Open Letter to the GDC

[SuburBot]

This isn't a prediction for future games. It is a recommendation to the GDC (Game Design Committee) that future games be more based on mainstream sports.

Bill Miller mentioned here (http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2010...on-update.html) a survey for the favorite FRC games of all time and posted the results here (http://frcdirector.blogspot.com/2011...counting.html).

There's a reason why Breakaway, Aim High, and Overdrive are first.

Unlike more complex and custom games, these games can be described to a complete stranger to FIRST in a few words. “Robot soccer”, “robot basketball”, and “robot NASCAR” is enough to give people a general idea and be interested enough to find out more for themselves. “Tube hanging” or “trailer shooting” just doesn't have the same ring to it.

This means that it's easier for students to bring their friends to meetings. It's easier to get school administrations on board, with the idea of “this is a sport of the mind” instead of “we build complicated stuff for some obscure event”. It's easier for your grandmother and parents to get an idea for what you're doing and how you'll compete.

Triple play is harder to explain. “You stack pyramids without walls on bigger pyramids. You gain points depending on how many of your pyramids are on each bigger pyramid and if some of the pyramids make lines from a top view. So it's kind of like tick-tack-toe.” Even if who you're talking to gets it, the game doesn't sound very attractive at all.

Scoring is also simpler with sport-modeled games. Last year (2010), point-totals were low and each point got people excited. It was easy to know who was winning and how much impact a low-scoring bonus could have. It was fun to control the robot but just as fun to watch a match. This is very much like mainstream sports, where games tend to be low-scoring or consist of few point scores at a time (soccer, baseball, football, basketball, etc).

Lunacy is an example of the opposite. The goals move, the robots are all inter-mixed, and no one in the audience who doesn't know the rules by heart can have any clue of what's going on.

Finally, sports-based games tend to have more possible robot strategies. There is more of a place for rookie teams, and plenty of major engineering opportunities for teams with more people or resources. Diversification is greater. In Aim High, for example, you could just collect balls and dump them, shoot them high, try to do both, climb the ramp, make it easier for other teams to climb the ramp, etc. The game offered large opportunity for greater diversity and specialization. And there were hundreds of ways to do each possible component of the game.

Meanwhile, this year, the challenge is more or less closed. You can “specialize” in higher or lower pegs, but to be competitive, you need an arm. You can have or not have a mini-bot. Excessive limits on defense rain on that strategic parade, big time. And your mini-bot, it pretty much needs to be a box with wheels after some team updates.

I'm not trying to strike down other game types. Personally, I think this year's game, though less exiting, is appropriate for first's 20th year anniversary (although to be honest, when I saw the animation at kick-off, I half-expected it to pause halfway and for Dave Lavery and Dean Kamen to say “gotcha, it's all a big joke. Now here's this year's real game, Touchback!”).

The only point I'm trying to make is that maybe the GDC should take the trend most people favor and base their games off of more familiar sports, a win-win for everyone. They can be just as interesting an engineering challenge, more interesting to watch, and more attractive to schools so they'll be more likely to form new teams or support their existing ones.

Dean's challenge last year was to bring people who really liked sports to the competition. I think he has the same idea: if this competition can become more widely known, more students and communities will have the chance to witness how exciting and social engineering, science, and technology can really be by playing a part in it.

I want to know what you think. Does what I'm saying make sense? What's your favorite FRC game? Would more sports-based games satisfy you?

Thanks.

[Molten]

This is a duplicate thread. Anyone wanting to post on the topic should do so here.