Subject:
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Re: rtlToronto, the Road Ahead/VM Questions
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto
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Date:
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Wed, 21 Aug 2002 18:05:56 GMT
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Viewed:
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906 times
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Chris Magno wrote:
>
> > So is the competition to find the best capitalist or the best robot
> > designer? This is not a rhetorical question, I'd like to hear what
> > people think.
>
> BOTH!!
<snip>
> This game should offer those same challenges. as a "capitalist" do you
> vend a cheap candy, or have a slot machine. what about some sort of
> arcade machine......
All good ideas. But if we want to make $$ a scoring condition, we could
eliminate a lot of cheesy approaches by scoring on *profit*. After all,
you don't get anywhere in real life by vending product that costs more
than you charge. So if you vend $5 for $0.25, you'll get a negative
score. If you vend mud for $1, you don't need to sell as much to beat
the guy who is selling $0.75 bars for $1.
>
> I don't want to limit people to just vend a hard candy.. or whatever.
I agree wholeheartedly. But we *could* fix the price charged, and let
people decide what to vend.
>
> by allowing people to vend whatever they want then i hope to not stifle
> the creative juices of people.
>
> case in point. if we MADE people build a bridge then we would NOT have
> seen that "hammer" robot for this last game. i never would have believed
> it unless i saw it with my own eyes.
I agree again... but I'd refine your point: I think the the choice of
rules is extremely important. I think they should be few, and elegant,
but I think they should also be chosen to maximize the kind of game we
want. F'r'instance we added the rule about 1 point for touching the
flag... that wasn't really necessary, was it?
The best choice of rules will give us a wide-open game where the robot
that wins is a robot people think is worthy of winning. So lets spend a
little time discussing rules. and maybe we throw them out and maybe we
don't...
* * *
Here's my current opinion on how to run the event; feel free to convince
me otherwise:
We have a front desk where we admit customers a few at a time (so that
our machines don't get damaged / ripped off, etc.) This might not be
neccessary if there are few enough people, but I think crowd control is
gonna matter.
We give each customer a few tokens, depending on how big the crowd is.
We have a donation box for the charity, and encourage people to drop in
$2 or $5. By token, I mean "not-money". Could be poker chips, could be
something simple we make out of lego and call a token. Whatever. We
decide soon what it'll be. This way: no money paid for goods received,
so it's a give-away, not a sale, and there are waaaay fewer rules.
People mill around the machines, and use up their tokens. You can take
as many tokens as you want for a vend.
We pretend each token is worth $.50. At the end of the day, you add the
tokens for your machine, and subtract the value you attributed to your
product. That's your score. The winner takes the Adam Smith award :)
If you attribute an obviously cheesy value to your product ($0.02 for a
pair of Reeboks or whatever), we call you a weasel. :)
Then we put a cup in front of each machine. Each person who built a
robot gets tiles marked from 1 to 10 or 1 to 5, or whatever (depends on
how many machines) and puts them into cups based on how good they think
the machines were. The machine with the best score wins the Builder's
Choice prize.
* * *
I know that you could campaign or form cartels or cheat or whatever, but
I think that our participants are honest and have too much self-respect
to want to win that way, so we don't need a lot of rules other than "If,
in the referee's opinion, you are a weasel, you don't win". I know I'd
give someone else my top marker if I honestly thought their robot was
better. I think most people are the same. And this allows people to
award points to the best technical design, or the best looking machine,
or whatever they like.
So it's simple: Tokens to avoid complications. Donations for charity.
*Profit* (not revenue) determines the Adam Smith award, and Builder's
Choice determines the other award.
* * *
As an aside, I'd note that games are effectively all-profit, and might
be addictive, but take a while and so limit your rate of income. Things
that give you a product are lower profit, but can probably service more
customers in a day. Any approach, done well, could win you the profit
prize. Any approach at all, if it captures our imaginations, can win
the builder's choice award.
Jeff E
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Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: rtlToronto, the Road Ahead/VM Questions
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| (...) BOTH!! every game we do is more than just building a robot. there is some strategy involved. With project X I made the choice to scan the board first then solve. others had to solve on the fly. This game should offer those same challenges. as (...) (22 years ago, 21-Aug-02, to lugnet.org.ca.rtltoronto)
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