Future Contest Themes

["mschoessow" <mikeschoessow@...>]

I understand that Phillip already has a theme in mind for the next 
design competition (although I have no idea what it is), but I 
thought it still might be interesting to discuss potential themes 
for future contests. It's not so easy coming up with a good theme, 
as I found out when it was my task last year. In fact it was my 
brother Steve who suggested the Changing Landscapes theme. 

We are looking forward to the fifth design competition now, and 
assuming we have many more of them in the future, the choosing of 
new, fresh, and helpful themes will become increasingly dificult. At 
some point the use of themes may need to be re-thought in some way, 
and of course this decision is always ultimately up to the winnwer 
of the previous contest, assuming they want it (at least that's the 
precedent, and it seems to be working fine in my opinion).

The contest themes we've seen so far can be classified into 
categories (BTW, "theme" is not really the best word for what we are 
talking about, but I'll stick with it for now). Firstly, there are 
those that imply a mechanic or class of mechanics. Changing 
Landscapes was an example of this, where there was a requirement 
that the board or playing area shift or change in some way during 
the game. Another category of theme is subject. An example of this 
is the most recent contest, History Repeats Itself, in which all 
games were required to address a historical event. The very first 
contest, with it's requirement that all games be built around some 
aspect of the passage of time, was another example of a theme based 
on subject. A third category, which we haven't seen yet, involves 
game "type". This would involve a requirement that all games be, for 
example, race games, or alignment games, or displacement games, etc. 
These are all recognized fundamental types of games (see Bell or 
Parlett). The second contest, Ludic Synergy, included a requirement 
that the authors must combine another game system with the piecepack 
system within their games. The requirement in this case involved the 
bits used to play the game. So, some fairly obvious categories are,

1) Mechanic

2) Subject

3) Type

4) Bits

Other categories I can think of that we have not yet seen are,

5) Time (a requirement involving game or turn length)

6) Dexterity (requiring physical skill such as balancing or flicking)

7) Cooperative (players compete against the game, not each other)


Possibly the dexterity category is already covered by category 3, 
but even if so, it's different enough to deserve its own category. 
Cooperative games are also an interesting category that is gaining 
some popularity since the publishing of Knizia's big Lord of the 
Rings cooperative game. Cooperative games are essentially group 
solitaires, in which all the players are on the same side and work 
together to beat the game.

Below are some potential future contest themes in "bare bones" form. 
I'm not claiming that these would all make for great contests. In 
fact I think some of them are pretty poor, but I wanted to throw 
something out there to stimulate thought. The number in parentheses 
indentifies the category in each case.


Negotiation. Games must involve negotiation between players. (1)

Teams. Games must involve team play or partnership play between at 
least two of the players. (1)

Big. Games must utilize most of the bits from two piecepacks. (4)

Community. Games may not involve player ownership of tiles, coins, 
pawns, or dice. (1)

Cooperate. Games must constitute cooperative endeavors between all 
players. (7)

Democratic. Player voting must play a significant role. (1)

Empire. Games must be about the rise of empire. (2)

Race. The goal must be to be first in completing some task of 
movement, construction, or alignment. (3)

Free Form. Games may not be based on sequential player turns (i.e., 
player turns must be determined by game play rather than directly by 
game rules). This theme would also accept games in which there are 
no turns (i.e., simultaneous or opportunistic movement schemes). (1)

Collect. Games must involve set collection. (1)


I didn't feel particularly inspired when coming up with this list 
(it just isn't one of those days for me :-) Anybody else have an 
idea for a theme, or comments on the uses of themes in future 
contests? 

-Mike Schoessow