Ruminations
Why is Armagetron so good? Here are some reasons. Feel free to add and anotate as you see fit.
what exactly is a team?
If we are flexible with a non-seeded or non-set-up play-off tree, so team-captains or whatever arrange matches with whoever, how about playing around with the notion of a team.
Let's say my team beats another team which contains the amazing Mazuffer. We could ask him to join our team as a sub. If we encounter a team where our strategies don't work and we look like we are going to lose, perhaps we could ask Maz to play for us... This may sound a little odd, but the Romans did it with their soldiers, and I think the Greeks did it with they generals...?
What is important, is that the team wins. It is kind of like how to learn GO well, or maybe chess. You compliment the opponents move, and by doing so, you learn what a good position is, rather than taking sides...
why choose a better team?
If team-captain/exemplars can choose which team to play, what stops them from choosing some crappy team, and leaving the better ones for later...? Nothing... apart form the risk that they may be beaten and they don't get a chance to meet a good team, and that good team wins the championship after beating a team that had a freak win.
However, to balance things out, what happens if there was an incentive to play a good team, even the favourites? Well, I remember playing some hockey tournaments, and when we were beaten by a team, I would support them. Why? Because if they ended up winning the tournament, then we got beaten by the champions, and in some way, we were in the same position as the people who came second. Now, this has little value in a poxy hockey tournament, however, if prizes were given not only for how far they got in a knock-out tree but also by how close they were to the winning team... So, a team might want to play against a good team if they were going to win more prizes by doing so...
It also opens up the opportunity for related teams, teams which are part of the same clan, to knock each other out, work their way up the leader-board, until risking it by playing an outside or unknown team... And if their team set-up was flexible, they could re-organise the winning teams.
strategy game
Millions used to play chess. With a few simple rules, an active mind can combine moves to win an advantage over an opponent. No luck involved, apart from the matching of player styles and contextual factors effecting the players' states of mind.
Computers introduce another level of play to the classic strategy board game with their processing capacity: automated tasks can be performed by the computer, creating a more complex 'board', one that changes through time. For example Tetris and Snake both include the irresistable momentuum of time, forcing players to develop preventative strategies to avoid unpleasant future events.
The internet expands the notion of a two-player strategy game (opening up the field, setting a level playing field) and thus heralds multiplayer and team games. Of course, multiplayer games are quite taxing in terms of board-games, with players taking turns traditionally, sequentially, with administrative tasks taking up too much time thus limiting the number of players than can practically play a game.
So, as computer games continue providing people with ever more complex environments, realistically simulating battle-fields for example, so there is space in the virtual library of games for chess-like or GO-like strategy games. Armagetron is such a game, and specifically Fortress. It is simple, with defined parameters. Because the game can be played with only two keys, and the motion of the lightcycles is relentless, the real game is shifted away from the representation, from lightcycles and trails as much as from bits of wood or stone on a board, to the abstract relationships in space and time in the mind of the players. Simple rules providing complex behaviour. It pits player against player, and with the judicious balance of teamwork and individual skill, winning teams display the grace of effortlessness and depth of play.
teamplay
There are two operational levels of a team: interteam competition and intrateam co-operation.
Competition is the obvious result when teams come together. It is merely the extension of the individual competition which we are so familiar with growing up in a family and what we nominally term the educational system. Competition between.
At a lower level of organisation is the co-operation between elements of a team. A good team works well together. They know what their respective roles are, and they are ready to step in and assist their teammates when required.
Teamplay involves both levels: a target for the team to gell together, for the elements to combine effortlessly, to produce a result impossible alone, and even improbable as a collection of individuals.
Fortress is about individuals working together, supporting one another... the result of which is a formidable team which might even be able to compete against a gang of highly skilled though individualistic players.
