[Icehouse] IGDC - Question

[David Artman]

Thanks for replying!

On Fri, Mar 14, 2008 at 3:10 PM, Andrew Plotkin <erkyrath at eblong.com> wrote:

> The *original* point was that if a game is already established then
> voters will have an opinion of it. It's hard to compare an old favorite
> to a game you just learned in an unbiased way. This is even more true if
> people have discussed the game and there's a consensus on how good it is.


I guess I danced around that a bit. Thank you for providing historical
perspective.


> I wouldn't want to rule out a game which has been sitting unseen in
> somebody's notebook for five years. Nor am I willing to assume there are
> no such games left anywhere. (If I had such a game, I could decide it
> "wasn't really completed" and enter it anyway -- but why encourage people
> to finesse the rules?)


Again, I think I danced around that. Such a "notebook" game hasn't entered
the fan-space which might skew ranking; nor has it been "pre-refined" (much
like a for-print game would be, the better to deliver a quality experience).

I despair of the idea that the procedures of this comp are being finessed. I
don't mean to say that I wouldn't refine the processes to a point where
there's no ambiguity (viz all my rewrite suggestions in posts awaiting
moderation). But it's like cheating at Tic Tac Toe: there's nothing to win
but attention; therefore, a "perfect" game wins on merits, but gains nothing
(it's perfect, right?) in the way of feedback, and it only saps attention
away from games which are on the cusp of perfect (or playable or pretty cool
or ...).

I interpreted the "not published" requirement in that sense: not "done."


> Maybe just say "The Competition is open to all original new games which
> make use of Icehouse pyramids. A game is eligible if it was designed in
> the past N months. An older game is still eligible if it has never been
> published in print or been a commercial product."


*bow* In as much as I have any right to support a change, I support that
whole-heartedly. Newness and uniqueness retain priority while not locking
out very old projects.

My name is David Artman, and I endorse this procedural amendment. ;)

(I feel like Jimmy Carter.)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.looneylabs.com/pipermail/icehouse/attachments/20080314/36ff1fe8/attachment-0001.htm