jwarrend wrote:It doesn't seem in the spirit of the competition to force the American designers to break the bank paying for rush shipping due to not having enough notice to get the prototypes out on time.
Or perhaps it's perfectly within the spirit of the competition. Perhaps they prefer European entrants.
Ouch! Perhaps you could be right about that. There's no question that Americans have placed well in the competition in the past, though I don't recall whether there's been an American winner or not. Still, it's all the more incentive for us to work to bring Darkehorse's idea of an "American Hippodice" to fruition.
I posted a suggestion to this end in the Admin forum, but it got zero response, so I'll put it out here for the group as a whole: as Darke noted, the thing about doing an American Hippodice is finding a group that's willing to invest several months in nothing but playtesting. I don't actually think we'd be able to find an analogous group here in the US, but what we might look for is a loose confederation of many gaming groups all in one area. Just such an organization happens to exist in the Boston area, and are organized under the moniker "Unity Games". Moreover, the current SAZ president, Alan Moon resides in the Boston area, and is very involved with Unity Games. I think that if he were to spearhead such a contest, it would give the contest some clout, and as the SAZ chairman, it would be in his interest since it would give up-and-comers the sense that SAZ was actively trying to help them. Moreover, it would help establish SAZ in America, which Mr. Moon is trying to do. (And, to drum up membership, he could perhaps make entry in the competition free for SAZ members).
The other obstacle is finding judges for the final 10, but between Rio Grande, Mayfair, Out of the Box, Days of Wonder, Uberplay, Face2Face, and the many up-and-coming companies, there's definitely a deep enough pool from which to draw judges.
I think it could really happen, and would be a huge boon to American designers. Any thoughts? Should I write to Mr. Moon, or does one of the other admins (or someone else) want to do it?
-J
I'll go ahead and add my comments:
I, also, have heard nothing from Hippodice. I'm hoping that since they're meeting this Friday, we may hear something early next week.
As for the American Hippodice (which, of course, we'll have to come up with a better name for...perhaps a pun such as Rhinopawn?), I'm sure folks in my game group (Houston Gamers) would be willing to help with the initial playtesting. There's also a couple of published designers (Ray Mulford, Kevin Nunn, apologies if I've forgotten anyone else) and small publishers (Kevin Brusky of APE Games) in the group who might also be willing to participate in this venture, although I am loathe to speak for them. Also, let's not forget Anye Sellers of Dancing Eggplant out in Austin, as a possible asset (assuming she can scrape more than two consecutive minutes together...).