FRC Blog - Something New - Team 'Standards'

[AllenGregoryIV]

Originally Posted by Jay O'Donnell

Fair enough.

Not everyone likes sports, some people like other things such as fantasy. We've had plenty of opportunities to use sports themes to bring people in. And this Standard is just like recycling cans this year: symbolic of a theme that matters less than the robots itself.

I don't think this debate is sports vs non-sports. What I believe Adam and some of the others are trying to say is that a good robot game is more important than a theme. Ultimate Ascent wasn't sports themed, it used a Frisbee as a game object but there wasn't much of anything of Ultimate Frisbee involved, it was just a good robot game. Theme or not the most important aspects of robot games should be put at the top of the priority list. In my opinion watchable and strategically interesting games are more important then fleeting interest by pedestrians walking by (most people stop and look for a little while anyway, it's already cool robots). Often the themes takes away from that because if even a single thing about the game or balance is changed to make the theme better now you have made the game a little worse.

I like to look at most of the VEX games as good examples of robot games. Very few of them are themed in anyway but they allow for season long strategy and robot iterations (in most years).