what objects do you think would be fun to play

[Billfred]

Originally Posted by Andrew Blair

Not necessarily an object, but hands down, water would be the coolest. I don't mean like the whole field underwater, but to score, you had to fill something with water. It would require the minimum of additional preparation to things like electronics to be competitive, and like this last year's game of throwing things, it would catch the most experienced teams off guard. No one has had to deal with a fluid before.

I think we're seeing a shift to the lots-of-opportunities-to-score type of game, judging from the past few years, with fewer opportunities to truly lock down scoring from the other side. (Sure, you could've tried a tetra-starvation strategy in Triple Play, but the risks would've been ridiculously high for penalties.) With each year going back to FIRST Frenzy, we've seen more and more game pieces on the field, with a decent team able to score in at least one of them at a given time. Water transportation would be a bit of a leap, but I could definitely see some form of transport-a-lot-of-really-tiny-non-grippy-objects game in the future. Ping-pong balls would do wonderfully in this--reasonably durable, cheap, and field reset can sweep or pick them up. On the flip side, imagine if the GDC decided "Hey, we won't specify a set number of balls on the field!" Suddenly, later matches would have to contend with more stray balls on the field.

That sound you hear is of every programmer in the country cringing at the thought.