What makes for a good and spectator-friendly game?

[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.

[Peter Matteson]

Chris this is one of the best summaries of what makes a game great to watch that I have seen. I think you hit the nail on the head with most of it. Robot varity, big start/finish, and ease of telling who's winning are all great points that make these games visually great or painful to watch.

I think the one thing you missed is that the big/start finish can't have a disproportionate score that upsets the balance of the game too much, unless it requires an absolute trade off of the primary scoring method to do it.

[MattB703]

While I absolutely loved playing the game in 2000, I have to disagee about 2005. It was tic-tac-toe. When I explained it to people that way it seemed like the got it pretty quickly.

Other than that I think you are right on.

Matt B.

[Alex.Norton]

That is a really good list but i disagree with you on what I think is the most important part in that you should be able to judge who is winning with a glance. In any other sport I can come in, in the middle of a game and still be in touch with who is winning and while I know that a FIRST match is only 2 minutes in certain games I have concentrated on a single machine for a few seconds and when I've some back the score has completely changed.

-the score should be atainable simply by looking at the field.

This is why I had a very hard time with both the 2006 and 2008 games because I would get distracted and suddenly be completely lost. Also this is why I dissagree about the 2005 and the 2007 games, I could look at the field and get a general idea of the score.

[Ian Curtis]

I liked the 2004 model for a Human Player way more than the 2009 model. In 2004, a good human was downstream from the robot. If the robot couldn't deliver to the human, it didn't matter how good he/she was. This year, the human had no dependency on the robot. A team could field a box on wheels and still score 20 moon rocks. Granted, I doubt this happened, but it's a possibility. I wouldn't mind a return to the 2004 Human, where he/she could score the big points, but when they could only be reloaded by the robot.

I hope in 2014 we get treated to FIRST Frenzy: Raising the Bar Again. I'd love to get a second shot at that game.

Also, when looking for what 1997's game was called (Toroid Terror), I stumbled across this nifty PDF from FIRST quickly explaining each game.

[Brian C]

Chris

Well written and really not all that long considering what you're covering.

One I would like to add though is the 2001 game, It ended up being very spectator friendly although in a different way from head-to-head competition.

[Bongle]

I agree with all your points, but I think it misses one point. I'll try to write it in your style:

The game should have fairly consistent movement
Games where the robots tend to bunch up tightly and stay there for extended periods are boring. Also, they tend to result in broken robots. Games with more open floors or fewer chokepoints tend to have a greater amount of robot movement, which makes for more exciting games and a feeling of flow.

Good Games from this standpoint:
2006: The period changes always precipitated a big race from one end to the other as teams rushed to get into scoring position. Once there, there would be pushing matches, but there was usually enough freedom of movement that the defender and defendee would move around.
2008 (kinda): The very nature of the game required fast movement. However, since some robots had to stop in order to hurdle and drivers couldn't see around the overpass, traffic jams were common in the home zones.

Bad Games from this standpoint:
2007: The rack was a difficult thing to score on without being defended. Once a robot was in front of you trying to prevent you from scoring, long periods of dead time would occur as you fought for position. This also resulted in lots of broken robots, which would then become defender robots.
2009: The lack of anti-pinning rules, though good in some respects, allowed whole-match pinning as a viable tactic (which we successfully used in one match). Perhaps at IRI they should widen the carpeted portion of the field to allow pinned robots a better chance of escaping. Another problem: the addition of 6 robot-sized trailers created a situation where there simply wasn't much space.

[GaryVoshol]

Originally Posted by Chris Hibner

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.

Except both of these created opportunities for strategy, the most in the 5 years of games with which I'm familiar. I liked both for that. The casual observer might not be able to tell in Rack-n-Roll. But the real-time scoring was pretty accurate. And the point of Triple Play being a variation on Tic Tac Toe has already been made.

Originally Posted by Alex.Norton

In any other sport I can come in, in the middle of a game and still be in touch with who is winning and

Really? You can turn on the game in the bottom of the 5th, see that the Yankees have runners on 1st and 2nd, and determine from that who is winning?

