[Wasp]

Initially Gurushots is great fun as you progress up the ranks. Then it starts to get old. One is playing a game of which the rules are mostly a closely guarded secret. As you progress up the ladder it gets harder. Finishing in the top 100 of a challenge requires a lot of game currency. This can either be built up slowly and painstakingly by participating in challenges or bought with real money. At this point my eyes are giving up. I just don't see myself spending my hard earned cash on trivial pursuits like this. I get it that the proprietors of GS have bills to pay, but so do I.

Before I get accused of not cutting it, I have reached the exalted rank of Master in the game. To reach Guru, I only need to achieve one more goal. There lies the rub. To win a challenge requires a lot of in game currency. And a lot of time. I really mean a lot of time. As in constantly following the challenge and making adjustments to your entry. Oh yes, you need good pictures as well. This by itself is no guarantee though. In general the standard is very high but I have also seen some average looking stuff doing well.

How and why does one adjust your entry? Let me try to explain. It is rather complicated and obfuscated. Gurushots works on votes from participants. You get more votes when your photo is more "visible." When one clicks to vote, you get to see the pictures that are deemed more visible first. One way to be more visible is by swapping pictures in a challenge. A newly swapped picture is more visible. As time passes (two hours or so, I guess) it gets less visible. That is when you have to make a swap to be more visible again. The new swap starts at zero votes, they do not accumulate. The trick seems to be swapping often. Just before the challenge closes, you swap back to one that has the most votes. You can also buy more visibility for a specific picture. When you swap it out, you lose that visibility. If this sounds complicated and tedious, that is because it is complicated and tedious.

Challenges are set up by gurus who gets to pick the theme. Sometimes the theme is completely open. Sometimes it is can be widely interpreted. My favorite is street photography. Some themes are ridiculously narrow in scope. One example I can think of was "European capitals" but I am sure that were worse - I have chosen to forget them. During the run of a challenge the guru picks his favorite. Most of my efforts that got picked were ones that I did not hold in high regard but that is the way it goes. What a guru pick does for visibility, I do not know.

The most obvious way to gain visibility is by voting on the merits of other submissions in a challenges. You do this by either clicking/tapping on a photo or passing it by. There is no option to down vote. This means that if you are critical and objective, you have to look at more pictures. Sometimes a lot more, as there can be some [S}bad{/S] really average stuff. Not so bad on a desktop, but dreadful on the mobile version. One therefore tends to say: "lets get it over with and up vote everything." At one stage you could up vote a picture before it even loaded but they introduced a delay to stop that. The result is that some dreadful stuff get a lot of votes by blind luck, or so it seems to me. To top it all, the exposure meter indicating visibility of a photo is buggy in the mobile version. After voting the meter might not update. Or the meter might show full in the general view while actually quite low. So one taps/clicks back and forth to double check. Not good.

Don't even get me started on off topic photos from those who participate in everything, in search of in game currency. At least one can mark photos as off topic when voting. I was once guilty of that myself. The topic was tulips. I didn't have anything suitable but I was chasing currency so I submitted a flower that looked the part. Sure enough, I got a warning message about it. At least that part of the system works then. And then there are the adult photos. You have to mark your photo as such when submitting. Sometimes participants do not do this. Other times very innocent non-adult pictures get marked. My guess is that the participants want to raise their visibility by doing this, but I have no idea how effective this strategy is.

Gurushots has a social network component. One can follow other participants and be followed in turn. Having lots of followers probably helps your visibility, but I have not explored this. The only sure way to gain followers is by following others, it seems. Yet another mystery.

So while I have a reasonable idea of how to do well, I have only a vague idea on what it takes to win a challenge and become a guru. Trying to finish well can be emotionally draining. One submits and swaps away, really playing the game, only to see your masterpiece slip down the rankings. You might run out of currency. Or life might get in the way for a while. You stay away for a few hours to do some work or get some sleep. When you get back, you re out of the running. This is bad enough when you only want to finish in top five percent. When trying to finish first, it would be a different game - literally.

In the end, when you reach guru status, more work lies ahead. You then have to pick topics, set up challenges and judge them. Just how many, I have no idea.

Here endeth the rant. I have not take part in a GS challenge for a few months now. My mobile phone consumes less data. I have more time for other things. Like reading, taking photographs or posting on forums.

[BigMackCam]

I'd never even heard of Gurushots until you posted this, but as a result I've just read up on it...

