Would you participate in a practice GDS run by Goblin Artisans? How much time would you be willing to invest in such a contest, given that there'd be no internship prize?
Would a sample multiple-choice test be a valuable preparation tool?
What role does Magic design play in your life, on a scale from "It's a fun way to kill time" to "I'm gonna work in R&D someday, somehow"?
I'd play in both; I have no illusions of getting myself hired, so both are just for fun for me.
ReplyDeleteAlso from what I've read of performance, not only would a sample test be valuable, but many of them would help you practice in ways just studying wouldn't.
I plan on participating, with the goal of being a finalist and ultimately winning the GDS3. If I do not make it to the finals, I would gladly participate as a community contributor.
ReplyDeleteI would absolutely participate in a GDS run on GA. That sounds like loads of fun and a great way to prep. Who would be judging?
I'm assuming that the person(s) judging would also be coming up with the test questions. As long as the questions were taken from known public information on wizards processes (and not opinion based) I could see that as being a valuable prep tool for sure! :-)
As far as Magic, and its role in my life
"I'm going to work at R&D someday, somehow, or die trying"
Great idea HavelockV!
The GDSi (Imaginary Great Designer Search) is not something that's going to happen immediately, or even in the next few months. It's on my list of projects to run at GA. But if it were to happen, it would probably involve me and at least one other GA author as regular judges, with a rotating cast of guest judges.
DeleteCompiling a list of questions from things Wizards has revealed over the years would make for a good preparation exercise, I think. Obsolete Vapor Ops questions, choice answers from the three tumblrs, etc.
DeleteMaro specifically stated on his tumbler that GDS3 questions would not come from it unless the knowledge was also available on the mothership.
DeleteThat's true. I just meant it's another angle to attack getting questions from.
DeleteGreat idea! I'd love to participate in any GDS, regardless of setting or rewards. If I entered a Wizards GDS and somehow won the internship I'd jump at the opportunity, but Magic design is mostly just something that I love to think and talk about. (More than a way to "kill time", though!)
ReplyDeleteYes to everything, as a contestant or judge or whatever.
ReplyDeleteOne way we could do the multiple choice is to have each designer submit one unique question of his or her own devising (in serial, so there are no duplications) and then letting the community discuss what the best answer is.
Interesting idea! That would certainly spread the work around. However, there's also something to be said for a single holistic vision of what the test is covering.
DeleteI think this is an interesting idea as well. Perhaps in order to figure out who is serious about competing (similar to the essay questions in the real GDS) you could have each person submit say 5-10 test questions with answers. Then one person could take what they feel are the 20 or so best questions from the pool (no more than 2 of which can be from the same designer) and construct a test for the rest of us to take? This would allow for a test with more of a holistic vision then just using all submitted questions, and would also help determine who was interested in participating.
DeleteI concur that this is a very good idea. A nice resource in this is the judge training test of wizards. When taking the test I kept thinking that some questions could be tweaked into questions about design.
DeleteI plan to take part in GDS3 (and hope to win) when it takes place, and I'd certainly be interested in participating in GDSi in whatever role makes sense.
ReplyDeleteI like Jay's idea of community submitted questions, though we'd need a good way to weed out questions that are matters of opinion.
Weren't there matters of opinion in the tests for GDS1+2?
DeleteAll the essay questions were matters of opinion.
DeleteMost of the multiple-choice questions were pretty straightforward (asking about color pie, keyword abilities, psychographics, design trends from MTG's history) and of those that could be argued more than one way, the "right" answer was typically something WotC/MaRo has made an official statement about on the mothership.
Examples from GDS2:
17) Of the following reasons, which is the least important reason that Design creates vanilla creatures?
40) From a design standpoint, what is the most important advantage of the variance of the draw to Magic?
50) From a design standpoint, what is the most realistic threat to Magic's long-term health?
None of these questions were among the top five missed questions on the test, showing that it's possible to make the right answer "obvious" even if the other four answer choices seem reasonable to an outside observer.
I suppose I'm a bit of an odd duck here at the GA community. Despite having participated in 34 of 52 design challenges (yes, I keep count on a spreadsheet) I actually find development, flavor, rules/templating, and draft format construction all more interesting than individual card design.
ReplyDeleteWhile I wouldn't participate in a GDS I would enjoy following along with it and tossing out the odd suggestion from time to time.
There have been 52 design challenges? Woo, one year!
DeleteYou may not be status quo (who is?), but you're not an odd duck: Many of us enjoy one or more of those related aspects quite a bit.
You're not odd; I really want to try my hand at world-building, which could have literally zero "design" in it. That's what I get for being a writer. Fantastic new universes and all that.
DeleteI think it would be interesting to have some more developer-style challenges. It's a lot harder to do that on a single card, since developer normally balances an entire set. But things like "design a keyword that's not too broken" or "design a card which fits into an X strategy" are the developer-end of card design.
DeleteIn practice, both Design and Development require real playtesting, but that is rarely an option (since it's inconvenient to playtest online, and so hard to get Magic players to play fake cards). That's why I tend to stick to skin-deep design challenges. Development, in my experience, is even more flawed when done armchair-style. Which is why you don't see as much of that.
DeleteThat said, you're far from the only one interested in more Development, jack.
I'll enter the GDS3, and live in the US, but I expect to hopefully work as a community contributor behind one of you guys. I definitely don't think I'm ready for the big-leagues.
ReplyDeleteI'd give the GDSi my all, though, as contestant or judge!
Similarly to what has been stated above, I find this more than a way to pass some time. It is always a moment of pleasure participating in the challenges and discussions.
