The test of popularity that the marketing criteria challenges is always going to be subjective. An under marketed game is not going to be a bad thing, but on the other hand it is a reality that an under marketed game will not be able to get the name out there as quick, when words of mouth take some time to kick in.

Just think about it this way, there are probably quite some games made with construct 2 free edition within March that may very well be eligible for the contest, but they didn't know there was a contest here.

Yeah, but to be fair, it's still supposed to be a hbgames contest. Of course it's good for the competition to expand to as many people as possible, but if it's 400 contestants from which 5 are previous .org-members, I'd think they'd miss the goal.
I get your point though.

But yeah... the word-of-mouth thing has something to it I value a lot personally: a more honest impression on the person that's being interested, as there's no marketing bullshit to it that tells you how awesome something is - might be true, might as well not.
But you almost always trust someone's recommendation if you know them and their ways.

I updated the OP with some notes about lag and load times affecting your rating in the "Stability" category.

If a game takes an absurd amount of time to load, or lag a very noticeable amount, it may minorly affect your score. We will be more concerned with bugs & errors, but if a game takes an extremely long amount of time to load on a good internet connection, or if it lags badly, these would probably be considered stability issues.

Note that excess of 30sec to 1min of initial loading, on Chrome with a very good internet connection, may dock you up to 1 point.

I can't say I've seen an entry yet where this is an issue (so don't panic!!!!) but I wanted to note it.

Will it be an issue in a game where the music has a 5-10 second delay before playing? Since I can't seem to fix it, and it'd suck if I lose points! D:

However, in my defence, it only happens the first time you play the game, if you let all the sounds load and stuff, play the game, then close it and decide you want to play again, the next time the music SHOULD load straight away, lol

You can cut this down by compressing the audio file, however I'm instructing the judges to only allow that to affect their opinion if it takes a really noticeable amount of time to load, like 20+ seconds.

Ah well that's okay then lol, I don't think anyone has had to wait that long yet... and the only reason I don't want them compressing too much is due to sound quality, but meh we'll see...

@Jason Have you tried preloading all your sounds. That might help with your audio issue.

Something like this:

+System: Every tick
-Audio: Preload (Your Sound)

But I wouldn't try preloading your music though. I tried that once and it took 15 min to load my game on a fast internet connection. lol

I've seen different things on this...but preloading every tick doesn't sound (pun intended) correct. Preloading your most used sound effects once at the beginning, regardless of layout, should be what needs to happen to get them cached client side. I'd do it on the title screen. Preloading music is asking for load time and probably isn't necessary.

CF

Only the most important sounds should be preloaded. These should be preloaded only once maybe in the start event of your first layout.
Never preload music, because it's streamed in Construct2. You should always make sure that your audio files are in the Music folder, and not in the Sounds folder.

If the late start is an issue with the music I can come up with a one trick.
I don't know if this works, but it should be possible to have a short loading screen/story intro or something similar.
Set mute "GameMusic", Play GameMusic, stop"GameMusic", Unmute "GameMusic".

And play it normally when the level starts.

I never actually managed to fix it, so it's up to peoples internet speeds I suppose when it comes to streaming it, you guys should be nice and check for me, just play my game and see how long it takes for the sounds to kick in

Hmmm I actually preload my music at the start of my first layout and everything works okay. Are you sure we shouldn't preload music Nemo? Since its an html5 game, wont all the streaming be cached client side anyway? I simply assumed preloading loads the music in to ram first, but i may be wrong!

Here's some good answers from Ashley:
http://www.scirra.com/forum/preloading-questions_topic47080.html