Honestly, the concept leaves me cold right from the outset. The only aspect of it that I find vaguely interesting is the encouragement to get out and take different kinds of photographs. But I can encourage myself to do that... and if I don't feel like going out, I don't go out. I wouldn't appreciate feeling tied into going out and taking photographs just because I needed to complete a challenge within an allotted time frame. Then, there's the gaming aspect... Well, multi-player gaming's not my thing either. Aside from playing the odd game of gin rummy or sudoko on my tablet, or some traditional puzzle games on my laptop, I'm not into gaming at all. Perhaps I'm not as competitive as I once was. Finally, social networking... Well, PentaxForums is the only social networking I'm involved in, if you can call it that.

I guess I can see why some folks would enjoy it... especially younger photographers who are more into gaming and social networking. But it's not my kind of thing, that's for sure...

[EssJayEff]

Never heard of it either. I don’t have plans to join, but I read the intro page and saw there are exhibitions. Did you ever show any work in any of them? If so, what was that like?

[Madaboutpix]

That game sounds even sicker than I imagined it to be based on the feel-good commercials they run on many YouTube channels. Appreciate the openness of how you're writing about something you could just have chosen to keep to yourself. And be sure of my respect for having claimed your life back and raising your chances of rediscovering the simple, innocent fun of photography.

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Last edited by Madaboutpix; 12-07-2019 at 06:11 AM.

[PJ1]

Definitely not my kind of thing.

[James also]

You lost me I still don"t understand guru shots, Probably a good thing.

Count me out

[timb64]

I was a member for a couple of months but got bored of the work involved to "progress" beyond Expert level.

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Last edited by timb64; 12-07-2019 at 08:43 AM.

[Wasp]

Never heard of it either. I don’t have plans to join, but I read the intro page and saw there are exhibitions. Did you ever show any work in any of them? If so, what was that like?

I qualified for those exhibitions many times, but never took them up on the offer. You see, doing so costs real money. All you win is the chance to pay up. Only the very top finishers get exhibited as prints. The rest only gets shown on some digital slide show, I guess.

As for prizes to be won, there are some nice ones that come up, like cameras and software. However, for the most part prizes come in the form of game currency. Meh.

[EssJayEff]

Sounds like they built a good “cash cow” business.

[kevinWE]

I play all the time. For me. it's just casual fun and it is just a game. There really is no merit for being a great photographer, as explained by the OP it's all about exposure. I would like to make a point about swapping, you do take a chance when you do this because you lose points that were gained from a particular photo in hopes that a new photo will do better, and sometimes this may not be the case.

I've been sitting at Expert for about 8 months, but I just let the game play it's course. I have no desire to reach the loftiness of GURU, if it happens, OK, but no big deal. I will not waste money at GURU so the odds of advancing above my current status is minimal. As stated, I play for fun, and I always know and accept that it's truly a game not a contest. Some rather mediocre photos advance to positions they wouldn't earn in a photo contest, but in a game, hey, everything is fair.

I ignore their messages of having my photos in an exhibit because they have earned the right. Just pay 7.00 to fill out the application, blah, blah, blah. It's all about taking your money.

Playing to win will cost money just like any internet game.

[ramiot]

Hello, I have played Gurushots for a few months and I have also quit after reaching the level of Master (Last level before becoming a Guru). That was enough for me, because if you want to reach the last level you needed to finish first on a challenge (I met the other 3 criteria :150,000 Points (773,000), 30 All Stars (385) and 5 Guru's pick (11)), But it is now nearly impossible to win a challenge because you need to compete against thousand of photographers across the world you would need to spend many many hours in front of your PC to do that. It was becoming an addiction at the end and I was spending way to much time at the game, so I decided to quit. I now post my photos here and on some European sites of Pentax users and I have as much fun without becoming addict to posting. It's a fun game but you need to know when you have reached your time to stop.

[csa]

Sounds like they built a good “cash cow” business.

Money involved kind of sounds like the old pyramid schemes.

"Trying to finish well can be emotionally draining."

This does not sound like someone enjoying photography! I'd rather use the money you "invest" in this silly one-sided game to buy some photo equipment.

[luftfluss]

Honestly, when I first saw the thread title - and before I clicked on it - the thought crossed my mind that this might be a drinking game.

[newmikey]

I eventually got to Guru status. I got bored and eventually irritated by the constant begging to purchase "keys" and other options. They've now extended and added levels above Guru in an attempt to generate more money. Disgusting practice really and I'm quite done with the site and the "game".

[MossyRocks]

Sounds like a real pain mostly about gaming the system. If I wanted to improve on images I can always go and shoot some, play, and toss them up here for critique and then go either reprocess or go and reshoot some other time.