i think they need to stick to hints for the 2012 game. I can’t be excited for 2013 yet, 2012 is so far away!
I sense Track Balls will return.
There’s a time and a place for hints/games/jokes. There’s a time and a place for providing pertinent information regarding the current season and upcoming seasons. Mixing information/hints/seasons up creates confusion in a disorganized fashion. It’s nice that they want to work towards the future regarding the robot game challenge but the money we will be paying very soon will be for this season’s competition only and it is the one that matters to the teams that will be competing. If teams were investing in 2 - 4 seasons down the road, I might be more keen to know what is going to transpire but, at this point, it simply doesn’t matter. It has too much of the feel of a romper room effect right now to be considered any sincere form of transparency.
I miss Dave.
Jane
Wow. That survey was FAR too long, and even more so repetitive. I almost regret taking it. What do other CDers feel about the award system now. I sort of like it. I appreciate the judges and feel that they are doing a great job with both pit interviews and award choices.
Which particular section of Bill’s Blog do you feel was confusing? I’m no English major, but he has an interesting hook with regards to game design and goes on to provide important information for this season with no overt references to game hints that affect the flow of the piece. People talking about game hints for the most part are people reading game hints into everything like they always do.
He also gets bonus points for mentioning airplanes. 
I think Jane is saying that Bill’s Blog is being too cute, simply for the sake of being cute, and that dilutes the message. BB is an official source of information from FIRST. It’s as if an email from the COO of a company would have to be examined word by word for hidden clues. (I know corporate announcements do have to be examined to find out what they say and what they don’t say; they just don’t do it by wordplay.)
That was not the case when Dave Lavery was on the GDC. Everything Dave posted was unofficial, and he could select words just to exasperate everyone.
I’d much rather see Poof Balls.
If he (or his ghost writer) is going to discuss multiple years in one blog post, break them down chronologically:
2012
2013
2014
2015
If he (or his ghost writer) wants the blog to convey meaningful information such as 2012 updates on venue status, costs, game manual readiness, teams enrollment, etc., then cut out the cutesy. If the blog is just meant to be cutesy, why? What is in this blog post regarding the seasons’ game challenges that is useful?
Dave’s skills at communicating accurate information that was useful and his timely and cunningly crafted hints were not meshed together in a crazy manner. It was genius - year after year, post after post however informal. If you felt the romper room effect, it was because he had planned that effect very carefully. This blog is not that controlled or skillfully managed although it is a formal means of communication.
Jane
I’d like that.
The survey took me maybe half an hour, at the least. Most of that time was spent trying to remember what, out of all the things we said to the judges, could be applied to each award. That’s the best metric I could come up with to answer the questions. I wonder why they had drop down menus instead of checkboxes (or similar). Clicking once instead of twice would have cut down a lot of time. Also, as someone said earlier, the UL Safety Award was left out.
Regarding game hints…I don’t they’re talking about 2013. If they don’t feel like there is anything new on 2012 to report, and if 2013 is what the GDC is working on right now, that’s great. It’s cool to see how quickly and efficiently they’re working. Dropping words that could be interpreted as game hints is another matter. Let’s stick with one year at a time on those. This year’s game hint threads are going to be chaotic when people start mixing up hints for 2012 and 2013.
I’d take them making it simpler. Faster boot times, faster connect times, faster LV compile times… Nothing innovative just some iterative changes.