[Icehouse] IGDC Winter 2008 is ready for announcement tomorrow!

[Brian Campbell]

On Nov 9, 2007, at 11:39 AM, kerry_and_ryan at att.net wrote:

> Brian Campbell:
>> Now, I haven't
>> actually looked at the rules of whatever the game in question are (is
>> there an actual game, or is this all hypthetical? I haven't been
>> following the discussion closely enough to have picked that up),  
>> but I
>> really think that if a game makes good use of two Treehouse stashes,
>> it should be allowed.
>
> I'll offer up my own Ice Dao (http://home.att.net/~kerry_and_ryan/IceDao.html 
> ) as a strawman.  It's a two-player game where each player uses one  
> large, one medium and two smalls.  The easiest way would be to have  
> all of a player's pieces be the same color, and that requires 2  
> Treehouse sets to get the requisite number of smalls (and that's how  
> the rules are written).  But the game could easily be played with a  
> single Treehouse set as red&yellow versus blue&green.
>
> As I think I've mentioned before, I wouldn't mind seeing such an  
> entry in this competition, but I would rate it at least a little  
> lower just because it isn't "solidly" a 2HOUSE game.  I could see  
> other judges rating it as either perfectly 2HOUSE or perfectly  
> non-2HOUSE.  It's a judgment call -- that's what judges are for.

Yeah, I think I'd rate this pretty low in a 2HOUSE-restricted  
competition. I don't think I'd need it to be filtered for me; I can  
make up my own mind about how well this fits the 2HOUSE design  
restriction.

There are lots of games that can be played with Icehouse pieces that  
don't really fit the set very well. Heck, even Martian Chess is really  
one of the least Icehouse-y games I've played, and while I might say  
it meets the requirements of a design restriction of using 4 monocrome  
stashes, it really takes no advantage of the 4 monochrome stashes, nor  
does it take advantage of the stacking, pointing, colors, or  
distribution of the pieces. On the other hand, RAMbots makes lovely  
use of 4 monochrome stashes, so would get a higher rating in such a  
competition even if I liked Martian Chess better.

>> If just
>> reading the rules you think "meh, I can't see how that game would be
>> any good", well, that game probably needs some work. Of course,  
>> judges
>> should always have at least read the rules of any game they rank, but
>> I don't think that playing a game should be a requirement for ranking
>> it.
>
> I agree with this as well.  Another criterion a judge might use  
> during this initial weeding-out is whether _that_particular_judge_  
> considers each game "a 2HOUSE game."

*nod*