I was thinking today and came with the following thoughts:
What ever this years game is I think it will be a multi-demensional game. Triple Play, while fun to play, was pretty one demensional... You could either cap or place a tetra under a goal, or defend. From looking at the last two lines of the hint, I think that FIRST might be adding more to this years game in the means of scoring. Meaning that there will be more than two ways to score, and a lot more strategy involved.
When thinking about what the game could be I thinking about some of the things FIRST has to take into account when designing a game: How much money would the game cost? How easy would the game be to reset and run? How safe is it for teams, much less robots? How easy is it to transport? Can every venue handle such a game? How easy would it be for teams to replicate? How challenging is it for veteran teams?
In asking myself these questions, this is what I came up with:
When it comes to the field, I don't think that FIRST is going to dramatically change the field from the last couple years, simply because they have quite a bit of money invested in fields and those fields can be used for a wide variety of games. Team San Diego built a field that was pretty close to spec for this years Battle at the Border and it wouldn't be too hard to make the field wider or longer. I think the shape should stay the same.
I don't think that a multi-level field will be easy to transport, setup, reset, repair, take down and transport again. Plus it would be terribly hard for a team to replicate... Plus with fewer teams joining each year FIRST needs to make sure that fields are easy to replicate so teams can hold scrimmages and try to attract more schools to FIRST.
I think that there is a 95% chance that the game will not be water based... Something about electronics, a lot of water and people, I don't know. Personally I can't wait for the year FIRST has a water game. One of our engineering mentors and his dad (also a mentor) used to build boats
Alliances should stay, but there might be more teams per alliance. There should be two alliances with an even number of teams... Could you imagine what alliance selection would be like if alliances were uneven?
When it comes to the game object FIRST has to make sure that the object is challenging for veteran teams, but easy enough for rookie teams (we don't want to discourage them). Exersice balls probably aren't going to be used for a few years, footballs on the other hand would be a different story. FIRST has never used footballs, so just like tetras teams would have no prior experience manipulating footballs. What other box, circle or triangle shaped objects has first not used in the past?