I’ve seen a few posts from people talking about how they voted. Honestly, I’m not sure how I feel about that. I like the voting to be an organic decision, not something engineered by campaigning.

That said, you can’t stop campaigning, so I guess it’s legit. So here’s my thoughts:

Overall, I liked all the choices in Round 1. All of them felt like viable themes. A few felt too close to previous themes, so we’re easy reject on that basis. Although, I’m not opposed to reusing avoid theme if it’s been a while – as the event grows there will be a lot of people should missed out on the theme the first time around. I had to adjust my thinking from “which of these *could* I build a game about to which do I *want to build a game about.”

On first pass I had 8 +, 1 0 and 1 – votes. Wanting to be more decisive, I took a second pass. Here’s what I thought.

Construction: previously used.
End of the world: I’m sick of zombie apocalypse and mayan calendar stuff.
Guardian: a game where you have to escort and protection could be fun.
Ghosts: I’ve had some ideas for a ghost game for a while, this could be a good time to do something experimental prototyping.
Inverse World: wouldn’t be a bad theme for a game, but I’m not sure how I would invert to make a unique game that was playable. There’s definitely potential, though.
Mirrors: I can imagine a few cool mechanics using mirrors, and some neat graphical tricks.
Outer Space: done to death. Admittedly, a great theme, but I feel like it’s tapped dry by now.
Quarantine: Just doesn’t grab me for some reason.
Salvage: I can imagine a fun game based on finding junk and trading it in for points, or building a New Thing with it.
Symbiosis: a player and a player-aiding AI team up. How would they synergize?
Trapped: Similar to Escape, true, but not necessarily. Maybe it could be a prequel for your Escape game 😉
Unstoppable: all I can think of is the Halting Problem, and Blast Corps on N64.

Tags: theme, voting