14-Oct-2015, 4:22 PM
@random 8: If anyone wants to go through with building a CC2 set during the production of CCLP4, there’s nothing really stopping them. My only concern is that unless the people who wish to be involved with each project are completely different, two setbuilding projects running simultaneously, even if one is smaller in scale, can divert attention away from each other. Of course, this is all contingent on the nature of CC2 set production in the future. The other variable at play is Chuck’s and the Niffler team’s involvement with CC2’s future. I have to wonder how much say they would like to have in official “DLC” and how the production process would change as a result. If they’d like to lend their involvement to the process, it could remove a lot of the work burden from the community.
@Josh: I agree with wrapping up CCLP4’s submission period sometime in the very near future, especially since the focus of design has shifted to CC2. Some might recall that when we originally began the conversation about CCLP4 at the beginning of this year, there was quite a bit of discussion about how we could potentially make the production process easier on the community and how that would affect how much consideration each entry in the submission pool received now and for future sets. Right now, as CC1 design phases out and the transition to CC2 continues, I think “less is more” would be optimal from an efficiency standpoint. As far as I can tell, we won’t really be worrying about a CCLP5 unless there’s just a lot of demand for it.
The big question is voting. The reason I sounded hesitant to pursue a lot of voting in my previous post was not only because it would be a bit of a hassle for anyone in our midst who isn’t familiar with Tile World, but also because what it accomplishes and what is necessary to achieve representative gameplay and design diversity during the set assembly phase often stand in opposition to each other. Here’s basically what I’m getting at: after spearheading two CCLP staffs, I think voters naturally tend to have a picture of their ideal level type in a given CCLP, and this sort of bias is evident in the raw voting results where “agreeability” tends to inform what performs well. During CCLP3 voting, many voters were either optimizers who wanted a monster optimizing challenge or players who gravitated toward a monster gameplay challenge. The result was a huge chunk of ultradifficult levels in the top tier of the voting results. So for CCLP1, we tried to avoid the same kind of homogeneity by using the voting results as a guide to determine what was ultimately inducted. Sure enough, there was an “ideal type”: the middle-of-the-road, not-too-easy-but-not-too-difficult variety level. It was only through determining that yes, we would have blob levels (for example) and a reasonable amount of easy levels that some degree of variety was achieved. What was sad was that the voters still had to wade through 1,647 submissions (out of many more) during the voting process, and after all was said and done, some deserving entries that contained elements like blobs didn’t even perform that well and wouldn’t have been included had it not been for the staff’s involvement with postvoting segmenting.
I think we have to acknowledge that these sort of biases are going to exist no matter what. There’s no real way to avoid them. But the CCLP4 staff can conduct the community’s involvement with the project in the context of building a set with variety. Perhaps voting itself can reflect this. Instead of dumping a huge bunch of levels on people to award a rating, why not do the segmenting in voting itself? It could make everything much easier: we could have the staff curate the submissions and decide on what will populate the ballots for “best walker levels,” “best mazes,” “best easy levels,” “best variety levels,” “best strange designs,” “best melee levels,” "best levels with bombs as a dominant tile," etc. For superbroad categories like these, voters could check off as many or as few options as they want to see. It’d essentially be “yes / no” voting, but at least we could begin with the idea that these types of levels would be represented in the final product, and how far that representation would extend could depend on how enthusiastic the responses to certain levels are. We could also create polls for very specific level slots where voters could pick only one option: “best level 1,” “best cypher,” “best level 131 / 147,” “best set finale,” etc.
Of course, this approach may not necessarily cover the entire set directly, but I have confidence that the CCLP4 staff would judiciously use general community opinions and their own hunches as a group to make wise decisions. What I think this approach can ultimately help with is making sure that levels that carry their own senses of identity beyond the “ideal type” are considered fairly. It would also help ensure that community involvement can be in the hands of the community, without tons of pressure. What do you think?
If anyone wants to be on the CCLP4 staff, I highly recommend kicking things off, stepping up, teaming up, and taking charge. A bunch of us are here and ready to support you.
@Josh: I agree with wrapping up CCLP4’s submission period sometime in the very near future, especially since the focus of design has shifted to CC2. Some might recall that when we originally began the conversation about CCLP4 at the beginning of this year, there was quite a bit of discussion about how we could potentially make the production process easier on the community and how that would affect how much consideration each entry in the submission pool received now and for future sets. Right now, as CC1 design phases out and the transition to CC2 continues, I think “less is more” would be optimal from an efficiency standpoint. As far as I can tell, we won’t really be worrying about a CCLP5 unless there’s just a lot of demand for it.
The big question is voting. The reason I sounded hesitant to pursue a lot of voting in my previous post was not only because it would be a bit of a hassle for anyone in our midst who isn’t familiar with Tile World, but also because what it accomplishes and what is necessary to achieve representative gameplay and design diversity during the set assembly phase often stand in opposition to each other. Here’s basically what I’m getting at: after spearheading two CCLP staffs, I think voters naturally tend to have a picture of their ideal level type in a given CCLP, and this sort of bias is evident in the raw voting results where “agreeability” tends to inform what performs well. During CCLP3 voting, many voters were either optimizers who wanted a monster optimizing challenge or players who gravitated toward a monster gameplay challenge. The result was a huge chunk of ultradifficult levels in the top tier of the voting results. So for CCLP1, we tried to avoid the same kind of homogeneity by using the voting results as a guide to determine what was ultimately inducted. Sure enough, there was an “ideal type”: the middle-of-the-road, not-too-easy-but-not-too-difficult variety level. It was only through determining that yes, we would have blob levels (for example) and a reasonable amount of easy levels that some degree of variety was achieved. What was sad was that the voters still had to wade through 1,647 submissions (out of many more) during the voting process, and after all was said and done, some deserving entries that contained elements like blobs didn’t even perform that well and wouldn’t have been included had it not been for the staff’s involvement with postvoting segmenting.
I think we have to acknowledge that these sort of biases are going to exist no matter what. There’s no real way to avoid them. But the CCLP4 staff can conduct the community’s involvement with the project in the context of building a set with variety. Perhaps voting itself can reflect this. Instead of dumping a huge bunch of levels on people to award a rating, why not do the segmenting in voting itself? It could make everything much easier: we could have the staff curate the submissions and decide on what will populate the ballots for “best walker levels,” “best mazes,” “best easy levels,” “best variety levels,” “best strange designs,” “best melee levels,” "best levels with bombs as a dominant tile," etc. For superbroad categories like these, voters could check off as many or as few options as they want to see. It’d essentially be “yes / no” voting, but at least we could begin with the idea that these types of levels would be represented in the final product, and how far that representation would extend could depend on how enthusiastic the responses to certain levels are. We could also create polls for very specific level slots where voters could pick only one option: “best level 1,” “best cypher,” “best level 131 / 147,” “best set finale,” etc.
Of course, this approach may not necessarily cover the entire set directly, but I have confidence that the CCLP4 staff would judiciously use general community opinions and their own hunches as a group to make wise decisions. What I think this approach can ultimately help with is making sure that levels that carry their own senses of identity beyond the “ideal type” are considered fairly. It would also help ensure that community involvement can be in the hands of the community, without tons of pressure. What do you think?
If anyone wants to be on the CCLP4 staff, I highly recommend kicking things off, stepping up, teaming up, and taking charge. A bunch of us are here and ready to support you.