ReplyDeleteI would love to participate and help with GCDi if at all possible.
As far as working as a mtg designer, it is a dream job albeit one that seems a bit impossible to acheive given my current location and carreer.
I'm planning to enter GDS3, but as far as actually winning, I don't know that I have what it takes. Thankfully, I'm on track to have a good steady career (side note: I think I'm one of the youngest Artisans). But R&D is certainly a dream every now and then. GA has definitely inspired me to be a community contributor next time though, even if for some reason I don't enter.
ReplyDeleteGDSi would be awesome, though I don't know that I'll have time until the summer.
Magic is a huge part of my life, though it has been waning recently. Again, I would love to work in R&D. I find design, development (which I'm not very good at), templating, and creative (especially world-building) all fascinating.
I find the creative aspect of Magic fascinating as well. Its funny that the two of us were finalists in MJ Scotts fiction contest, and also frequently post here. Small world-er internet...
DeleteI'm fascinated by GDS, and I almost want to compete just to prove to myself how good I am. But realistically, I don't want to win, I don't want to start over with a new career, designing magic is cool, but I prefer the career I've already got.
ReplyDeleteI'd be interested in GDS-style challenges, but I probably couldn't commit to a lot of time in advance. I think essay questions would be very interesting, but difficult to judge fairly if the judges aren't Mark Rosewater. I think multiple-choice questions would be interesting, but are hard to design well and likely to involve a disproportionate amount of effort writing the questions.
I spent a lot of time trying to help MTGColorPie get into the finals for GDS2, even though I live in the UK and am not eligible. I took both multiple choice tests when they were up publicly. I'd jump in when I could.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, to answer my own questions:
ReplyDeleteI didn't enter GDS1 because I wanted to finish grad school.
I participated in GDS2 as a community contributor (after narrowly missing the multiple-choice cut-off) and loved it. It was exhilarating to be part of something so big, and seeing my designs posted on the Daily MTG with comments from R&D was thrilling.
I've been waiting for GDS3 since the day GDS2 ended.
I will most likely participate in the next Great Designer Search, even though my GDS2 submission clashed in numerous ways with Maro.
ReplyDeleteI was very encouraged when I made it into the top 101, but all my design decisions were wrongheaded. I submitted a color weighted set with more Blue cards and didn't sell how that would be attractive to all players. I used really iffy mechanics and didn't implement them well. I though it would be clever to make my Planeswalker'new' and gave her two abilities and a triggered effect. My Spike cards and Timmy cards were too Johnny-ish. I used a named counter types rather than +1/+1 counters. I used creature types WotC doesn't want to support anymore. I didn't cultivate design support on the wiki. The only thing I walked away liking was my decision to include Humans as the victims in the story I was telling. Waaay before Innistrad.
All this is to say I feel I've learned things as a designer since then and would like an opportunity to try again. GDSi sounds like a lot of fun.
The million dollar question. In my headcannons, I was in 9th place for GDS2 (Although it's more likely I was actually 101st). I definitely think I could be a contender for GDS3, but family and life might stop me from entering in the first place. It would largely depend on what was happening in my life whenever they kick it off.
ReplyDeleteLiving in the UK and no desire to move to the USA, so sadly not going to participate in GDS3 as a contestant. I'll be up for chipping in to the community from time to time.
ReplyDeleteMagic design is one of my major hobbies (well, inasmuch as developing, maintaining and participating in Magic Multiverse is one of my major hobbies). If WOTC R&D opened a British branch I'd love to join, but I don't want to live in the US so I doubt it'll ever be more than a hobby. I've occasionally considered trying to make money from it by writing for SCG or trying to build up my reputation to be the House of Cards author for dailymtg, but I think I prefer it as a lower-level hobby than that.
For the GDSi, there wouldn't be the same reason not to enter, so I'd probably enter :) The only reason against my entering would be that my time to participate would be somewhat limited by other factors (3-month-old baby, working with publisher on a board game design, etc).
You design board games too? What are you working on?
DeleteHeh. I guess I have about four "active-ish" German-style games in design at the moment, for varying degrees of activeness. The most active one is a steampunk inventors worker-placement game that is likely to be in games stores in 2015 (contract with publisher has been signed), a situation I'm rather excited about :)
DeleteI have a few other games in varying levels of ongoing development, including one other that a publisher expressed interest in but then that publisher kinda stopped publishing.
Do I infer from "too" that you do as well?
Congratulations!
DeleteI do. No signed contracts yet, but I've got a couple games in the Storyteller Cards manual, and Legacy of the Slayer is available for purchase on The Game Crafter now. My real passion are the games that I've showed off at conventions to good reception, but I'm still either iterating on those or looking for the right publisher. One of them is being made into an iPad game as we speak.
GDS3i: Sounds like fun. I'd be up for participating and probably follow along if I couldn't. Individual card challenges are neat, but larger issues are kind of where I am right now as a designer (developing an emotional tone/feel or exploring mechanical space over 20-40 cards). Further broadening the scope of GA's content would probably rope me back in.
ReplyDeleteGDS3(for reals): Absolutely. For both DGS1 & GDS2 I missed out by one point in the multiple choice tests.
How large is Magic in my life: As far as playing goes, not as much as I would like. Life gets in the way sometimes. I am thinking about starting a youth group or Magic after school club at my son's school. Its a win-win :) My drive to design is somewhat listless atm. I designed three sets in two years, and now I'm just kind of not feeling it. Its cyclical though, so I'll be at it again eventually.