>The themed competitions would be more about getting people to work >creatively on a particular problem, while the open competition >would be about recognizing that best games overall. What do people >think? I'd like to see the competitions--open AND themed--focus on current Looney Labs products and strategies. Basically, this means it should be playable by a totally new user for an investment of (say) no more than ~$25. That's two stashes and Martian coasters, 3HOUSE (almost), two stashes and Volcano caps, or a stash and a card game (except Chronauts). So, a game which (say) calls for seven full monochrome stashes would not qualify for either contest--a player must buy 10HOUSE to play, or a mix of Treehouse and monochromes through the LL site. This might not be a permanent submission requirement, but I'd like to see it as a major focus for at least a couple of rounds of contests. Think of it in terms of ends: the Looneys can FAR more use a bunch of games that help initiate sales than a bunch of games that presume the player has a (nearly) complete collection. That said, MY notion for the "themed" contest is that it would not just be tied to a particular product (because both competitions essentially have that as a requirement), but rather it would be something more akin to the Iron Game Chef competitions: http://www.game-chef.com/ Basically, the competition organizer(s) would throw out four general themes (mechanics, flavor, timing), and all submissions would have to use at least three of them. Example: Turnless, Chessboard, Theft, the Orient. The ultimate "end' of this sort of competition is (perhaps) to inspire a new boxed set or create better bridges to the more mainstream board game and miniature markets (or RPGs?). And it pushes the boundaries of creativity more than just "use Volcano Caps" would.... Regarding prizes: the idea of donated prizes is nice, but I'd rather such donations go to environmental groups or to homeless children. Recognition should be sufficient reward... and, sure, it would be cool if the wiki had an "Award Winning Games" sub-section and a ribbon graphic (a Rainbow Rabbit Ribbon? a tie-dyed star?). Finally, regarding ways and means: I do not consider wiki registration a significant barrier to entry submission. It takes about ten seconds, and creating a page is no harder than working in Word (there is enough formatting control in the toolbar for 90% of game designs). Otherwise, you've to the organizer burdened with hosting and posting in addition to all the ballot management. If "rules creep" is a concern, simply designate a date for "lock down" of rules and beginning voting, set your (the organizer's) wiki Watch Pages to all the games submitted, and aggressively rollback changes made after that date. The wiki will preserve them (so the designers can "roll forward" after judging is complete), and it spares the organizer the burden of having to wrestle with a wild variety of submissions. The only issue could be the broken images thing, but that's easily mitigated by asking the organizer to host JUST the images and reply with a URL (which, when put straight into the wiki code, displays the image). Voting by e-mail is both the easiest and most secure way to do it... but there's nothing preventing vote by wiki. Again, the wiki preserves all changes, so one could just click the + on the "Votes Tally Page" and a new section appears, in which the voter can just list his or her name and rankings/scores/whatever. If someone attempts to change that, it will show up in the page History (and that user could be "banned" from the competition and their votes disregarded). And it's easy to rollback. Heck, or modify one's votes up until the end of judging--the organizer could allow an individual to edit his or her own "vote" section, just not anyone else, saving a lot of shuffling and sorting of e-mails, if voters want to change votes via e-mail. But... mail works fine, too. :) David