In the mobile fashion-oriented gacha game Love Nikki, there’s a regularly-held contest in which you submit an outfit based on a prescribed theme. Entries are presented pairwise to other players, who must select one of the two entries to vote for, with an algorithm that standardizes the number of times an entry appears for voting. While the appearance of any given entry for judging is random, the paired entry will often share certain characteristics to make direct comparison more refined. Votes are tallied and the entry is assigned a percentile ranking, with a lower percentile being better (if in the top 1%, approximately the top 1000, then an absolute numeric ranking is provided instead). At the end of a contest cycle, in-game currency is awarded based on the percentile, heavily weighted towards the highest echelons (i.e. top 20%). The currency is then spent on new outfits that may be used for future contests.
This mechanic is actually very similar to applying for grants and fellowships from the NIH, where a researcher submits a research proposal in hopes of obtaining funding. These applications are reviewed by an independent committee (formally a “study section”), in which similarly themed applications are rated and then assigned a percentile ranking, again with a lower percentile being better. Funding is then awarded to applications ranked below the payline percentile (typically the top 10-20% depending on specific institute, grant mechanism, and other factors). The funding is then used to conduct research that produces results that then serve as the preliminary data for the next grant application.
1. The grant that’s guaranteed to never be funded is the one that’s never submitted at all.
It’s good to be detail-oriented, but delaying an application because of fear that the idea isn’t perfected is likely only to result in a missed opportunity in the end. This low-effort entry (using essentially a pre-curated outfit) adequately addresses the theme, and further refinement of the entry would definitely not have improved upon its ranking of <1%:
2. Sometimes, reviewers just won’t get what you were going for, but it doesn’t mean it was a bad idea. Though maybe this should be that clever pet project that’s happening in the background because it’s just too “out there” to ever bring in the $$$. (This entry really took a lot of effort to exploit the loopholes to create the illusion of 8 limbs)
3. And sometimes, you submit something you just know is the real deal, and it’s just what the reviewers were looking for. What a rare but satisfying event!
A few more just for fun (most screenshotted before voting occurred):
