Looney Labs Icehouse Mailing list Archive

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

  • FromDavid Artman <david@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • DateThu, 08 Nov 2007 11:46:01 -0700
> From: "Jorge Arroyo" <trozo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
> That's why I think we should relax the requirement a bit...

At the risk of sounding peevish... I am really tired of defending this
design restriction (but I will continue to explain its subtleties, to
avoid confusion or disappointment or waste).

It was under debate (which I advertised on the lists) for months prior
to announcement; it is designed to drive sales of second sets for new
adopters; we had a vote; I have announced it all over the Internet...
and "2HOUSE" it is.

If you want to be sure to have a game that qualifies, use at least 16
pieces: done.

If you want to try to submit a game which uses a total of 12 pieces for
which color is irrelevant, don't be surprised if it's rejected. Feel
free to then petition the list for clemency--if I hear unanimous
support, I'll let it in, as clearly the most involved folks are happy to
take the time to judge it. But I'm not going to have "votes to see who's
eligible to be judged" infinite regresses.

Besides, there's absolutely nothing that stops someone from making
*whatever game they want* and asking for playtesters and getting
feedback: that's Business As Usual. But the point of the competition and
its restriction is (a) to sell tubes of plastic and (b) to have more
than 9 games in the "Two Sets" section of What Can I Play? As a bonus,
competitors tend to get a lot of extra eyes on their designs, the better
to improve them; as compared to BAU, during which it's kind of hard to
get *anyone* to give feedback. (And thus, I'm not going to piss off all
those volunteer judges with any kind of "bait and switch" submissions of
single-set... or ten-set or two-mono-stash... games.)

As for the point about "any game can be done without pyramids"--well,
yeah... you ever notice that a significant percentage of IH games are
derivatives of other games which don't use pyramids? Why not *embrace*
that "problem" and come up with a game that definitely, absolutely *has*
to use two sets of Treehouse pyramids and *can't possibly* be played
with coins, beads, dice, Legos, piecepaks, matchbooks, etc?

Being challenged is supposed to be *fun* here, folks, not some onus
against which one bucks until the Coordinator final says "fine, do
whatever, I don't care anymore" (flushing the majority vote FOR the
restriction down the drain!).

Step On Up, Suck It Up, Free Your Mind, Just Do It (etc);
David


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