Ken,
Thanks for an interesting look into another world! I think your analysis
is right on target.
It seems to me that there's another difference between our "Radiosport"
activities and the worlds of Guild Wars et al. It's the difference
between a Contest and a Game.
By "Contest" I mean a competition which seeks to rank its participants in
terms of their demonstrated prowess at something. It might focus on radio
skills (our contests), or physical ability (think athletics), or mental
ability (think chess tournaments), or whatever. A Contest is designed to
test some skill.
By "Game", I mean a competition which seeks to rank its participants only
in terms of their performance in playing the game. The skill they measure
with points is simply the skill at playing the game. A Game is designed to
maximize fun.
Of course, both Contests and Games can involve the need for strategy and
tactics, and serve to exercise our mental and physical abilities. But
Games are more fun, for more players, than Contests. So more people
participate, to play more than to compete.
It might be interesting if you asked your son to find some of his other
Gaming friends who also have a ham license forgotten in some drawer to get
together and design a Game where the playing field is ham radio. No
preconceived notions about what such a game is, just a blank slate. Using
what they know about games, how would they play a game using radio?
Scoring not trying to measure radio skill or level an uneven playing field,
or preserve old records, but just designed to make it fun. They might find
the task of inventing such a game to be an interesting challenge.
They might have some interesting ideas about introducing the "social"
aspect of Games into the radio playing field to increase the fun. For
example, in many of our contests we have the notion of teams. But other
than adding all of their scores together, it doesn't seem to me that teams
today do any coordination during a contest. They're called a "team", but
they're not acting as a team, they're just lone players out on the field,
and may never even encounter each other. Radio contests with teams and
something like "voice chat" to actually behave as a coordinated
multi-player force - that might be interesting and fun - even with today's
scoring schemes in existing contests. Who has the best team strategy and
tactics...?
Your son and friends could invite us old crusty radio experts to play in
their radio Game, and we'd all enjoy the fun of them beating the pants off
us...
73,
/Jack de K3FIV
On Mon, Dec 2, 2013 at 4:36 AM, Ken Low <kenke3x@gmail.com> wrote:
> "I am not attempting to solve any issues with a particular contest. My
> scoring comments then emphasized by Mark, are being suggested as a means to
> sell radio contesting to a huge group of younger people who
> love to compete using computers playing online games.
>
> Aren't the amount of logs being sent in a function of the internet
> reaching almost every location on the planet? Participation should be up
> too as I think we have more amateurs in the world than we ever had.
>
> Making scoring more interesting or dangling carrots in front of
> participants has been a proven method in online gaming. See the series of
> articles recently published in NCJ. We can't fix the age problem unless we
> can interest younger people.
>
> Mike W0MU"
>
>
> If the goal is to attract new, younger, 'Millennial-type' participants to
> Radiosport, minor changes like distance-based scoring won't move the
> needle. Here's why:
>
> My son Patrick, K3PAL got his General class license when he was 13, with
> lots of help from me. He tried a few contests on Phone and RTTY but it
> did not stick - not complex enough to hold his interest. Many real
> challenges of contesting come at the advanced levels (band selection,
> propagation, Run vs. S&P, off times, etc.) which for beginners don't matter.
>
> Now he's 19 and a Freshman at UVM Honors College. Don't ask me how he
> does it, but he's getting A's and B's while spending 2-3 hours a day
> playing Guild Wars 2. Out of 2 million players worldwide, he is ranked in
> the top 150. What's the attraction? It's complex, social and accessible:
>
> 1. SOCIAL FRATERNITY: He is on a team ('guild') where he was
> interviewed for two weeks to verify his skill level. This involved
> streaming his game play for observation and review by the team officers
> before he was admitted. Now he's been admitted it's clear it serves a
> social purpose an an 'elite online fraternity'. They use 'voice chat' to
> coordinate their attacks online.
>
> 2. ACCESSIBILITY: It's available 24/7. Patrick arranges his
> competition schedule around his classes. Millennials like Patrick do not
> operate on a 9-5 schedule ... They operate in a 24/7 mode. His guild
> teammates live in Europe, Silicon Valley, etc. They form teams for 'raids'
> based on day-to-day accessibility.
>
> 3. MATHEMATICAL CHALLENGE: He has completely deconstructed the gaming
> algorithms to increase his scores and attain his current rating, and writes
> User Guides to help other players. It is obvious the mathematical
> complexity aspect is a major attraction.
>
> 4. CONSTANT IN-GAME FEEDBACK: No 'slow rate hours' in his game.
> There is constant action and obstacles to overcome.
>
> 5. LOW BARRIERS TO ENTRY: Patrick builds his own computers from
> scratch since stock models don't have the graphics capabilities he looks
> for. He has dual 24" monitors, 7 fans for cooling, noise-canceling
> headset and a memory keyboard that records his keystrokes for playback
> which helps him kill certain monsters. Total investment was about $1,700
> but the ongoing costs are FIOS Internet fees only. Total cost = a big
> tribander.
>
> You can see the parallels to Radiosport in all 5 aspects I described
> above. But you can also see how hard it is for Amateur Radio to compete
> for Millennials' attention.
>
> A small Postscript: As you can imagine, our dinner table conversation
> frequently goes like this: "Hey Pal, how about a little less gaming and
> turning those few 'B's into all A's"? To which I get the infamous
> 'teenager blank stare' back.
>
> But as he's majoring in Business and Economics and will probably start his
> own company one day, I don't push too hard. It's clear he knows 'the
> Millennial marketplace' better than I do. Most importantly, when his
> company goes public, he'll be a prospective client for me at UBS Private
> Wealth Management :-)
>
> 73,
>
> Ken KE3X
>
>
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