Feedback to Authors

["mschoessow <mschoessow@...>" <mschoessow@...>]

I have received a number of requests from authors, taking me up on my 
offer to provide feedback to them about their games. I just want to 
let those authors know that I will get back to them soon but not 
immediately in all cases due to time constraints. I don't want anyone 
to think I'm forgetting or ignoring them. I took notes while we 
played the games, noting things we liked as well as problems we found 
and suggestions that came up. 

I should mention something about how the judging worked. In some 
cases we noticed aspects of games that seemed non-optimum or not 
quite dialed in yet and often, ideas for "fixes" would be voiced. I 
determined that we would not play the games with any changes from the 
rules as submitted; I felt that my job was to judge the games when 
played according to the author's rules. Now that the contest is over 
however, comments that I feed to authors may contain ideas that 
surfaced during playing of the games. 

Judging games could imply different things to different people. Some 
may feel that how much fun the game is to play is the most important 
thing while others may feel that how well the game mechanics work or 
how much logical thinking is required are most important or that the 
judge should sort of pretend that he is a game marketing guy and 
should attempt to determine which game would have the broadest appeal 
within the target group of game players. My criteria was ultimately 
just based largely on which games I liked most. That's what I 
promised to do in the original contest rules. 

It has been great fun (but also a lot of work at times because I was 
determined to give each game a goodly amount of play) to play all 
these new games and see the new ideas the authors tried. 

I was surprised, but pleasantly so, by the high quantity of games 
submitted, and the generally high quality, and hopefully later 
contests will also garner lots of entries. I'm already looking 
forward to designing a game for the next contest. Thanks again to all 
who participated.

-Mike