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Unread 22-03-2015, 19:19
Green Potato Green Potato is offline
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AKA: Tory Farmer
FRC #0422 (Mech Tech Dragons)
Team Role: Tactician
 
Join Date: Feb 2015
Rookie Year: 2009
Location: Richmond, VA
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Re: This year's "game" is a job, not a game

Honestly, I don't think the best word to describe this year's competition is "Job," or "game." The best one-word description that I can think of is "challenge."

Before I go on to rant, I'll define a few things.
According to Mariam-Webster...

Game- activity engaged in for diversion or amusement, often involving strategy and/or competition
Challenge- a stimulating task or problem OR a summons that is often threatening, provocative, stimulating, or inciting

Think about it. In earlier years, apart from Rebound rumble's center bridge, a successful team won not by not necessarily beating the game per se, but by beating the enemy alliance. 2013, most of 2012, 2011, and especially 2014 were all games that were generally considered more fun to watch, and focused more on strategy and competition instead of provoking a problem. Sure, designing a great robot is no small feat for any competition, but in those years, strategy was a huge part of the game, and the robots directly competed against each other for victories. Those competitions fit the "game" definition more than the "Challenge" definition.

Fast forward to 2015. Sure, this year's game is fun to play, and teams do compete against each other and develop strategy like FIRST has emphasized for a long while, but it's who, or in this case, what, teams competed against that drove me to my conclusion. In this game, teams didn't compete against each other in qualifications for the most part. Often, they helped each other. However, they did compete against the field. The challenge really was out to kill this year: the landfill is always cluttered with litter, the tote chute is unreliable, and the cans are relatively difficult to grip and lift to scoring levels. No matter how one slices it, the word "problem" or "puzzle" certainly fit the bill here.

This really shouldn't be a surprise. FIRST has been hinting at this for years now that teams should be working with each other instead of against each other through Gracious Professionalism, and this challenge, as I see it, was a manifestation of those values. A challenge like this was almost inevitable.
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Last edited by Green Potato : 22-03-2015 at 19:19. Reason: misspelling
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