The end results were pretty close, but nothing I thought unexpected:
- Ponies: 4 votes
- Accountants: 6 votes
- Crystals: no votes
- Explosions: 1 vote
I ended up not voting myself, because when you think about it it's actually not that simple. The level of difficulty for each of the elements depends on a range of factors, which I would broadly split into two areas, design and implementation. There is also the issue of ensuring that the element is appropriately incorporated to meet the nature of the contest, which may become an issue if you try to twist the definition of an element too hard.
"Crystals" is, in my opinion, the easiest element to include, and it seems the poll voters agree with me there. There is a large amount of scope as to what the crystals can be and what they are used for in the game. A crystal is also easy to draw and even easier to model in 3D. You also don't need to animate it, except for maybe a few sparkly effects.
"Accountants" as an element is a lot more challenging. As I've written before, the nature of an accountant is very specific; it's hard to get around the definition of having a person or equivalent entity that balances figures of some kind. That really limits the sorts of roles that element can pose, and shakes your perceptions out of the safety zone. I admit I was rather taken back by its inclusion as an element, but the more I've thought about it the more it grows on me.
Adding an accountant does however pose significant design challenges. The main challenge I see is that a game's accountant doesn't really qualify in my mind unless he does some accounting. I don't think it will work well to just take, say, the end boss and dress him up as an accountant; you'd need to make his evil plan based on accounting without it seeming forced.
"Ponies" is an element of a slightly different class of difficulty. There is some significant design challenges involved too; a pony is different from a horse, and in my mind you can't just interchange the two without some reasonable explanation. For example, you can have a cavalry unit be based on ponies, but it would have to be either fantasy or on those historical units that actually used ponies instead of horses. Personally though I think the design challenges are easier for including ponies than for accountants.
The real challenge for including ponies, which I don't think many entrants have considered yet, is the implementation. Ponies and horses are one of the hardest creatures to animate well, as Richard Williams pointed out in The Animator's Survival Kit, and the Four Elements contest traditionally has been more heavily slanted towards programmers than artists. Consequently, designs need to take into account that it may be a right pain to include a fully animated horse model or sprites in the final version. I suspect we'll be getting some extremely funky ponies in the final submissions.
"Explosions" is one of the more deceptively difficult elements. Since many games include explosions in some form it is very easy to just chalk this one up as a gimme. However, since it is listed as an element, in my view it needs to take equal billing with the other three in terms of the game experience. That means that explosions somehow need to be a critical part of the design rather than just mere eyecandy. This isn't too hard to do on its own, but a fair bit more challenging in a game with ponies, accoutants and crystals in it.
Luckilly, we've been given the option of only have three elements this year. I find it easier myself to try to think of ideas involving all four so I don't have to worry about which one to leave out, but I like having the option of making one of the four substantially weaker than the rest with no penalty.
Discussion is welcome, it will help with the brainstorming!
