[Icehouse] Re: Ice Game Design Competition 2007

[Brian Campbell]

On Apr 16, 2007, at 11:09 AM, David Artman wrote:

>> The themed competitions would be more about getting people to work
>> creatively on a particular problem, while the open competition
>> would be about recognizing that best games overall. What do people
>> think?
>
> I'd like to see the competitions--open AND themed--focus on current
> Looney Labs products and strategies. Basically, this means it  
> should be
> playable by a totally new user for an investment of (say) no more than
> ~$25. That's two stashes and Martian coasters, 3HOUSE (almost), two
> stashes and Volcano caps, or a stash and a card game (except
> Chronauts). So, a game which (say) calls for seven full monochrome
> stashes would not qualify for either contest--a player must buy  
> 10HOUSE
> to play, or a mix of Treehouse and monochromes through the LL site.  
> This
> might not be a permanent submission requirement, but I'd like to  
> see it
> as a major focus for at least a couple of rounds of contests. Think of
> it in terms of ends: the Looneys can FAR more use a bunch of games  
> that
> help initiate sales than a bunch of games that presume the player  
> has a
> (nearly) complete collection.

I would prefer a combination of the laissez-faire approach taken by  
the old competitions, with themed competitions that target currently  
available offerings for the first several themed competitions. In the  
old system you could submit games that required whatever extra  
components you wanted, with the caveat that people may rank lower  
games that just require too much stuff. There were no explicit  
criteria for voting; people could base their judgements on whatever  
they wanted, including that it required too much equipment. That way,  
if there was a strong community feeling that stuff that required too  
much equipment wasn't worth it, it would be reflected in the votes,  
without any rules imposed from on high, and with the opportunity for  
really great games that just happened to require more than some  
arbitrary cutoff to still be recognized. I think that having the  
themed competitions, with particular entry requirements, will be  
enough to spur interested in designing smaller, simpler games that  
are good entry level games.

> That said, MY notion for the "themed" contest is that it would not  
> just
> be tied to a particular product (because both competitions essentially
> have that as a requirement), but rather it would be something more  
> akin
> to the Iron Game Chef competitions:
> http://www.game-chef.com/
> Basically, the competition organizer(s) would throw out four general
> themes (mechanics, flavor, timing), and all submissions would have to
> use at least three of them. Example: Turnless, Chessboard, Theft, the
> Orient. The ultimate "end' of this sort of competition is (perhaps) to
> inspire a new boxed set or create better bridges to the more  
> mainstream
> board game and miniature markets (or RPGs?). And it pushes the
> boundaries of creativity more than just "use Volcano Caps" would....

That's an interesting idea, but I don't know how it will work in  
practice. Board game design is a bit different than RPG design, and  
having too many requirements may make the games too similar (in RPG  
design, there's a lot more room for creativity, since they are a lot  
more open-ended), so I don't know if this would transfer over  
appropriately. I'll definitely keep it in mind, and maybe try out one  
or two simpler themes (Volcano caps, Martian Coasters), and one or  
two Iron Game Chef style themes, to see which works better.

> Regarding prizes: the idea of donated prizes is nice, but I'd rather
> such donations go to environmental groups or to homeless children.
> Recognition should be sufficient reward... and, sure, it would be cool
> if the wiki had an "Award Winning Games" sub-section and a ribbon
> graphic (a Rainbow Rabbit Ribbon? a tie-dyed star?).

It's sounding like a lot of people are uncomfortable with the prizes  
idea, so I'll probably hold off on it. If someone with more graphic  
design skill than myself wants to design some cool looking ribbons  
(maybe a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place ribbon), I'd be happy to give them  
to the winning games.

> Finally, regarding ways and means: I do not consider wiki  
> registration a
> significant barrier to entry submission. It takes about ten  
> seconds, and
> creating a page is no harder than working in Word (there is enough
> formatting control in the toolbar for 90% of game designs). Otherwise,
> you've to the organizer burdened with hosting and posting in addition
> to all the ballot management. If "rules creep" is a concern, simply
> designate a date for "lock down" of rules and beginning voting, set
> your (the organizer's) wiki Watch Pages to all the games submitted,  
> and
> aggressively rollback changes made after that date. The wiki will
> preserve them (so the designers can "roll forward" after judging is
> complete), and it spares the organizer the burden of having to wrestle
> with a wild variety of submissions.

As far as rules creep goes, I could link to the specific version at  
time of entry from the contest page, so people would easily be able  
to get to the correct version without having to worry about reverting  
too often.

> The only issue could be the broken
> images thing, but that's easily mitigated by asking the organizer to
> host JUST the images and reply with a URL (which, when put straight
> into the wiki code, displays the image).

I can certainly provide image hosting to anyone that needs, and  
should be able to write up a quick script to allow easy web-based  
uploading without much trouble.

> Voting by e-mail is both the easiest and most secure way to do  
> it... but
> there's nothing preventing vote by wiki. Again, the wiki preserves all
> changes, so one could just click the + on the "Votes Tally Page" and a
> new section appears, in which the voter can just list his or her name
> and rankings/scores/whatever. If someone attempts to change that, it
> will show up in the page History (and that user could be "banned" from
> the competition and their votes disregarded). And it's easy to
> rollback. Heck, or modify one's votes up until the end of judging--the
> organizer could allow an individual to edit his or her own "vote"
> section, just not anyone else, saving a lot of shuffling and  
> sorting of
> e-mails, if voters want to change votes via e-mail.
>
> But... mail works fine, too. :)

Yeah, I'd be fine with either mail or wiki, though with the wiki you  
can't do secret ballots.