mattorama12 wrote:As a side note, I can't tell you how much I love the thought you've put into these tourneys; it really shows in how balanced they have been and how they are fun for all of us, regardless if we're the top players or not.
Honestly I really appreciate the kind words. I'm not going to lie and say it isn't rewarding to me when you guys offer praise like that, and of course it gives me encouragement to keep doing the things I'm doing. It's also great that you think there is fun for players of all abilities and the tournaments have not just focused on the competitive players.
As for the question as to whether the rounds will be announced I think it would be worthwhile sharing my current thinking on how I think the summer game will loosely work ...
For the rest of the month we'll let the discussion continue so feel free to make suggestions and we can include them if they are agreeable to all. In March I'll look to lock down a date for the tournament as well as the general format and rules. I'll confirm the rough outline to you all so you know what you need to prepare for, and then you have March, April and May to come back to me with your image selections. When I get the submissions I'll look through them and do my best to look for a good way to order them, such as splitting up selections that are too similar in genre or era, as well as spreading out difficulty if that is possible. Once I have an order, I'll message everyone telling them what number round they have been assigned and the approximate date this will be in play. I want to try and ensure everybody gets to see their own round in play so if there are potential clashes in their personal life this will give me an opportunity to move things around. I will also ask at this point if they want their round to be anonymous or public. My take is that some may enjoy playing a round publicly saying "this is my challenge and I want everyone to know it so I can enjoy teasing you all in the discussion thread!", whereas others may think their identity offers a clue to the solution and may enjoy seeing if people can work out who it is by. There would be no points for guessing correctly some may get a kick out of playing their round that way. It would be my intent to then reveal the submitter immediately when the round ends.
dunbar wrote:How about bonus round puzzles?
I both loved and sucked at the bonus rounds this year.
But given this thing wouldn't kick off for 4 or so months, it would be cool if a few creative minds (or hell let's do 11 bonus rounds) could come up with some twists to get the film buff juices flowing. Or something like that, but less weird sounding.
Honestly I really like the sound of this but I'm currently unsure how well it could be implemented. If *everyone* who is submitting a standard round also agreed to do a bonus round (ie 11 bonus round like you suggested), then I believe we could get it to work. Essentially we'd just tack them on to the end of each individual round. However it's not fair to assume everyone would want to do that, and I wouldn't want to pressure anybody into something they didn't originally agree to. (As an aside, I remember a big discussion on the image game thread about whether abstract clues were allowed. We all eventually agreed they were, but then hardly anybody played them!) If we then had a mix of some people interested and others who weren't, we'd be back into the issue of whether there is an advantage to players who aren't submitting bonus rounds over those who do. At the same time I do think it is an awesome idea to have you guys being creative with the bonus rounds so if we can agree upon something which is fair to all, I'm all for it!