News You Can Bruise for 2012 April 10

I was worried that no one would enter the CDBOEGOACC contest and it would be like a party where no one showed up. But ten people put in 29 entries, which is a pretty good party. I'm pretty sure all the entrants are Constellation Games subscribers, so I gotta work on my crossover appeal, but I'm happy with the turnout.

Once again, the grand prize is a galley copy of Constellation Games which will hopefully be delivered a few days before the paperback comes out. Even I don't have a galley copy, so you know it's exclusive. There'll also be a random drawing, and the winner will get a free basic-level subscription. Although since everyone who entered is already a subscriber, I don't know if you want that. Maybe you can give it to a friend, maybe you can negotiate a different prize with Kate, the publisher.

Anyway, let's take a look at the entries:

• First, you gotta check out Andrew Perry's nerdtastic entries. He took little bits of worldbuilding I'd scattered around the novel and created (AFAIK) the first piece of Constellation Games fan fiction, featuring realistic Farang, Alien, and Wazungu games, plus one created for humans by a Smoke submind. I especially liked the "Flase Daylight".

  In a non-ironic twist, Andrew's fidelity to existing Constellation Games canon was what cost him the award. Since I wrote the stuff he was stitching together, reading his CDBOEGOACC entries didn't make me feel like I was on a flight of fancy. But, I have asked Kate for dispensation to award Andrew the special CDBOEGOACC Jury Prize.

All the other entries were short concept quotes posted to Twitter. I've archived all of them here because I really hate the way Twitter's UI consigns the past to a dark, eternal oubliette.

• Ornithopter:
  • The Way Arounding: hide your shameful underscale color from your husband's husband while negotiating a wedding contract with him
  • "An invading army is coming. You have 3 days to store fat for hibernation and to bury yourself deep enough to avoid detection."
  • Young-Time Architecture: Design a nest for your eggs of sufficient complexity to prevent yourself from eating them.
  • Fish or Other Fish?: You are captured by Roetus. Arrange patterns of color to convince them you're sentient before they eat you. (The title "Fish or Other Fish?" comes from an event in Dolkoan history where a fish and its twin competed for war-minister.)
  • No Never Negation No No!: Find the lost start-card to your transport shuttle in a series of exotic locations. #cdboegoacc
  • No Never Negation No No No!: Sequel to NNNNN! You are the transport-shuttle's start card. Hide to extend your owner's vacation.
• George Buckenham:
  • Thermal Vent Orchestrator: Intended as a test of vent-controlling verisimilitude, but usually played for laughs with cheats on.
  • "When Catastrophe Strikes, Emulate the Octopus" [he adds: "this is actually the title of a Wired article"]
• Benhimself:
  • Xarthru: "Falling shapes composed of four blocks descend from above, arrange them in lines to clear them and score." Wait, what?
  • Squigglers III: Eat delicious parasites off the tentacle monster on which you live without becoming a meal yourself!
  • Launch asteroids at a planet using the gravity wells of other orbiting planets to save energy.The other player will return fire. [This is very similar to "Occluded Occlusion", an Ip Shkoy game mentioned in chapter 33. -LR]
• Gus Andrews
  • Pentathlon: Behemoth bowling, cotyledon racing, flailing, cube dancing, bluntshooting
  • Aesthetics-driven, unscored "doing-the-dozens"-style attempt to outdo other players by producing the most nuanced cloud of gas
• Tikitu de Jager
  • Bloom: Rediscover the excitement of first pollination. Only this time YOU decide where the seeds fall.
  • Society: Out-game negotiations influence in-game status, and (where not prohibited by applicable social strictures) vice versa.
• Adam Parrish
  • one player must communicate a terminal semantic taxon to others without using distal mouthparts or pheromone glands
• Brendan Adkins
  • "Largely Automated Testimony Extractor:" Only a game inasmuch as one can play to lose.
  • "Hit The Button Before Anyone Else Hits The Button:" Popularity declined after players began using relativistic time dilation.
  • "My Friend The Modular Dissent Repression System:" Hacks a hunter-drone's neural core to prioritize cuddling.
  • "Inferior Gasband:" Created to defame a rival pseudofamily. Rivals later ate the designer and produced a successful sequel.
  • "If You Outscore This Game's Designer At This Game Her Agents Will Implode Your Home Village With Hydrocarbons:" No longer true.
  • "That's Enough:" designed for slowphase, an innovative anti-cheating system emits UV flares if the player displays life-signs.
  • "Meatchild:" An innovative control scheme allows up to 4 million of Her hive-units to cooperatively guide a single biped.
• Mirabai Knight
  • A long-scope evolutionary commerce game in which shoemakers must adapt to the cyclic disappearance and reappearance of feet.
• Evan Baer (who entered after the deadline, but I'll at least put his entry up here)
  • Stop, Memmings! subvert attempts of adorable figures to prevent access to Constellation drop boxes, which are empty when opened.

I thought all the entries were really good, although Adam may have been phoning it in. C'mon, Adam, this ain't Apples to Apples. Anyway, I'm excluding Adam and Brendan from consideration because they were beta readers. Here are my three favorites (apart from Andrew's, which I've already spilled the beans that it didn't win):

• "An invading army is coming. You have 3 days to store fat for hibernation and to bury yourself deep enough to avoid detection." [Ornithopter]
• Pentathlon: Behemoth bowling, cotyledon racing, flailing, cube dancing, bluntshooting [Gus Andrews]
• A long-scope evolutionary commerce game in which shoemakers must adapt to the cyclic disappearance and reappearance of feet. [Mirabai Knight]

And the winner of the Constellation Games galley copy is... Ornithopter! I loved their game concept because it tied into a theme I don't really explore in CG: the repurposing of really awful historical situations as entertainment simulations.

But don't give up yet, non-disqualified entrants! We've still got the random drawing. And here's some Python code to perform it:

>>> import random
>>> entrants = ["Andrew Perry", "Ornithopter", "George Buckenham", "Benhimself", "Gus Andrews", "Tikitu de Jager", "Mirabai Knight"]
>>> random.choice(entrants)
'Andrew Perry'

OK, well, that worked out. Andrew Perry will receive the random drawing prize, and we'll just call it the CDBOEGOACC Jury Prize.

And that's it for the gala CDBOEGOACC giveaway contest! I hope it was a fun time. I certainly enjoyed watching people come up with this stuff.