News: Game of the month for Civ V - feedback appreciated

[DaviddesJ]

I don't think we have any common basis for discussion, David. we are clearly using different languages.
Usain Bolt is apparently not the "best" sprinter in the world.

Apparently you don't even care enough to read what I write. It's not surprising we can't have a discussion. I said, it's not essential to competition that it identify who is the "best". I see any number of competitive activities, all around the world in all sorts of areas, where no one really cares who is the "winner" or the "best", the pleasure and enjoyment is from the competition itself.

You respond to this by saying, some competitions do focus on identifying the "best". Your point doesn't really have anything at all to do with my point. It's as if I said, cows can be any color, not just white, and you said, but I saw a white cow!

You illustrate how GOTM has been taken over, since its early days (when no one really cared about being the "best", but they enjoyed the spirit of friendly competition, the idea that by playing the same game and comparing your results to others you could make an essentially solitary activity more social and more interesting), by people who focus way too much on winning and rankings and "cheating" and "enforcement".

Your example illustrates the problem. There are millions of people around the world who run in races. There's one Olympic Games every four years. If you try to make your competition more like the Olympic Games, than like those thousands of races with millions of people, then you shouldn't be surprised that the effect is to reduce participation. It's just a missed opportunity. It's ok with me, I have other things to do with my life. But I think it's a shame.

 

[leif erikson]

Yes, I basically agree with everything except the "TSG" name. I think you've turned off a huge number of people by calling it "TSG" rather than "GOTM". Perhaps names shouldn't matter so much, but they do. They determine people's expectations. Calling it "training" is extremely offputting to the people who might otherwise participate. It's water under the bridge at this point, I just think it was a pretty terrible decision.

Perhaps this is the best reason to dig a bit deeper rather than allowing "labels" to drive decisions.

As to participation, the numbers of submissions for the first bts gotm (161) are comparable to the number of submissions for the first G&K gotm (147).

 

[AlanH]

Please identify one competition that doesn't attempt to rank its competitors. Someone wins a race. they get a prize. It may not be an Olympic medal, but it acknowledges that that person was the best on the day in that event. And it was the primary purpose of the event for the majority of contestants and for the organisers.

Taking part may be fun, but you don't get public recognition for having fun.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Please identify one competition that doesn't attempt to rank its competitors.

I didn't say anything against ranking the competitors. GOTM ranks its competitors by score and finish date, that is at the heart of the competition. "I want to do the best I can" is a healthy attitude. "What matters is that I beat some other person" is not.

Someone wins a race. they get a prize. It may not be an Olympic medal, but it acknowledges that that person was the best on the day in that event. And it was the primary purpose of the event for the majority of contestants and for the organisers.

Well, that really sums it up. It makes me sad that anyone thinks the primary purpose of GOTM would be the prizes. In most competitions that exist in the world, the prizes aren't the primary purpose, not even close.

That's the idea that drives all of the rest of this. If you didn't have this attitude that "prizes are the primary purpose" then you wouldn't have all of this misbegotten emphasis on worrying about whether the "wrong" people get the prizes. But I guess that would require different people.

Every self-identified community evolves, it takes on certain characteristics, the people who like those characteristics tend to join or remain, those who dislike those characteristics tend to depart or stay away, and so those characteristics that develop are enforced by selective pressure.

I used to tell people about GOTM as a great idea. Now it often makes me cringe.

 

[DaviddesJ]

Perhaps this is the best reason to dig a bit deeper rather than allowing "labels" to drive decisions.

As to participation, the numbers of submissions for the first bts gotm (161) are comparable to the number of submissions for the first G&K gotm (147).

The fact that you call it GOTM illustrates how it must really not be important to avoid calling it GOTM!

But, when you talk about "labels driving decisions", I think you're missing the point. The issue is that what you call something changes what it is. It changes how people think about it, and how they act, and that affects the thing itself. The thing you have is different than it would be if you called it by some other name. For better or worse.

