Suggestion for future design contests.

["Aaron Waters" <aaron.waters@...>]

Hi folks,

Perhaps this is not the best way to introduce myself to the group,
especially seeing as how I'm not likely to ever be a participant, but...

In the last two design competitions long, long after the results have
been posted many of the rulesets entered into those contests are still
not available to someone like me, who's interested in finding more
games for piecepack. For the mesomorph contest only 10 of the 14
entrants listed have rulesets available and there were 17 entrants
altogether. For the Good Portsmanship contest, 9 months after the
fact, we still only have access to 3 of the ten entries. For a wannabe
piecepack user like me, this is very frustrating.

It seems to me that at least one of the goals of these contests is to
get more game designs out there so that the piecepack system has more
potential "value" to gamers. To this end, it seems to me like it might
be better to have as part of the contest rules, a stipulation that
entries will be posted either here in this forum or on the wiki as
soon as the results are finalized. Entrants could of course still
modify those rulesets after receiving comments from the judge, but in
the meantime at least there would be some version of the rules
available. After all, if a designer thinks a game is good enough to
enter into a design competition, shouldn't it be good enough for the
general public to at least see? Now I realize that perhaps the judge
found some horrible loophole or something and a designer's game might
in their opinion turn out to be terribly flawed, but couldn't they
then just mention that in the ruleset. Perhaps then someone else might
find a fix for the problem long after the original designer abandoned
the whole thing. I'd think it'd be better to have more rules
available, even if some are flawed, than it is to have lists of
interesting sounding games for which there are no rules available.

Anyway that my $.02. I hope my comments are taken as the constructive
criticism they are meant to be. I am definitely not the game designing
type myself, so my comments come from the perspective of one who wants
to use piecepack, but is unlikely to ever be entering one of these
contests myself.

In general, I'd like to thank all the people who have already come up
with and posted the various interesting rulesets that are already
available. I love the concept of one box, hundreds of board games. For
those who can design, please keep up the good work.There are players
out there that have enjoyed your games, even if we're not very good at
letting you know.