded for a specific identification if your suggestion matches the final verified identification. That is, if you correctly identify a sighting to a genus, but the final verified identification is at species level, unfortunately you miss out on the gold.

Note: If you identify through QuestaLab in the QuestaGame app, 5 gold is awarded for correctly categorising a sighting, and 25 gold for correctly identifying it. However, for this World BioQuest competition, gold earned through QuestaLab will not be counted as part of the score. 

Prize categories

  • The ‘World Champion’ will be determined based on the highest overall score from both sightings submitted and identifications given during the competition period.

  • The ‘Champion Spotter’ will be determined based on the highest score from sightings during the competition period..

  • The ‘Champion Identifier' will be determined based on highest score from identifications given during the period from the start of the competition to the time when all eligible sightings submissions are processed (i.e. when there are no more unidentified sightings from the competition).

  • The ‘Best Find’ will be determined based on the highest scores for any single sighting that is submitted during the competition period.

  • The ‘Best Photos’ will be determined through QuestaGame’s Facebook page. A short list of photos from the World BioQuest will be chosen by QuestaGame, with a winner to be determined based on the number of Facebook likes/engagements each photo receives. The Facebook post announcing this ‘Best Photo’ competition will be posted by the 31st May, 2017 and contain final details on how it will be conducted.  

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