Saturday, March 9, 2013

Episode 64: Player competitions

This is episode 64 of Roguelike Radio, which is a large panel discussion about competitions in roguelikes, including the monthly Angband competition, the weekend Brogue competition, the Junethack and /dev/null Nethack competitions, the biannual Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup tournament and the ADOM "Weakest Link" competition. Talking today are Nick McConnell, Francis Garcia, Steven Steinke, Patric Mueller, David Ploog, Rachel Dillon, Darren Grey and Andrew Doull.

You can download the mp3 of the podcast, play it in the embedded player below, or you can follow us on iTunes.



Topics discussed in this episode include:
 - The Angband competition started by Tony Holmes and currently run by Nick McConnell
 - The weekend Brogue competition started by mikeym and currently run by Francis Garcia aka fugori
 - A Brogue midweek competition started by Steven Steinke aka sorta-stupid, which used a shared save file in media res (this is different to the current Brogue midweek competition)
 - The Junethack competition which Patric Mueller is involved with, including his presentation at IRDC 2012 (pdf)
 - The differences in motivation and approach between Junethack and the original /dev/null Nethack competition
 - The Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup tournament started by Rachel Dillon and the interplay between the development of DC:SS and the post release competitions (some stats from David Ploog)
 - The ADOM "Weakest Link" competition started by Darren Grey and how the ADOM community approaches competitions in a different light (you can find more examples by searching for "weakest" in the ADOM forum thread titles)
 - How player skill and enjoyment is affected by a competitive environment
 - How scoring systems influence player behavior and ways of encouraging risky play


Join us next time for an episode on communities.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for having me on a great show! It was really fun talking to all of you.

    I made a post on my blog that extends the NetHack related links: http://unnethack.wordpress.com/2013/03/09/roguelike-radio-episode-64-player-competitions/

    ReplyDelete
  2. version____period__players__runes__winners__winrate
    __0.11____10/2012____1545____400_____214_____1.18%
    __0.10_____3/2012____1568____372_____183_____1.10%
    __0.9______8/2011____1337____264_____116_____0.86%
    __0.8______5/2011____1523____264_____108_____0.79%
    __0.7______8/2010____1091____229_____109_____0.72%
    __0.5______8/2009_____737____208______90_____1.01%
    __0.4______8/2008_____385____101______50_____1.23%

    Notes:
    1. Crawl tournaments are hold after releases. Since 0.5, there are two releases each year, traditionally in February and September.
    2. runes = number of players who got at least one rune
    3. tournaments up to 0.7 took the whole of August; tournaments since 0.8 take 16 days (three weekends).
    4. The 0.4 tournament started with a single server (CAO); the 0.11 tournament used four servers (CAO, CDO, CSZO, CSN).
    5. Since 0.8, tournaments allow webtiles play.
    6. Clans were supported from 0.7 and onwards.
    7. Banners/Awards were given since 0.4.
    8. Rules for the 0.11 tournament at seleniac.org/crawl/tourney/12b

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. An easier to read version is linked in the blog post:

      http://pastebin.com/KDUqmJYT

      Delete
  3. Thank you for a most interesting episode! Particularly for the part about the refinement of scoring systems as well as the part about the emergence of clan play.

    ReplyDelete