[Chris Hibner]

I'll apologize in advance for this being a long one...

The thread reviewed the pros and cons of Lunacy got me thinking about FIRST games in general, and what makes for good and bad games. Also, what makes a game easy or hard to follow for spectators. Since this is about much more than Lunacy, I thought it deserved its own thread.

I believe that having a spectator-friendly game should be a very important goal for FIRST. Spectators that are hooked become volunteers, mentors, and people that help to grow FIRST in general. Furthermore, I believe nothing will help to expand FIRST faster than getting it on TV, and they key to that is to have games that are spectator friendly.

With that in mind, I have some opinions on what makes a game spectator friendly. I have sprinkled those opinions throughout these forums, but I have never summarized them in one place - until now. I would love to hear the opinions of others.


FIRST Game - Spectator Friendly and Fun to Watch


It should be easy to tell (from the stands) who's winning, without real-time scoring.

I prefer a game that allows you to look at the field and see who has more points.

If using goals, keep it to one goal per alliance (two goals only if absolutely necessary). It's easy to look at two glasses of water and see which one has more water in it. It's much more difficult to see if the water in the three red glasses adds up to more than the water in the three blue glasses.

If using a single goal and colored game pieces, you should be able to see that there's more red than blue, therefore red wins. Some bonuses add fun to the game play, but the spectators shouldn't need to do mental gymnastics to determine who has the upper hand.

Example of a good game from this standpoint:
2000. There were two goals – one red and one blue. Even though there were four black balls that counted for more points, it was easy to see how many black balls each goal contained. The bonuses were simple point adders, so you could look and say, “blue is losing in the ball count, so they better hang on the bar for those 10 points if they want any chance at winning.”

Examples of bad games from this standpoint:
2005. In 2005 there were too many goals and too many bonuses, requiring spectators to do a lot of mental math to determine who was winning. Even seasoned veterans had trouble determining who won before the official score came out. Add to this the fact that a single well place tetra could swing the score by 30 points.

2007. This game also required a lot of mental math to determine if the red team's rows would out-score the sheer volume of the blue team.


Scoring should be concentrated in a geographically small area.

People can only concentrate on a small field of vision at a time. Therefore, the scoring should center on a small area of the field. Spectators may watch one area and think that one alliance is doing great and then look at the other end of the field and say, “how did THAT happen?” A casual observer should be able to see all scoring occurring at the same time.

Good examples:
1997, 2000, 2007. The goals were located in the center of the field for these games. 2004 is also a pretty good example, but to a lesser extent.

Bad examples:
2009: Moving goals were great from a strategy standpoint and made the game interesting, but it also made it hard to follow the action.

2005: This was easily the worst game from this standpoint. 6 robots scoring on 9 goals all around the field made the game nearly impossible to follow.

Good and bad:
2006: During each of the rounds where only one team was on offense, it was great. During the final free-for-all it made it extremely difficult to follow with the goals at opposite ends.


The game should allow for a wide range of effective robot designs.

Most spectators like to see a very wide variety in robot designs. It always makes for a more interesting show when you see many different methods for solving a problem.

Good examples:
2000 was a great example since the game offered risk and reward for design features. You knew it would be faster to go under the short bar to get to the other side of the field, but it vastly complicated the robot design. Furthermore, there were so many decisions to be made as to how many balls you want to carry at any time, and if you wanted to spend the extra weight on a mechanism to hang on the bar. Should you worry about de-scoring? Human load or floor load? There were so many options to consider.

2004 was a good example since there were many facets to the game – small balls, large balls, movable goals, stairs, and a hanging bar.

2008 was a great example showing how many ways you could solve the problem.

Bad examples:
2005: there were a few creative robots, but 95% of the robots consisted of an arm with a simple end effector that could score one tetra at a time. A lot of robots didn't even have end effectors – just a stick for an arm.

2009: There were basically just a few different basic designs, with some different implementation flavors.

2007: Rules against manipulating multiple objects caused the robots to be arms with a few different varieties of end effectors.


The game should have a good balance of human player involvement.

While FIRSTers may understand the history and role of the human player, most outside spectators want to see the robots compete, not the humans. However, some human involvement can be fun. It seems the best games for human involvement is when the humans mainly feed the robots and can score in desperation, but with with a low percentage.

Good examples:
1997, 1998, 2006, 2002, 2000: in all of these games, the humans could load the robots to increase efficiency, but there were risks involved with doing so. In these games the humans could also score from afar, but the accuracy generally dictated that you should let a good robot score. Human scoring was an option as a last resort.

Bad examples:
2004 was the game that all of the non-FIRST spectators that I spoke to thought that the human involvement was much too high. Everyone agreed that the game was exciting and fun to watch, but they felt that the game was cheapened by the over-reliance on humans.


The game should have a exciting start and exciting finish.

The start of the game should matter, but it shouldn't be the sole determining factor in the outcome. The start should give an alliance an advantage, but that advantage should not be insurmountable.

Likewise, the end of the game should be exciting and allow a team the ability to steal the game in the end.

Good examples:
2004: knocking the ball off the pedestal at the beginning and hanging at the end made for great starts and finishes.

2007: With spoilers and robot-ramps, the end of the games were always exciting and could be played in a variety of ways.

2000: the matches started with a race for the 5-point black balls and finished with a race for the bonus points for either hanging on the bar or sitting on the ramp. Sometimes the end was exciting due to de-scoring and re-scoring of a 5-point black ball.

2003: the race for the stack and the king-of-the-hill battle in the end were exciting.

Bad examples:

2002: For a certain handful of robots, the race for the goals determined the match. The matches were over in the first 15 seconds with no real hope of winning after that.

2005: no big advantage to anything at the beginning or the end. However, getting the last cap usually made a big difference.