I like the themes because it adds a whole new aspect to robotics. Teams now design T-shirts and costumes around the yearly theme, making new designs to show off during competition season. Even if you believe that art is not an important part of robotics, it does help bring in some non-engineering people to the club.
A lot of teams have been doing this for a very long time; it’s not really a new phenomenon. (Yes, including my team. Our first full-blown theme was in 2007.)
Kids who are serious about sports are unlikely to be involved in FRC, theme or no theme, unless their sport(s) have nothing going on in both winter and spring seasons.
I like the theme announcements that we’ve had the past few years.
In terms of recruitment and appeal, the appeal of steampunk, castles and now retro gaming appeals to a much broader population than just robot builders! As pointed out earlier, perhaps the only thing more popular with teens than video games is breathing! (and even then, I’ve got some doubts…)
More significantly, perhaps it gives teams who desire to do so the opportunity to prepare their pit, image and gamewear to look amazing. It is a fabulous opportunity to reach out to the artistic and creative community in and around a school and engage them in team activities. Got a sewing class that can make some 8-bit ties? http://www.thinkgeek.com/product/9352/ (clip-on, for safety, of course.) Got a school band that wants a good excuse to learn some Nintendo music? The theme is a great way to start a conversation without the rush of build stressing anyone out.
Anyway, probably too much has been said already on a topic where the O.P. didn’t have the confidence of their opinion to attach their name to their post. Or, more appropriately, confidence in the CD community’s ability to discuss their comments respectfully.
Jason
This is an excellent point.
To me it is annoying when a theme gets in the way of the game itself. Or to put it another way when the game suffers to accommodate the theme. IMO 2016 seemed to me to be a far better balance of function over form in vs. 2017. This being said a sample size of two is hardly significant and the non-themed games of yore suffered from other things like symmetry of the field, ease of field assembly, game reset times, etc.
However you can only do the same variations if a task so many times before everything obvious that can be said about it has been said. This is where I believe themes have there place, an artistic approach in allowing us to approach the same old basic tasks and extract more mileage out of them in conversation, aesthetics, and design.
Of coarse I am bias from my time as a student in “The Golden Age of FRC Game Design” 2011-2014.
Not necessarily. We’ve had a pretty high percentage of varsity athletes over the years; they often, in fact, make great drivers and human players.
Huh, I feel like an odd one out.
I think the themes are good. They offer more character to the game and they don’t detract from the gameplay experience. Additionally, they aren’t meant to be the main focus point of the game. When I think 2016, I don’t think “medieval.” I think of the game objectives. The same with 2017 and steampunk.
Additionally, adding on to what Kevin said, the themes allow for two otherwise unrelated game objectives to be tied together. Having more than one midgame game objective is important. Strategies in 2012 and 13 were rather bland - they were min/max games. 2015 had next to no strategy aside from “score more than your opponent,” the definition of a min/max game. We saw a slight deviation from that on Einstein with the canburglar wars, but again, that took until close to Einstein. 2014 was a bit of an odd one out here, but that’s mostly because it was an open field and the only obstacles were your opponents (and sometimes teammates), which allowed for drivers to really stand out.
In my opinion, 2017 was one of the most strategically diverse games that FIRST has done recently. We saw 2 rotor + 40 kpa + 3 defense strategies, we saw 2 shooter + 1 gear bot + 0 defense strategies, we saw 4 rotor rush + 0 kpa + 3 defense strategies, the list goes on. Plus overflow bins were starting to be used later in the season once teams developed stronger shooters.
Take away all the steampunk from 2017 – is it the same game? Yes, strategically, it is. But maybe people would be criticizing it for having “totally unrelated” game objectives…
Disagree. 2012/2013/2014 were three of the best, most strategically interesting FIRST has ever made.
2012 was pretty tame strategically. Shoot a bunch of balls, get your balance points. If you fail to get your balance points, your ball shooting doesn’t really matter. The only widely different variety of strategy came from whether or not you could find three robots that could triple balance together. There were attempts to manage the ball economy and/or situationally disruptive defense, but I don’t think it was any deeper than a typical FRC game.
2013 was certainly one of the most strategically diverse games in recent memory, largely because specific features could completely morph how a game was played. A match with a full court shooter played entirely different from a match that didn’t. Alliances with floor loading autonomous modes or 30 point climbs were drastically different from ones that didn’t. Ultimately, however, it turned out that the Champion alliance were three teams that cycled faster than anyone else (one with a 7 disc auton), and won that way. No full court shooting or high climbing required.