[Wayne TenBrink]

I agree with what has been posted regarding general game design.

Another aspect of a "spectator friendly" is whether or not that spectator understands what they are watching.

Regardless of the rules, participants (who are familiar with the game) can follow and enjoy the action better than casual observers (visitors, family, dignitaries, etc.). Perhaps we could improve their enjoyment by doing a better job of explaining the game. The game animation serves its purpose at kickoff, but it is intentionally vague regarding robot capability and strategy. Perhaps a "quick start" guide or a different game animation created specifically for visitors would be a more effective part of the opening ceremonies, etc.

[Jared Russell]

I agree with all of these as general points, but I disagree that every year each game must follow all of them. For example, scoring in the 2006 high goal was one of (if not the) most eye-catching tasks ever accomplished by a FIRST robot, and such a task would have been impossible with static scoring.

[Alex.Norton]

Originally Posted by GaryVoshol

Really? You can turn on the game in the bottom of the 5th, see that the Yankees have runners on 1st and 2nd, and determine from that who is winning?

Comparing a FIRST game to a baseball game IMO is perhaps a strech. Yes both game require strategy and knowledge of the game but I've always considered a FIRST game as a fast paced hetic and choatic match and I personally can't watch baseball because it move too slow. So no I can't turn on a baseball game and see who winning beyond looking at the score. However, I can turn on a hockey game take a quick look at the score, see that the puck is staying in the Avalanches zone and that the players are tired and make a quick assesment of how each team is doing.

In addition in most sports the real time scoring is 100% correct because that is the official score. In many of the FIRST games i've seen the score will change dractically between real-time and official score without any pentalties being assessed.

[Jared Russell]

Originally Posted by Alex.Norton

In addition in most sports the real time scoring is 100% correct because that is the official score. In many of the FIRST games i've seen the score will change dractically between real-time and official score without any pentalties being assessed.

Bingo. Real-time scored games are only spectator friendly when the displayed score is official (at least the vast majority of the time). Penalties that impact the score are detrimental to this. So are games with many game pieces being scored at a high rate leading to miscounting in real time.

This, by the way, begs an examination of how penalties or fouls are handled in other sports. Except in the case where a foul occurs by the scoring team during the act of scoring, I am hard pressed to think of a sport where penalties alter the score directly.

* In some sports, penalties mean you are down a player for some period of time (hockey, basketball's fouling out). In FIRST, maybe a penalty means your robot gets disabled for 10 seconds?

* In other sports, penalties directly affect field position (football most notably). While this would require a stoppage of play to implement in FRC, maybe an analog could be the direct manipulation of human player game pieces by the referee? What if penalties in Lunacy resulted in the other team getting an additional super cell instead of just a flat 10 point penalty?

* In almost all sports, points earned while in a penalty state are revoked (such as a touchdown being called back because of a holding penalty).

* In almost all sports, there is some level of foul that results in disqualification. We already have this in FRC as well (disabling a robot for the match and disqualifying).

Just trying to think outside the (54' x 27') box.

[RoboMom]

Each year at our local kickoff I sit in the front row and watch the NASA feed along with reps from most of the teams in Maryland. As the game is released, I jot down the words I can use to describe the game in 30-60 seconds, aka, the elevator speech. Always have to include the part about alliances up front.

During the build season, and during the regionals, I help train students to talk with VIPs. I yak about FIRST to all different audiences all year long.

This year was a challenge on a lot of fronts. Although I understand what the goal was with all the lingo, I never ended up using it. The game was difficult to explain while watching, to someone new to FIRST, like a potential sponsor or the media. The follow-up was difficult, because the real time scoring often was very different from the scores that ended up on the screen (which then involved a side conversation about why that could be and this talk was hard - just enough words without seeming like there were errors).
The GDC has a hard task every year. I'm not saying that this aspect needs to be the priority, but it does need to a priority if we hope to market FRC outside the world of FRC.