has anyone been noticing the lameness of the games in the years? three years ago the box pushing game… was exciting it was so much fun then the shooting baskets and the balls along with hanging on the bar had so much enthusiasm but when last year came around, at times it could drag on with the capping, but began getting interesting twords the end of the season, but this year so far has almost been unpredictible because at times its interesting but at others its just another 8 hours in the stands. has anyone else came to the conclusion of each game every year has some relation to the first logo…? triangles (tetras) circles (balls) squares (boxes) now as of i can tell there is no pattern to get a head start idea but idk its kinda interesting how first doesnt go out of First’s Comfort zone… haha
It’s not just a comfort zone…it’s also what they want to use. Balls are the most useable and most easily identifyable resourse for FIRST to use as a game componet. IT’s not what they use…it’s HOW they use it. Have you ever seen a game in which we needed to actually shoot balls out of our robot? Thats new. Thats what makes this year different and exciteing. I’d likt to see a game in which we’d have to shoot pool noodles out of our robot, but because shooting pool noodles isn’t easy, they use the most simplest of componets to use…balls.
They only used Tetras once and Bins once. I don’t see any replication of them.
Not only that, but it would be rather difficult if FIRST took a new object into the game every year, they would soon run out of ideas as to what to use. IT’s not a bad thing that they use the same ojbects. It even helps when remembering older years and older models to help amp up.
FIRST does seem to have this logo-like trend…but until they use Tetra’s and Bins in the next 2 years, I won’t be convinced.
The games themselves are always exciteing. The only Game I was bored in was Stack Attack cause it as just a demolition derby.
Perhaps the FIRST logo was designed to recapitulate the game components rather than the reverse?
Lame? So I take it your robot wins every match, hands down, because there is no challenge? Your team wins every regional? Every championship?
I recommend you get out of the stands and engage yourself in whats going on. At any given event your robot spends about 20 minutes on the field and about 20 hours in the pits (being maintained, modified, tweaked).
If your robot is perfect there are always plently of other teams that need help keeping their bots running.
Usually when people are bored its because they are not connected with whats going on.
All the discussion you ever wanted to read on trends and the logo…
But seriously, I find this game one of the more difficult to understand games (before you retaliate remember, you’ve had this for 12 weeks now). We had some people come it with us and it took them all day Friday to finally understand the game. While it might be fun to watch the robots shoot balls into the goal, most people want to see destruction which is not what FIRST is about. You have to take everything with a grain of salt because remember, its not as much about watching the game, its about building a robot and learning from it.
I have too thought about this and concluded, althought it may not be false, and first might change thier minds about the game based on our feedback for the next year. I have concluded since Zone Zeal in 2002 we had balls (circle), 2003 Stack Attack we had boxes (square), 2004 FIRST Frenzy we again had balls (circle), 2005 Triple Play we had tetras (triangle), 2006 Aim High we yet again have balls (circle). My conclusin is with the exceptions of the first few years FIRST is now going to a fashion where they go from ball to new crazt object back to ball then back to new crazy object, and for that to continue. For examples back in time th4ere was the floppies (pillows). 
Im trying to think of a sport that uses game objects that are not round or square or triangles… I got nothing
when you put the fundemental geometric shapes in your logo, its not easy to come up with something else
A hyper-cube? Highway cones? A pile of sand? Boomerangs? Arrows? Bowling pins?
a box of kittens?
Ugly bags of mostly water?
well, FIRST could do a water game because technically water doesn’t have a shape, it is the shape of its container.
a water game…someone please hurt me for saying that
Pucks in hockey.
In Afghanistan, the game of buzkashi is played with a headless goat.
How about Javelin?
Pole vaulting?
Now there’s a FIRST game worth watching!!!
I think large beanbags would be an interesting game piece. You could have the bags be of widely varying sizes, and score based on bag mass. The bags could be different colors easily indicating their mass to drivers. Maybe in the middle of the field could be a large walled-off pit that you get bonus points for tossing or dumping the bags into, making an interesting engineering challenge: how do you toss bags consistently?
You’d have to make the bags out of pretty durable material so they didn’t spill though. Or have plenty of shop-vacs on hand to clean the field up quickly.
I would love to see these used as a game object. They are similar to poof balls balls in size and general base geometry, but have a very unique difference.
Imagine a game object like this which moves either away from you, or towards you constantly.
It would add a whole new element to the game.
Rhythmic Gymnastics!
Hey, it’s an official Olympic Sport! Don’t they wave those batons around with long streamers on the end? 
How about “synchronized robots”? (Synchronized swimming is also an Olympic “Sport”).
GDC can still remain in the “sport” realm and develop much lamer challenges.
how about a football game piece or a rugby ball?
Can we get back on topic?
ANYWAYS…
I wouldn’t call this years game lame as much as I would aasay that it isn’t as interesting as other years. But that could also be because i cant be a driver this year and its a completely different thing watching from the stands than it is from the field…
are round!
I think large beanbags would be an interesting game piece.
It was (1999).
Imagine a game object like this which moves either away from you, or towards you constantly.
like a box of kittens?
maybe for the FIRST 15th anniversary game they could combine all the games from the last 14 years into one 10 minute match?
It would be like a Goldburgh-machine competition! (lamacy would be less than 3%)
The season is not over so give it a chance.
Even you said last years game was dragging, “but began getting interesting at the end.”
The end is not here yet.
Not from the point of view of the stick they aren’t…
…and yet more and more people and more and more teams show up to play them every year. Hmmmm. :rolleyes: So from that I must conclude that (choose any one):
A) the quality of the games just doesn’t matter - we would all build robots to play “rock-paper-scissors” if FIRST told us to, cause it is just so freakin’ much fun to build a robot until 2:30am every night for six weeks!
B) the 25,000 people participating in the process of building robots to play this year’s game are all morons that love to play games that suck
C) the original premise is not quite correct, there is some room to improve but the games are not all that lame after all, and they provide a reasonable challenge for the teams to design toward and a reasonable level of excitement for the audience to watch
D) the original premise is way off base, the games are perfect and absolutely impossible to improve upon
I may admittedly be a little biased, but I think I am going to go with option “C.”
And, yes, if you didn’t notice - Dean, Woodie, and I take these sort of comments a little personally. Believe me, if you ever saw some of the ideas that never made it into the final games, you would really know what a “lame game design” could be! (Dave thinks about the “score points by throwing Krispy Kreme donuts at Dave and Jason Morrella” game).
-dave
One aspect of the games I would like to see change is the interaction between robots, and 3 on 3 robot hockey would be a good example.
In recent years, most alliances have worked together in an individual manner. (Team XXX plays defense against Team ZZZ, and Team YYY will fend off defender WWW while shooting at the goal.) The robots have not been challenged to act harmoniously to achieve a goal. I know many folks did not like the 2001 game, because of its’ indirect competitiveness, but the robots that year were forced to work together as a unit, not individually to achieve the alliance goals.
There have been posts this year talking about “feeder robots”, and that may have happened, but to a very small degree overall. Otherwise, robots have acted on their own to accomplish their part of the alliance goal.
A hockey type game though would force the robots to work together and set up passing plays. (i.e., the robot who carries the puck across the “blue” line cannot be the robot who scores, unless the puck is passed to a partner and returned to the original robot, or stolen by an opponent and stolen back) I would love to see more interaction in this manner, rather than the manner in which current games are designed. This is just an example, there are many quirky rules that would need to be hammered out, but the idea of having alliances interact with each other to win is the key point.