Design Competition Update

[Michael Schoessow <mschoessow@...>]

We've started receiving entries in the piecepack game design competition,
which is exciting for me and also encouraging. Although most entries will
probably be submitted in the last week or two of the contest, I won't be
surprised if additional games come in within the next month or two. Some
games will probably be strictly 2-player while others will be written for
four or more players or for a range of players, and I intend that each game
be fully tried over the whole range of numbers of players specified. As with
many of us, I get in some regular game playing with a small group of people.
Usually there are four of us including my wife, who is not really a
hard-core gamer, and the group tends to lean toward German board games.
Although I also sometimes fit in a game with a friend or two over lunch at
work (more abstracts in this case), and my brother and I play games all day
when he visits from LA for the occasional weekend, I'm now working on
increasing the opportunities for game playing, specifically with an eye
toward play-testing games submitted to the design contest, especially in
January. 

With that in mind, I would like to hear from any members of the group who
might like to participate in play-testing and who:

1) Are absolutely positive that they will not be submitting a game to the
contest.

2) Will agree not to participate in play-testing any game of which they know
or suspect the identity of the author.

3) Will agree not to reveal any author information they may know or suspect
to me or any of the other play-testers.

4) Live within reasonable driving distance of Belmont, CA (say 1 1/2 hours
or so). Belmont is in the northern part of the south bay between Palo Alto
and San Francisco.


I thought about the idea of letting other geographically distant people help
with play-testing and then discussing impressions of games over the phone
but this doesn't appeal to me because there will be problems comparing games
if some testers have only played some of the games while other testers have
only played a different subset. It's possible it may become necessary but
right now I don't see that happening. 

Anybody whose interested (or knows someone who may be, even if they are not
a member of the piecepack group) in participating please let me know.
Comments are welcome as always.

-Mike Schoessow