I'm glad to hear you have higher participation than I thought. Maybe it meets the needs of your current community pretty well, and you just don't need people like me. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing is going to work for everyone.

 

[tommynt]

how about play the game instead of doing a pointless discussion?

 

[DaviddesJ]

how about play the game instead of doing a pointless discussion?

I guess you missed the subject line.

 

[AlanH]

I didn't say anything against ranking the competitors. GOTM ranks its competitors by score and finish date, that is at the heart of the competition. "I want to do the best I can" is a healthy attitude. "What matters is that I beat some other person" is not.(

We are going round in circles.

A ranking places some people above others in a table. My term "prize" was simply a shorthand for the rank you have achieved. none of the GOTM competition prizes are any more than a few pixels on a screen, so the medals and awards have no more intrinsic value than the other numeric rank values.

Wanting to do the best you can is fine. That implies that you want to improve your performance/ranking. You evaluate whether you have achieved an improvement by seeing your ranking increase. But if you don't know whether the other people in that table are achieving their results by "cheating", or by "playing to a different set of rules" (depends on your perspective), how can you assess your own results?

 

[tommynt]

I guess you missed the subject line.

seems to me like there is non

 

[DaviddesJ]

Wanting to do the best you can is fine. That implies that you want to improve your performance/ranking. You evaluate whether you have achieved an improvement by seeing your ranking increase. But if you don't know whether the other people in that table are achieving their results by "cheating", or by "playing to a different set of rules" (depends on your perspective), how can you assess your own results?

Higher is better than lower. That's true whether other people are "cheating" or not. I'd rather get a higher ranking if everyone else is cheating, and I'd rather get a higher ranking if no one else is cheating. Whether some of them are "cheating" matters to them, but it's completely irrelevant to me.

 

[DaviddesJ]

seems to me like there is non

The subject of this thread is: Game of the month for Civ V - feedback appreciated

The opening post says: "I would like to invite everyone to share their ideas and proposals on how we can improve the way we run the Game of the Month competition. Please use this thread to voice your opinion."

There are lots of other threads about playing the game.

 

[Monthar]

I don't need to "compare like with like" in order to compete with people. Maybe some of them have an advantage because they are cheating. So what? If we're going to talk about advantages, I have an advantage over them because I'm smarter than they are. Does that mean I need earphones blaring out loud random noise, just to level the playing field? Some people who run in the NYC Marathon are professional athletes with sponsors and appearance fees and year-round full-time training, others have day jobs. They can still all run the same race and their times are posted on the same board.

Yet every one of the entrants, no matter what their skill level is, are required to follow the same rules for the marathon or be disqualified. For instance, they must all follow the same course. If anyone attempted the cheat by taking a shortcut, they would be disqualified and their time would not be posted on the boards. Since these rules are in place and enforced, the time comparisons are in fact "comparing like with like", because all participants are running the same race on the same course.

If the folks organizing the marathon didn't enforce the rules, then you'd see every manner of cheating possible, in which case the finish times would be completely meaningless. By proxy, that would make the marathon completely meaningless. All of which would have driven away anyone that actually wanted a fair race to be run. Thus the marathon wouldn't keep happening year after year.

It's the rules and enforcement of the rules in any competition, from an elementary school spelling bee to the super bowl, that ensures fairness and enjoyability for the majority. If not for rules and enforcement of the rules, only the cheaters would actually enjoy themselves.

IMO, anyone who complains about rules enforcement is typically someone who must win at all costs, intends to cheat and just doesn't want to be caught.

 

[DaviddesJ]

It's the rules and enforcement of the rules in any competition, from an elementary school spelling bee to the super bowl, that ensures fairness and enjoyability for the majority. If not for rules and enforcement of the rules, only the cheaters would actually enjoy themselves.

Your position is demonstrably contradicted by the facts. I mean, as Lief says above, there's essentially zero enforcement for the TSG games and yet there's still people participating and enjoying themselves. You claim they must all be cheating?

IMO, anyone who complains about rules enforcement is typically someone who must win at all costs, intends to cheat and just doesn't want to be caught.

