An Idea for Keeping BANGs Going
One interesting thing Rich mentioned during his presentation on Game Offshoots at the GC Summit 2008 (and I believe he mentioned something on this blog a long time ago) is his theory that the reason there hasn't been a BANG 18 yet is that no one felt compelled by their placement in BANG 17 to host the next one. Part of the reason why that happened is the same teams keep winning and either don't want to keep hosting (quite understandable) or are pretty busy developing long term projects (e.g. Google Puzzle Hunt, Games, etc.). I have an idea how to deal with this. Whether it's a good idea or not is another question entirely.
Looking at the BANG Hall of Fame, there are only four teams that have won more than one BANG (some are ties, admittedly), and only three teams that have hosted more than once. Nearly every team that has won has hosted or co-hosted a BANG (Red Sea DespARRRadoes says they will eventually), but teams that have won more than once don't host as often as they win.
So here is my suggestion: All future BANGs would have three comptetive categories, name and degree of difference to be determined by the hosting team. Category 1 would be the casual teams, beginners and intermediates. Category 2 would be the expert/hardcore teams. Category 3 would be any team that has won more than one BANG playing in Category 2, by default. Only the winner of Category 2 would be asked to host the next BANG.
Just an idea.
Looking at the BANG Hall of Fame, there are only four teams that have won more than one BANG (some are ties, admittedly), and only three teams that have hosted more than once. Nearly every team that has won has hosted or co-hosted a BANG (Red Sea DespARRRadoes says they will eventually), but teams that have won more than once don't host as often as they win.
So here is my suggestion: All future BANGs would have three comptetive categories, name and degree of difference to be determined by the hosting team. Category 1 would be the casual teams, beginners and intermediates. Category 2 would be the expert/hardcore teams. Category 3 would be any team that has won more than one BANG playing in Category 2, by default. Only the winner of Category 2 would be asked to host the next BANG.
Just an idea.
Labels: BANG, silly ideas
posted by Skott at 4:23 PM
2 Comments:
Your proposal isn't terribly different from the simple ask we had after BANG 16, which was for the highest finishing team that hadn't yet thrown a BANG to take on the next one. I'm very grateful that the Platonic Solids took that request and dutifully ran the excellent BANG 17, but I guess they also thought it was an undue burden to ask that of another team.
One big difference between our proposal and yours is that you have a category for "casual" teams that are exempt from hosting. I'm not sure why you'd do that, unless there is a limit on how many BANGs a team could play in that division. Otherwise, why should they be exempt?
You're right, it's not that much different. I kinda realized that after I posted. The main thing I was going for was a systemized way to say that the Burninators, Taft, Kittens, and you guys wouldn't necessarily be expected to host if you won, but at the same time making whoever was expected to host feel like the winner.
I had thought about the idea of it taking two wins for any Category 1 team to be asked to host, but I wasn't sure I was happy with that concept. As for letting them off the hook, my thought process was along the lines of "Well, if it was only a single difficulty level, most of the casual teams would never come close to placing high enough and anyway maybe they wouldn't play if they thought there was a chance they'd end up having to host."
Of course, it's a flawed idea. At some point, all teams would end up in Category 3 or hide in Category 1.
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