Pet Sematary, eh? =P

I'm always impressed when I watch a talk about education on TED, but here is one with a business twist that I think is worth watching, if you haven't already...just putting this out there for anyone on these boards that may be interested. It involves scientific studies about motivation and creativity and how it relates to problem solving in a business setting. Enjoy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrkrvAUbU9Y

It's on Youtube , but part of the TED network that has a huge amount of educational talks given in a global forum.

"CONTEST PERIOD: The Design a Spell Contest ("Contest") starts on November 11th, 2010 and closes on December 13, 2011 at 12:00 PM Eastern Time."

More than a year to submit a spell? How nice of you to give us time to think!

actually this is the correct info from the page

'Contest moderators will choose the top five most creative/implementable spells. The top five will be posted and you, the community, will choose the winner! Submissions must be received by December 13, 2010 at 12:01am"

harpo

I wrote a huge 

I wrote a huge reply expanding on this.  Then I accidentally hit "reload" and the forum ate it.  I wish this forum software saved drafts...

Basically, my point was: look to Magic the Gathering's color system.  MTG has five colors, and each one has a strongly established "flavor", backed up by assigning mechanics to one color or another.  For instance, most of the spells that kill a creature outright are black.  As evidence that the colors are well-defined, Magic players have strong intuitions about which color a given spell belongs in (and sometimes complain that spells have the "wrong" color); conversely, if all I tell you about a Magic spell is that it is blue, I've just vastly reduced the sort of spell that it could be (for instance, it's not going to deal direct damage to a target).

Limiting each element to a well defined domain of influence would give each element much more personality than they seem to have now; they would mean something instead of just being a bunch of different slots to fill.  I think a good metric is one I alluded to earlier: if I describe a spell to you, you should be able to tell me which elements it must belong to (there could be multiple if the spell works in more than one domain).

Do we know the same me?  As in the...  I mean the...  Hmmm, how to articulate this....

You think I have good ideas!?

I haven't had a good idea since Beta...  I know how to produce results...  Out of other people...  I know how to rationally and politely argue a point...  But good ideas?  Nononononono, you must mean someone else...

But...  You quoted my post...  That must be a misquote....  There's just no-....  Hmmm...

Well...  I have a few ideas....  But I'm saving my ideas...  Because I have something better scattered amongst the clutter-ridden recesses of this thing I call a brain...  Somewhere........  I just gotta find it....  I should write more stuff down...

But seriously, I'm not going to bother unless Derek or Brad or someone at Stardock can promise me that, IF I, by some miracle, win, I'll get my prize.

I just want to re-inforce Derek's point from before, this contest is just here because we think it will be fun for the community.  The spell wishlist/feedback forum is different in that it is a place where you can share cool ideas for spells and mechanics, however, we aren't looking to simply pull spells from there directly into the game.  

This contest is so someone can look at a spell in the game and have the joy of saying "I came up with that".  Also don't take a desire for community involvement as us being devoid of ideas for new spells or content.  We have plenty of ideas but we also realize how important the community is to our products and want to involve you whenever possible.

Basically, have fun trying to win free stuff and don't worry, we are working on the game all day every day, sorry that there was a lull in dev journals keeping you up to date with whats going on internally here but there is a lot of work to be done

It will not appear in the list until it is moderated.  This could take anywhere from a few minutes to a few days depending on the time availability of our moderators.

Bara

I second Mandelik's sentiment.  The Spell I'd like to see is listed there...Spell/magic reflect!

GJ Mandelik

According to that thread itself:

Which implied to me that spells might very well be taken off that thread and put into the game. When the contest was announced, that purpose seemed in doubt. And now this:

confirms the redefinition of the purpose of the thread. I am a bit annoyed, not because Stardock is giving away prizes, but because I feel mislead about the purpose of the original spell suggestion thread. My annoyance is not more or less than if spell suggestions were being solicited (again) without a prize. I feel like I wasted my time contributing to that original thread. That may or may not be the case - maybe it had some influence, maybe I'll see that influence in the game at some future date or read about it in a dev journal - but I don't see it right now, so I feel like my time was wasted. When you feel like your time is wasted, you are allowed to be annoyed.

For me, the gripe is not about getting ideas into the game. It's about the sustained refusal on Stardock's part to take the magic system seriously as content that should underpin and shape every other aspect of a fantasy TBS with the subtitle "War of Magic." A game world based on a magical cataclysm was a fascinating idea, and seemed fully worthy of aspiring to be MoM's 'spiritual successor.'

Now we seem well on the way to a medieval wargame with a secondary 'technology' system that's mostly about fancy graphics as alternatives to a tried and true hail of arrows or heroically-wielded battle axe. The magic just ain't magical. Getting some player-designed spells into the game is no substitute for ripping out the essence mechanics entirely; they were what gave the project its potential to become the new leader of the genre. I can understand not believing in magic in the real world, but I'm stumped as to why the devs seem to not believe in it as a fundamental part of this project.

Here's the crappy thing about language. The above quote could mean a number of things. It could mean that Brad created that thread just to tease us into believing that our input is actually being considered, only to give us the finger later. Or it could mean that spells as they are posted in that thread will not necessarily be taken 'as is', but the spell ideas, and what more of the community seems to want will be taken as a guideline for designing the different aspects of the game.

How you choose to take it depends on which way you like to fill your glass.