Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

RE: [Icehouse] IGDC Winter 2008 is ready for announcement tomorrow!

  • FromDavid Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateMon, 05 Nov 2007 10:01:00 -0700
> From: "Jorge Arroyo" <trozo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> I think it makes sense, although relaxing the requirement to 1 or 2 sets
> wouldn't change things that much and would stop designers artificially
> modifying their rules for the 2HOUSE requirement...

I'd say "art*fully* modifying," because I like to think that rules
additions that begin as artificial (i.e. "forced") additions often lead
to interesting complexities of gameplay.

But relaxing to "1 or 2 sets": no, not now. The whole point is to
encourage new Icehouse System players to buy a second set in order to
gain the capability of playing several new games. I think a "1 or 2 set"
requirement would lead to more 1-set games--not a *bad* thing, per se,
but we already have about thirty-six 1-set games (not counting those
languishing in development) but only nine 2-set games, most of which are
limited variations or only support a limited number of players in a
2-set setup. Andy made it pretty clear that "2HOUSE" games would serve
Looney Labs best, once one accepts that thirty-six-plus 1-set games is
"enough" to motivate first-set purchases.

In fact, if the next IGDC is design-restricted, we might want to
consider "4HOUSE," as there's only four games that use 4 sets (all of
which are player-number-limited at 4 sets). If you look at this page:
http://icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=What_Can_I_Play%3F#One_Set
...you can see that 5 sets pretty much caps the System: you can play all
but twenty-eight games (and variations), out of over 200 games, with 5
sets. Thus, after (if) we do 4HOUSE, any further design-restrictions
will have to be based on specific products (MCs, CCs, Looney card games)
or on "theme" or mechanics... and I'm not likely to favor mechanical
restrictions, as I suspect that would lead to VERY similar games being
submitted.

Anyway, just re-explaining our decision process vis a vis filling in
"holes" to encourage continual acquisition of sets by new players until
they have a full spectrum of ten (eleven) stashes.

Thanks for asking;
David


Current Thread