piecepack Design Competitions

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

Now that the fourth competition is concluded and we are all looking 
forward to the fifth, I have some comments and observations. The 
design contests have been a great success, and have given us all 
some of the best piecepack games which otherwise would, in all 
likelyhood, never have been designed. 

One interesting aspect of our competition format is the inclusion of 
a different theme for each succeeding contest. One might be inclined 
to think that the theme restriction would narrow the field and 
result in fewer entrants or exclude some potentially good games. But 
in practice I don't believe this to be the case, and the reason has 
to do with the nature of the themes chosen so far. A shrewdly chosen 
theme can serve to inspire or focus the designers without unduly 
constraining them. Certainly that was the case for me when I entered 
two games in the second contest. The Ludic Synergy theme (combine 
piecepack with another game sysytem) pointed me in directions I 
probably wouldn't have gone on my own, and so it broadened my 
thinking a bit. All the past themes have been good this way. The 
first theme, Time Marches On, encouraged designers to utilize the 
natural relationships between piecepack component quantities and our 
clocks and calenders, but allowed any game that included some aspect 
of time passage, a broad area which is nevertheless somewhat under-
utilized in games. The second contest added additional components to 
the mix, opening up new vistas of design. In the third competition, 
I had the opportunity to choose the theme, and I came up with 
Changing Landscapes, in which some form of mutable board was 
required. My intention was to encourage the design of physically 
more dynamic games and the use of the tiles in innovative ways 
while, once again, not being too restrictive. The most recent 
contest theme, History Repeats Itself, seemed intended to encourage 
stronger theming of the games, perhaps more in the German style 
(Rob, perhaps you would like to comment on this). In all cases the 
competition themes served to suggest new directions, and to focus or 
inspire, but at the same time, they were not too narrow or 
restrictive. An example of a restrictive theme to my way of thinking 
would be that all games must be some form of combat game. A lot of 
people are not particularly interested in combat games, so some 
might not enter the contest who otherwise would. Also, a combat 
theme is a natural and common theme in games so such a theme would 
not particularly serve to inspire anything new.

 

To insure a good level of participation, it is important that the 
competition announcement be widely distributed. I also like to see 
international participation, and there has been some in the past.

The following is the list of places where I posted the announcement 
of the third competition. I think the first five in the list are the 
most important, but who knows? It would be very interesting in 
future contests to find out how many entrants were not piecepack 
group subscribers when they first heard of the competition, and 
where they heard of it.

1) piecepack yahoo group

2) BoardGameDesign yahoo group

3) Board Game Design Forum

4) Abstract Games magazine

5) spielfrieks yahoo group

6) Boardgamegeek (ask to have it posted in the news section)

7) about.boardgames.com

8) rec.games.board

9) The Games Journal

10)Counter magazine

There are probably some magazines I'm missing, especially European 
ones and on-line ones, and I think there may be some additional 
rec.games groups. I can supply web addresses for most or all of 
these.



Starting with the third competition, the names of the authors have 
been kept secret from the judges until after the winning entry has 
been chosen. This was Ron Hale-Evan's idea, and I endorse it. The 
piecepack community is still a pretty close-knit group, so it is 
likely that the judge and some of the entrants will know each other, 
and perhaps even have awarded each other prizes in past 
competitions. Hiding the authors helps guard against unintentional 
biases, and speaking as a past judge, I can say that for me it also 
reduced the pressure of judging. 


In the past two contests, the time period between the announcement 
of the competition and the last day for submissions was longer than 
in the first two competitions, and I think that was good. Game 
design, not to mention play-testing, takes a lot of time, and I feel 
that, in general, the longer period results in a bigger percentage 
of good games. Of course, there will always be those who do all 
their work in the last two weeks or less :-)


Regarding the rules text, all I want to say is, make sure it is both 
thorough and clear in meaning. Both are very important. Fortunately, 
we have not had any big disputes following the close of the 
competitions, and one reason for this could be the quality of the 
rules presentations so far.


The hardest working person during these past three competitions has 
certainly been Karol, and I want to thank her for her dedication. I 
don't know whether she will be acting in the new competition as a 
clearing agent between the authors and the judge, as she has in the 
past. But whoever contributes their time to doing this deserves to 
have their time utilized efficiently. Here are some thoughts on the 
subject. I'm not completely familiar with how things were handled in 
the most recent contest so some of these may not apply or else may 
already be adapted. To prevent the need for double editing, I 
suggest that rules sets be sent to the agent as attachments to e-
mails, with the author's name, address, telephone, etc., NOT 
appearing anywhere on the attachment itself. The agent can then send 
the attachment out to the judge without any changes at all. She will 
keep a list that cross-references game names and author names. If 
the judge has questions for an author, he or she will send it to the 
agent who will just forward it to the author. The author will reply 
back via the agent. No editing of rules text need occur until after 
the close of the competition and the submission by authors of 
updated rules, if they wish. I want to stress that these are just my 
suggestions, and it's entirely possible that other people could have 
better ideas. When I was involved in the Changing Landscapes 
competition, I found that things went most smoothly when lines of 
communication were kept wide open and used frequently. Karol was 
very pleasant to work with and that made my job easy. 


All of my comments above are intended to encourage additional 
comments within the group. The competitions have, as I said, been a 
great success so far, but it behooves us to keep trying to improve 
them. I would be interested in hearing the thoughts of others on 
themes (are they good to have?, bad? other?), announcement 
distribution, author anonimity, contest lengths, logistics issues, 
and any other issues that affect the competitions.


-Mike Schoessow