a history of VI element rules 4E Elements - Earth, Fire, Wind, Water Rule - Entries missing ANY of the four elements will be immediately disqualified. 4E2 Elements - Earth, Fire, Wind, Water Rule - Entries missing ANY of the four elements will be immediately disqualified. 4E3 Elements - Water, Wind, Earth, Fire Rule - Entries missing ANY of the four elements will be immediately disqualified. 4E4 Elements - Robots, Pirates, Ninjas, Zombies Rule - Entries including less than two (2) of the four elements will be immediately disqualified. 4E5 Elements - Emotion, Economics, Emblem, Europe Rule - Entries that do not include all four elements will be disqualified. Each element must have a significant presence in the game. 4E6 Elements - ?,?,?,? Rule - Entries that do not include at least three of the four elements will be disqualified. An element must have a significant presence in the game to be considered as included. A note is that none of the two judging criteria listed for the contests allowing a reduced number of element inclusions, 4E4 and 4E6, have judging policies on said diminished inclusion. So using only 3 of the four elements in 4E6 gives you no disadvantage compared to someone using all 4. I personally liked requiring all, however 4eIV only required two and I thought that was too liberal. I like the 3/4 Theme requirement... but that makes me wonder, is it really a 4 elements contest if you only have to incorporate 3? Perhaps it’s "the 4 available elements contest". I'm wondering what other member's thoughts are on not requiring all 4 elements. I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up yet. Perhaps a justification would be since we are no longer using the standard earth, wind, water, fire elements; it becomes too awkward to include all the listed elements in a singular format w/out seeming a bit contrived. My statement to this idea is, if that is the case the criteria for element selection needs to be reworked. ps - But perhaps it was discussed during previous Element contest? I don’t know. Thoughts? [Edited by - mindrot on September 26, 2007 2:51:33 PM]

If the only elements you were allowed were the 4 listed...

i think the idea for 'judging the elements' is executed by the rejection process.

if game qualifies - then thats your point - after that point, for the most part, elements are ignored.

i think the reasoning for this is.
lets say i made an rpg using 4 elements and its a great fun story based game with elements

then you made a sandbox game... and the 4 elements are all there are to work with...its an essential core element of your game...because thats all your game is...manipulation of those elements.

im not saying either game is better or worse than the other
which is exactly the point
the sandbox style game shouldnt get more credit for making the elements CORE
both games passed through the filter and thus are judged equally after that point.

now - the question i kinda asked above is ... should inclusion of ALL elements (regardless of how CORE they are) be rewarded... that i still dont know.

i think that its the reason past contests have varied...
at first they over compensated by allowing only 2 elements
then they went back to full restriction
now they are meeting in the middle.
well see how it works out

In a way I'm a bit relieved there's a three element rule. Last year I had the beginnings of heaps of good ideas for workable contest entries, but I had to scrap them when I could only fully incorporate three elements with the fourth only able to be bolted on.

In 4E4 most people incorporated three or four elements even though they only required two, although many focused on two as "strong" elements with the others as extras. I expect something similar will happen this contest - most will attempt to have all four, but one mightn't be as well integrated as the other three.

But it all depends on the elements - we'll have an idea tomorrow how easy it will be to incorporate all four elements into a game idea!