This is pretty consistent with what I said above. I don't know of anyone who complains about rules enforcement. I wouldn't have much sympathy for that. I don't place a high priority on rules enforcement, but certainly it does no harm, by itself.

 

[AlanH]

Higher is better than lower. That's true whether other people are "cheating" or not. I'd rather get a higher ranking if everyone else is cheating, and I'd rather get a higher ranking if no one else is cheating. Whether some of them are "cheating" matters to them, but it's completely irrelevant to me.

That would only be a valid statement if each competition you entered had the same mix of players, each using a consistent set of their own rules - and if you also used a consistent set of your own rules. If everyone's rule set varies from month to month you are comparing your ranking against a chimera.

 

[DaviddesJ]

That would only be a valid statement if each competition you entered had the same mix of players, each using a consistent set of their own rules - and if you also used a consistent set of your own rules. If everyone's rule set varies from month to month you are comparing your ranking against a chimera.

So more people might "cheat" one month than the next? So what? There are a million random things that you can't control that affect your "ranking" from month to month. One month you might move before settling and that works out badly for reasons you couldn't have known. Another month you might pop something great from a hut. There are all sorts of things that vary, outside your control. Again, unless you're pathologically obsessed with prizes or "public recognition", it's all pretty trivial. Who doesn't know they might happen to do better sometimes or worse sometimes?

The claim that strict enforcement is somehow essential to GOTM seems to be completely contradicted by the simple observation that participation has gone up from Civ IV even though enforcement has gone down.

 

[AlanH]

I think the logical conclusion of your argument is that we might as well not publish rankings at all - not run a competition at all. Just post a start save every so often and let you all play and discuss it.

I'd be delighted with that option. I could relax and put my feet up, and spend more time with my family. I wouldn't miss my CFC/GOTM salary one little bit .

If everyone agrees, let's do it!

BTW. Re participation levels: I'm not sure how you conclude that Civ5 games are more popular than Civ4. The first 46 Civ4 games attracted over 5000 entries. The first 46 Civ5 TSGs have attracted 1559.

 

[DaviddesJ]

I think the logical conclusion of your argument is that we might as well not publish rankings at all

This proves you're bad at logic.

BTW. Re participation levels: I'm not sure how you conclude that Civ5 games are more popular than Civ4.

I'm just going by what Leif said.

Personally, I'd expect them to be less popular, because of the way the GOTM staff has dismissed the Civ V competition, and because Civ V isn't very good. Sure, if you have a group of people take over the GOTM who do their utmost to make it all about prizes and "public recognition", so they drive away people who are turned off by that, and then they run a series of games in which prizes and public recognition are nonexistent, because of hysteria that someone might "cheat" and thereby win an all-important award to which they aren't entitled, then sure, I would think that you could probably manage to drive participation down to almost zero, since you've repelled almost everyone. The fact that participation has held up at all, says something about the intrinsic appeal of GOTM.

 

[AlanH]

This proves you're bad at logic.

You have said that there is no basis for comparison between player rankings, and adding cheating as another variable simply compounds that. If there is no basis for comparison, then there is no basis for a competition. Please explain the error in that logic.

 

[Arnold_T]

Hey DaviddesJ,
I didn't have the patience to read all of your posts, but I think your main point is that the "TSG" should be named "GOTM", correct? I agree, but it doesn't stop me from playing it. And it doesn't stop hundreds of other people from playing it. Why don't you just play it?!?

Oh, also, BTW I think Civ5 is much superior to Civ4, and I have stopped playing the Civ4-GOTM and only play the Civ5-TSG/GOTMs.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

DaviddesJ, how many Civ 5 TSG's have you played? I am not asking for actual submission counts or anything. They arent required for anything other than tallying results and naming the top 3 in a thread. Have you actually tried very many of the game save files?

This thread doesnt require actual participation to give feedback on GOTMs but I'd like to know if you've tried and liked/disliked the save files absent of any 'competition' discussion.