Challenge #1: Eliminations

by Charlie Plaine, Chairman

28th January 2010

Nearly all of the members of all of the teams did a fine job with the first challenge in this competition. While all of the teams made a fair share of mistakes, they have taken the feedback of the public and the judges and have been discussing improvements. This in encouraging, and speaks highly to the maturity and intelligence of our community.

Unfortunately, this is a competition, and eliminations are a necessary evil of these kinds of competitions. Eliminations are difficult and unhappy, but we hope that the contestants that are eliminated have learned something, will continue to follow the contest, and return again next year for Season 2.

The Cardassian Team

Ian Parmenter (Peers) and Jirka Paska (Taurnil) were nominated for elimination by the Cardassian Team.

Peers was the only one on the team to offer a full cycle of cards, but did not push for it with any conviction. The ideas that he did submit were raw, and could have spent more time being refined before being presented.

Taurnil did present very well-refined ideas, and some of them were quite good. But the judges observed that his feedback on his teammate's ideas was minimal, and often either negative or non-constructive.

With a vote of 3-0, the judges have decided to "cut" Taurnil from the competition, believing that positive communication and constructive criticism are essential to becoming The Next Assistant Game Designer.

From Brad: "Jirka, you had some excellent ideas, but need to work on your communication skills and your team work. We sincerely hope you will remain a part of the process and reapply next year."

The Klingon Team

Benjamin Wynn (EL1TE) and Jordan Smith (Mogor) were nominated for elimination by the Klingon Team.

EL1TE presented some good ideas to his team, but they felt undirected and unfocused, with not even a hit of a common theme. Also, he seemed to have difficulties working with his team, continuing to post radical new ideas when the rest of the team was working to refine their entries.

Mogor, unfortunately, did very little during the course of Challenge #1. During the span of the first challenge, he only made three (3) posts to his team forum, and none contained any card submissions.

With a vote of 3-0, the judges have "cut" Mogor, knowing that it is better to have unfocused ideas than none at all.

Brad says, "Jordan, I hope that you will continue to participate in Make it So and will reapply next year to really show us what you are capable of!"

Jirka and Jordan will be moved out of the team forums and into a different group, where they can still see the general goings on of the competition, but not the inner workings of their former teams.

Challenge #2, "The Mission Mission," will be posted shortly.