Hi Jeff, If by "go over" you mean play the games, even solo, that would be very helpful. Thanks! If all you're going to do is evaluate how well the rules are written, that is of some use, but where the rubber really meets the pudding is in the playing. We all want publishable games, but I don't want to get too caught up in professional submission standards. I want to reward good game design, and encourage the designers to keep up their work. Polishing the explanations can come later, if need be, but I'm willing to reward diamonds in the rough. (The confused mixed metaphor at the start of the paragraph was semi-intended. It just started coming out that way, and I liked it :). So playtest as many games as you can, all of you, please! I completely agree about having a good game description template! The idea of awards categories hasn't been abandoned necessarily, but I've just let it simmer to allow more feedback while I've posted about other aspects of the awards enterprise. The feedback has been mixed so far: "I sympathize, but no", "I agree, but have concerns", "no". Thanks for your own feedback. Even if it isn't done this way, splitting the games into categories like this really speeds up my own thinking: within a category I can easily pick my favorites, and more easily rank them; and then I can merge the two lists together if need be. Regards, Bryan On Wed, Jun 9, 2010 at 5:30 PM, Jeff Wolfe <jwolfe@xxxxxxxx> wrote: >> OK, Origins starts 2 weeks from now, so we need to get this list >> whittled down. I have edited the page >> http://icehousegames.org/wiki/index.php?title=New_in_2009 to show >> games already eliminated: by the designers' preference to their >> preferred game, or by being 2010 designs, or for being provisional >> yeses in the first pass. This leaves us with 9 games. > > I will try to go over the games in the next few days. A quick, 5-10 minute > perusal leads me to believe that I will be evaluating based on the quality > of the rules. The games all look fine, but some of them omit or bury some > very fundamental things. I do not want somebody going into a game cold and > saying, "Huh?" A reaction of "huh?" does not imply "best of the best" to > me. But that's what I got on a couple of the games. > > One thing I take out of that is that we (as a community, not as the > evaluation team) might want to consider coming up with a "suggested" rules > template that people can use. Game design does not necessarily involve the > same skill-set as rules writing, but both are needed for a publishable game. > A simple "make sure you include this here" template would go a long way > toward improving the perceived quality of games. And that's what we're > after, ultimately. > > A quick, two-minute off the cuff start: > Objective/Introduction (include # of players) > Equipment (we need some standards for how to specify pyramids) > Setup > Game play > FAQs/Strategy notes (if desired/needed) > > FWIW, I agree that we shouldn't split the awards into categories. It looks > like the idea was abandoned, but I just wanted to say something about it in > case someone is tempted to revive it. > > > _______________________________________________ > Icehouse mailing list > Icehouse@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > http://lists.looneylabs.com/mailman/listinfo/icehouse >