Design File drew, as they say, mixed notices. The interview with Reiner Knizia was a unanimous success, even to the extent of being described as the best piece ever in Sumo by one subscriber. He has since been excommunicated, I am back with my analyst and Dave Farquhar will be promoted to editor from issue 17. Whatever, Dave certainly did a good job on this and it showed that the careful preparation of questions was important. Dave will be doing more interviews as time and victims permit. We hope The Ragnar Brothers, gaming's answer to Showaddywaddy, will be next.
As I said in the editorial, the reaction to the Design Awards has been muted. Secondary publicity has been virtually non-existent (but thanks to those that remembered the plugs) but, in a way, this is understandable. It would therefore be appreciated if any editor reading this would put in a short mention of the scheme so at least anyone interested will know about it. What counts though is that I have received a number of gamekits here already, from various sources, and at least a dozen subbers have started work on thus far dormant designs in the hope of getting them finished and published. I know of at least four Sumo games underway if anyone needs the information sheet I will be preparing shortly, let me know. Great stuff.
Richard Breese made a good point on the timing of the awards. Although there was almost a year's notice of the deadline, it is quite likely that some games will take longer than this to complete (especially with other demands on time and large projects). Richard suggested that the awards should therefore run for at least two years, ie with another deadline in November '95, to encourage this group. That seems a good idea to me so please consider it official.
This time, we have Charles Vasey on Downsizing in Game Design, which is an invaluable piece for those of us who design twenty hour marathons when a mile is all that is desired (and I'm glad he didn't downsize the article). We also have an overview of most of the Grand Prix games on the market with a view to establishing where we are and then moving, next issue, to where we might go with the genre. I hope this will take the form of anyone interested writing in with ideas on how to simulate the sport any aspect, in any style. Everything welcome. Finally, we have a Formule De variant from North America that is not only interesting in itself, but also because it was designed over a computer network with no face to face contact between the designers. I wonder if this will prove to be prophetic.
On to the Downsizing In Game Design or back to Father's Got The Shipfitter's Blues.