Iron Game Chef: Sim - A followup

[ethan_greer]

I was thinking about putting this somewhere else, but in the end I decided since it's about our little game design contest it should go here in the game design forum.

In this thread,

Commentary on this particular contest:
 
 So, I had it in mind to do two games, and I even went so far as to clear it with Mike that it was okay.  I don't have two games though, as I had planned.  See, it came into my head that the inclusion of the keywords in the parameters of the contest pretty much makes it a guarantee that most if not all of the games will be High-Concept Sim.  So I decided to see if I could do a Purist For System game using three of the four terms.  I failed.  Mainly because Purist For System games are a bitch to write, and dull to boot.  I doubt we'll see a Purist For System game entered in this contest, unless someone sees this commentary as a call to action.
 
 So, to sum up, the Iron Game Chef: Sim competition pretty much ruled out Purist For System design by my interpretation.  Mind you, I don't know if that's bad.  If it's a limitation of the contest format, it personally didn't bother me, even though I failed to rise to my own challenge of trying to do a Purist For System game using the required words.  I just thought I'd bring it up as (heh) food for thought.

Well, that sums up how I feel about it... Anybody got any reaction?  Counterpoint?

[Mike Holmes]

First I agree with the assessment in general. That said, Emily's game was Hight Premise, only to the extent that the rules were a framework for something more Purist. IMO, I should have gien her some more points for that; neat idea. But, yes, overall, it was limiting for that competition.

Well, for the Narrativist competition, I think this will be less of a problem. That is, there's no particular form of Narrativism that I think will be limited by the inclusion of such terms requiremnets. So I'm inclined to go with it for at least the following competition.

In any case, to make it "Iron Chef" it does need to have some sort of "ingredient", and some sort of category. These corresponding to the Ethicity of the cuisine (Chineese, Japanese, French, Italian), and to the ingredient of the day. Not only to make it match that, however, but it does seem to me that this gives greater grounds for comparison, and sparks creativity. That is, how do you compare two games, if not by looking at some more arbitrary yardstick like the ingredients? And how do you prevent it from being bland if there are no specific requirements?

So, I'm willing to change the format (more likely after the next one for consistency). But I'd like to keep a category element and some sort of Ingredients. These could be radically different from what we've got right now, however. So I'm willing to entertain substitues, or other ideas for formats.

Let me know what you think, and we can hash this out.

Mike

[lumpley]

How about types of mechanics?  Like competition: Simulationist! ingredient: Fortune in the Middle!  Or competition: Gamist! ingredient: Director Stance!

-Vincent

[ethan_greer]

Basically we agree on this, it would seem - the keyword thing is necessary for such a contest to provide some basis for comparison and to make the thing a bit more challenging.  No problem in Gamism, no problem in Narrativism.  Sim has that Purist For System wrinkle that makes that particular branch of GNS a bit more complicated for this style of contest...  But I'm not even sure that something needs to be fixed here.  I could see maybe doing a separate contest with an altered format specific to doing PFS games, and keeping the existing format for Gamism, Narrativism, and general Sim.  On the current schedule, this would make four contests cycling every two years.  But do we really want a bunch of Iron Chef games that do Exploration of System?  I probably wouldn't be interested.  Still, when a game is written to focus primarilly on the mechanics themselves, I could see some interesting creations coming out of that.  I dunno.  Currently, I think I'm in favor of keep things as they are.

[Jared A. Sorensen]

Going back to the metaphor:

The Iron Chefs don't *have* to cook a specific kind of cuisine...it's just that they're often the most comfortable making French cuisine (or Japanese, or Italian, or whatever). The only real components of Iron Chef as a competition/game are:

Two chefs (plus assistants)
A number of dishes (more dishes usually = better rating)
Making use of the secret ingredient as the main ingredient of each dish
An hour time limit

Me? I dislike the keywords concept of Iron Game Chef. If I want to make a bad game that uses each keyword, it's still a bad game. What the contest should be is "make a game about *this*" and describe if the game should be G, N or S. For example, make a game about "personal horror" or "make a game that makes use of the Prisoner's Dilemma game model."

[Walt Freitag]

The closest analogy to the TV Iron Chef format would be to have a single keyword or concept (ingredient), and each competitor must create a variety of games that creatively exhibit the versatility of that concept, each game using it in a different way.

That's extremely not practical, of course. Unless the competition were in teams. (The Iron Chef competitors have assistants, after all.) Which would make the exercise too unwieldy, for many reasons (including putting the team leaders in the awkward position of editor).

It's interesting to imagine what the full analogy to the TV show format would look like. First of all, Iron Game Chef wouldn't be the title competitors were competing for, they'd be the ongoing house champions. Each competition would be a single challenger, who would choose which IGC to challenge, thus also choosing the Gamist, Narrativist, or Simulationist arena for competition. The challenger and the Iron Chef would then create their suites of games, which would then be evaluated by a panel of judges.

Okay, this could almost work. Forget the suite of games and go back to a single game. The contests would have to be more frequent, but each one would be far smaller (and less work for the Chairman). Selection and scheduling of challengers could become contentious; a simple waiting list might become prohibitively long. In another departure from the TV model, you could make the challenger, if successful, the new Iron Game Chef.

As an alternative to a single-word "ingredient" or a list of words, perhaps a single phrase or tag line that carries some meaning but still leaves a lot of wiggle room. (With only two competitors at a time, you don't need the ingredient(s) to evoke as wide a range of entries.) These could range from very specifically evocative ("head 'em off at the pass") to very vague or abstract ("crimson and clover, over and over"). Here are a few more:

From beneath you it devours.

"This is Free Trader Beowulf. Can anyone read me?"

The future the way it used to be.

The heroes have failed; now it's up to the villains.

Down the rabbit hole.

All in all, it's just another brick in the wall.

I try to get out, but they keep pulling me back in.

Old man river, he just keeps rollin'.

- Walt

[Mike Holmes]

I'd considered the challenge format where one chef defends his title. That said, this is game design, not cooking, so making designs often would be problematic, I'd think. Even if you went with the winner getting the title, that would mean that it would rotate a lot, I'd think. But that's not a totally bad thing...

Hmmm. This would require the Competing designers to organize a time where they could both compete. You'd want to have a rule where they'd have to do so, say, every three months or something. If they didn't participate at that rate, then they would forfiet the position, and it would be fought over by the next two challengers. Or the current Chef could just abdicate at any time.

I like your ideas for how to do ingredients, Walt, but would that be less restrictive as the current system? Opinions?

In any case, this still requires categories for people to design in, so that there are a limited number of titles. Is GNS OK, or are there better categories? Genre? Iron Chef Horror? Iron Chef Western? Seems like too many categories, potentially.

I'm liking the feedback, keep it up, please. :-)

Mike

[Walt Freitag]

I like your ideas for how to do ingredients, Walt, but would that be less restrictive as the current system?

No, it would be more restrictive (unless the phrase was way on the abstract/vague end of the spectrum). With only two competitors at a time, you could afford a more restrictive "ingredient."

Jared's version would work too, even though it's more restrictive still. That is, my version would just state "the prisoners' dilemma" as the "ingredient" and leave it up to interpretation whether to make a game about prisoners, or a game that uses the game theory Prisoners Dilemma game as a mechanism, or a game with cooperation in adversarial circumstances as a theme, or something else fitting. Jared suggests actually stating outright, "make a game that makes use of the Prisoners' Dilemma game model" or specifying what the game should be about.

- Walt