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Week-Long Designer Challenges

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Wed, 03/09/2005 - 13:36
Brykovian
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Howdy all -- idea time ...

Inspired by (read: "complete rip-off of") FL's Designer Showdown chats (that *was* FL that hosted those, no?), I'd like to propose holding a once-a-month week-long designer challenge, which I'd be happy to moderate.

Here's how I propose doing this ... setup a new forum for just these (or find the most-appropriate existing forum for these to be in and then use sticky-threads).

Each challenge would consist of 2 threads. First thread would layout the framework of the idea to design around (I'd like to do something similar to what the showdowns were based on ... theme, genre, interesting mechanic ... but with 7 days to work, the could be a little bit more complex, I suppose). Each site user who wished to participate would reply with a single post to that thread describing their design ... the designs would not need to be complete rulesets, just enough of a description to give others the "feel" for the game.

The second thread would be a poll which *all* site users (including those who submitted) would be allowed to vote for their favorite (and make comments if they wished).

Each thread would be open for 7 days, with the winner announced after the polling is completed at the end of the second week. The winner would be given a special title as that month's champ.

What do you all think? Ideas and comments?

Thanks,
-Bryk

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Wed, 03/09/2005 - 13:42
#1
FastLearner
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

I've wanted it for ages, and personally would love it if you'd take the lead and make it happen.

-- Matthew

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Wed, 03/09/2005 - 18:45
#2
jwarrend
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

I agree, this sounds like a lot of fun. Go for it! And, let us know if you ever get stuck needing a contest concept; or maybe we pitch one to you if we come up with something?

Sounds great,

Jeff

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Wed, 03/09/2005 - 19:28
#3
Brykovian
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

I'm all ears as to challenge ideas, so if you got one, post it here.

FastLearner -- do you still have a link to that website you used for generating the parameters?

-Bryk

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Thu, 03/10/2005 - 06:54
#4
zaiga
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

Bryk,

I'm not FL, but you can find it here: http://www.spotlightongames.com/list/challenge.html

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Thu, 03/10/2005 - 08:27
#5
Brykovian
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

Thank you, good sir! :)

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Thu, 03/10/2005 - 10:40
#6
Brykovian
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

Then, if nobody has an objections, I suppose I should start this today, with the following thinking:

  • Thursdays would be good launch days, since the weekly GDW chatter has usually died down by Wednesday
  • This time around, both the design and voting phases will be completed before the upcoming holiday weekend

As long as no one mentions any reason not to, then I'll post the launch just before the brown bag chat starts. At this point, I'm planning on doing a sticky-thread at the top of the "Game Design" forum ... any better suggestions for that?

-Bryk

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Mon, 03/14/2005 - 01:28
#7
phpbbadmin
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

Brykovian wrote:
Then, if nobody has an objections, I suppose I should start this today, with the following thinking:
  • Thursdays would be good launch days, since the weekly GDW chatter has usually died down by Wednesday
  • This time around, both the design and voting phases will be completed before the upcoming holiday weekend

As long as no one mentions any reason not to, then I'll post the launch just before the brown bag chat starts. At this point, I'm planning on doing a sticky-thread at the top of the "Game Design" forum ... any better suggestions for that?

-Bryk

Not sure how you were going to do it but I would recommend you having the entrants submit directly to you rather than post them publicly. The reasoning behind this is so that entries will be completely original. My other comment is to go ahead and create a new subforum for these events. I will take care of this for you whenever you're ready to start the showdowns.

-Darke

Edit: Sorry didn't make it clear, but the idea was to have everyone submit to you directly, then have you post them once the deadline had passed, *then* everyone would vote on their favorites. I wish the forums supported releasing posts. Who knows, perhaps it does, I will look into it.

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Mon, 03/14/2005 - 07:40
#8
jwarrend
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

Darkehorse wrote:

Not sure how you were going to do it but I would recommend you having the entrants submit directly to you rather than post them publicly. The reasoning behind this is so that entries will be completely original.

I agree that this would be a better way of doing things, but I think it also creates more work for Bryk, so he should only follow this path if he doesn't mind the extra effort.

I think that since the posts appear in chronological order, people will easily be able to tell if someone has ripped off someone else's idea, and will probably factor this into their voting. Of course, the danger is that in the case of two similar ideas, people might think the latter is derivative when the similarities are just coincidental.

Of course, it's all pretty informal and low-stakes anyway, so it might not matter too much. I'd say, if Bryk doesn't mind posting the entries himself, fine, but otherwise, we could just try Bryk's way and see how it goes.

-J

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Mon, 03/14/2005 - 11:27
#9
Brykovian
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

My initial thought was to have those participating post things themselves for a couple reasons ... (1) It would appear in a post with *their* name and avatar displayed next to it, and (2) It would force them to decide between posting earlier and getting "dibs" on a good idea, or posting later in order to buff-up a design, and perhaps learn from the earlier posts.

IMO, since it's meant to be a rather lighthearted challenge, having someone else post something similar to what you were planning should be part of the fun and challenge. I would assume we'd be much *less* likely to get similar entries if everyone saw each others' designs as soon as they were posted.

But ... you do have me considering going the other way ... I'd be happy to entertain more discussion/suggestions on it.

As I mentioned earlier, I figure I'll wait until Thursday to post the first one.

-Bryk

p.s. Nice to have the site back up ... now that I've had my caffeine this morning, and had a chance to stroll through these forums, everything's back to being "right in my world" ;-D

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Thu, 03/17/2005 - 13:06
#10
Brykovian
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Week-Long Designer Challenges

I posted an initial Overview sticky thread in the new Game Design Showdown forum (thanks, darke!) ... http://www.bgdf.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=2230

Let me know what you think. I'd like to "go public" with this today and post the first challenge this afternoon.

-Bryk

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