Despite the disappointment of not winning, it was a good exercise to go through. Here are some of my takeaways:
- Hit lots of ideas quickly, and filter out any that unreasonable or unoriginal.
- Engage other people that are either interested in the design process or are willing and able to give good feedback.
- (cliche alert) Think outside the box
Although I have not seen the winning entries, I believe that my submitted ideas were too unoriginal more than that they were untenable. In retrospect, I wish I had submitted Instigating, although I'm not convinced that would have done any better. Hopefully I can objectively compare my entries to the winning entries to determine where I fell short.
I was hesitant to "bother" other people with my ideas as well. I don't like rejection and failure, but I love to get constructive criticism. The problem is that I haven't found a definitive source of it. The people I usually game with may or may not be helpful. The primary problem there is that we find our game-time so limited that we would rather play tried-and-true games than playtest something that may not be fun.
It was definitely a worthy exercise, and I look forward to entering future design contests!