2014 was tactically very interesting, but strategically dull. When game planning for an individual match-up, you had tons of very specific tactical decisions to make about how to best approach the specific robots you were playing with/against. However, after the first couple weeks, strategically it was very tame. 50 point cycles were the obvious way to go for competitive alliances, and virtually every alliance was running more or less the same high-level strategy because of that. Bounce-back passes were a later evolution that changed things slightly, but that’s more of a change in tactical execution than match strategy.
I think you need to go back to 2004 to find a game as strategically diverse as Steamworks.
(At least in matches involving fuel-proficient robots. The other 90+% of matches were 3+D or 4+D races followed by climb roulette)
People have been comparing competitive robotics to video games for years. It’s a fairly simple analogy for newcomers to understand Here’s an excerpt of a piece *(http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/karthik-kanagasabapathy/competitive-robotics_b_2993240.html).
[quote=“Competitive Robotics: Bringing Excitement Back to the Canadian Classroom”]
Designing and building a robot is more than just the typical visual exercise of taking something from a textbook and memorizing it. Classroom robotics platforms give students a chance to create their own concepts in their minds, and then turn them into something physical with their own hands. This is a very visceral experience that most young people don’t get nowadays. Students who go through this process get to see and understand what happens when you create your own device, and that’s an amazing character building experience that gets them excited about what they are learning in school. *This is the hook to lure students back to STEM!
*[/quote]
For decades we have been teaching students on our own terms with old school methods of endless lectures and textbooks, forcing them down the roads that we wanted them to be on. With competitive robotics, students get to drive their educational experience down their own roads, while working cooperatively as a team. Young people today spend thousands of hours playing video games. Instead of fighting these urges, competitive robotics plays off of this interest and allows students to essentially design, build, create and play their own physical video game! From my personal experience designing VEX Robotics games and mentoring FIRST robotics teams, most students don’t even realize they are being taught because they so enjoy seeing the “cool” side of STEM.
Although, I for one don’t think FRC games need a theme to attract an audience, the story of “Instead of playing a video game in a virtual world, we built a 150 lb that has to play the video game in real life!” sells itself pretty well and it’s very easy to understand. Almost as good as “Instead of humans playing basketball, we built a robot to play basketball against other robots!”*
I don’t feel game themes or a more “relatable” game would attract the uninterested. From my experience FRC recruiting comes from feeder systems like our STEM camps, FLL and VEX teams. We directly recruit through students, mentors, and outreach. Game themes have never been a discussion point because the actual game is not the benefit of the program.
My son got into FIRST a bit by accident. We had never heard of FIRST - ever - but heard rumors of a high school robotics team. He was interested in science, and we were seeking some type of high school club to further those interests. Once I found out more about the program I joined in as well because FIRST goals aligned with my values.
The year was… 2009 Lunacy. We thought the program and the game was AWESOME.** I was blown away.
I’m still here. My son graduated with a programming degree and is now a returning mentor.
Bottom line, it’s hard enough to attract and retain the interested. You’re team will have to have a plan and work to bring in the uninterested. We’ve been successful if you can explain the benefit.
David
** I’m a FIRST snob now so I know better.
Meh, maybe it was strategically dull to you but we had fun with our strategy. Tactically… well, we sat in the corner for most of the match.
I’m kinda with you. I think this stuff sells itself without a theme which brings us back to the question of why FIRST has added themes and it certainly seems like the goal was to attract those “outside the tent”. I’m not sure they are doing that with classic video games, steampunk, and Holy Grail derivatives, and recycling can arms races… Maybe I’m wrong.
On another note, I feel like the theming isn’t helping FIRST with branding at all. It’s confusing as all get out from year to year from a branding perspective.
I don’t have a problem with themes per se, but the last three years they have driven the game mechanics into places that aren’t as much fun as the preceding three years when it appears that interesting game mechanics inspired the name of the game. The last three games have also had terrible sight lines, both for the drive team and the audience. In 2012-14, all six robots were visible from anywhere, unless it was hiding behind another robot. This year, it was better to watch the matches from the TV in the pits than from the stands because almost half the field (and more than half of the interesting places to be) were obstructed by field elements.
The only time since Jan 2015 that my heart rate went over 85 watching an FRC match that didn’t involve my team was 2015 Carson QF4, yelling at the 973 Greybots driver not to put that stack on top of a noodle with a few seconds left in the match. The next most exciting non-3946 moments were cheering in the stands for 3339 BumbleB throughout Carson elims and Einstein quarters. We sat next to them for much of the Carson Qualifiers, and it was impossible not to get caught up in their enthusiasm once we were eliminated.
Bottom line - I’m OK with the idea of a video game theme, but please give us an entertaining, visible game to play with it. Having some nifty engineering trade-offs as well would be stupendous!
To heap on my own two cents to this thread, I feel the recent trend in themes has made the games much harder to explain and attract people to. Back in 2012 if someone asked me what the game was I could say “shoot baskets then balance on a teeter totter.” There’s no way someone could describe Steamworks as accurately with so few words. Gears, balls that don’t often matter, a high and low boiler, ropes, pilots, rotors, and a bizarre steampunk theme on top of it all. Same with recycle rush and stronghold.
So we need a game that 1) is different every year; 2) provides some unique engineering challenges appropriate for entry as well as seasoned teams; 3) promotes opportunities for strategic play and possibly coopetition between opposing participants; 4) is played in a setting that has great audience and driver sight-lines for a variety of tasks with different appropriately-scored values; 5) could have a theme tying tasks together but not one that’s narrowly focused or gets in the way; 6) addresses all other problems perceived in previous year; and 7) overall should be capable of being described in a short non-nerd-invoking sentence in a way that even an outside spectator or potentially interested 3rd party (who hasn’t scrutinized its rules) can easily understand. Sounds so easy.
I totally agree with the complexity issues of the last 2 games, but for all the criticism of recycle rush, it was not a hard game to explain. “Stack boxes, put garbage cans on top”.
I think of the last 3 years, this theme is the least “insular”. From my experience, video games are much cooler and outsider friendly than medieval castles or (especially) steampunk airships. As long as they don’t dramatically overdo the theme, I think this year could be an example of a “good” theme.
I don’t think Stronghold was hard to explain. “Cross obstacles for 5 points, roll balls for 2 points, shoot balls for 5 points, park or hang at the end of the match.” The castle theme was pretty self explanatory once they saw it. No need to get into the intricacies of defense selection/placement or what it means to breach or capture. Those can be explained later after they get a handle on the core elements of the game.
This one.
I would bet that 75% of the U.S. either played video games, played arcade games, or is at least familiar with the concept and/or some of the characters. Particularly when you refer to some of the older games, or ones that were made into movies.
As far as reach/familiarity, it’s second only to sports…
As much as I love the mentor perspectives, I’d like to add what I see as a student for diversity of opinion, as we experience very different things in our roles.
I for one have had quite the opposite feeling with the themes, where I prefer them a lot more than the games without (although my rookie year was stronghold, I’ve been following my team since I understood what it could mean for me in high school). It adds an element that, to repeat another poster, can tie in otherwise unrelated elements for diversity. I’ve also seen with them an added level of spirit and excitement, as our drivers and pit crew alike dressed in full steampunk and rigged up an electronic hat.
I’d also say that I’ve had no experience of bars between those interested in sports not wanting to be in robotics because it is ‘uncool’ or the theme doesn’t fit with whatever image they think themselves in.
A quick rundown of our core members to prove my point:
- lead pneumatics, captain of the soccer team
- lead programming, head of booth for theatre
- a sophomore who is more passionate than much of our team combined, baseball
- a new alumni, soccer team
- another new alumni, top band and track
- another sophomore, soccer
- lead fabrication (yours truely), top orchestra and generally someone you’d never expect to fall in love with robotics if I didn’t talk about it 24/7
and that’s only some of them. We have a lot of overlap with robotics and other activities, and the only thing that has turned kids off from the club was how much time we require to keep up with everything. Two freshman girls who are starts of the tennis team want to join. High school kids are no longer the boxes teen dramas want to put us in. The athletes do robotics, the music kids do sports, and the best programmers are also quite popular.
The thing I’m trying to prove with all this useless (to you) information is that themes are not really the problem. Whenever I talk about robotics, I don’t get people calling it lame I get “that’s actually really cool” and “I wish I were smart enough to do that.” Being able to then tell kids that they most definitely are has gotten us over 67 interested freshman, more than double our last years team. So it’s not the themes or the game that’s going to make or break whether people want to join, it’s your team and students and how/if they talk about robotics. Believe me, school support hasn’t gotten us to this. So far they’ve already tried to shut down frc at our school (which was avoided, thank goodness) and never once have we been on announcements for anything but the first meeting.
Medieval themes lead to Monty Python, which many people know and love.
Steampunk is fun and no one can convince me otherwise.
Most high school students, even the jocks who you seem you want to put in a separate category from us, love vintage games as much as the new ones (or at least pretend to for the sake of saving face… whatever works).
No one can help but love a good theme. Homecomings, proms, and reality shows which are all popular have themes, so why should robotics have to be any different to attract people? Hint, it doesn’t.