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Fun While it Lasted
Oct. 15th, 2010 01:44 amWizards of the Coast has started up their second Great Designer Search, a sort of hybrid contest/job interview/reality show in which the masses vie for a chance to be awarded a 6-month paid internship at Wizards designing cards for Magic: the Gathering.
They did this once before, four years ago, and I decided I didn't really want to move to Washington, even for a few months, and didn't want to lose focus on my art career. Well, the art career is going kind of poorly, so this time I figured I'd give it a shot. Things didn't get off to the best start, as I missed the posting of the first challenge by a couple of days and had to scramble to finish it.
Test 1 was a series of 10 essay questions, each of which was to be answered in 250-350 words.
( The Questions, many of which will make no sense to those unfamiliar with the game. )
I think what they did was skim these and cut everyone who couldn't follow directions or spell. Then they sent out a 50-question multiple choice test, which they would use to cut the field to about 100 people. It's clever to do it in that order because right away it weeds out people who won't take the time and effort to write the essays. However, it does kind of suck for those of us who made it through Test 1 and failed to make it through Test 2, since our time on the essays was sort of wasted. Those who did make it through will face Test 3, an actual design challenge. Their essays will be read more carefully, I'm sure.
I made it through Test 1 even though in my desperate haste to make it under the deadline I didn't quite make the word count for a couple of the questions. Sadly, however, I appear to have flubbed the second test. They haven't released the actual correct answers, and I don't know if they will, so I'm frustrated not knowing which questions I answered incorrectly. The only things we do know are that you needed 44 right to move on, only one person got all 50 right, another got 49 right, and no one got exactly 48 right.
We were warned early in the process that Test 3 would require us to come up with our own world/setting, which would be home for all of the future design challenges. We were advised to start that worldbuilding process early, in case we moved on, because the actual duration of Test 3 is a mere four days.
I was actually starting to get pretty enthusiastic about my setting, so I'm extra disappointed that I don't get to move on and do anything with it. In theory we can post our stuff to the Wiki, and designers who _did_ move on can use a limited number of our ideas, possibly to demonstrate their ability to recognize good design. So I suppose I could continue with my ideas and possibly something would come of them, but it's much harder to build up enthusiasm now that I know that I'm out of the running. Oh, well.
They did this once before, four years ago, and I decided I didn't really want to move to Washington, even for a few months, and didn't want to lose focus on my art career. Well, the art career is going kind of poorly, so this time I figured I'd give it a shot. Things didn't get off to the best start, as I missed the posting of the first challenge by a couple of days and had to scramble to finish it.
Test 1 was a series of 10 essay questions, each of which was to be answered in 250-350 words.
( The Questions, many of which will make no sense to those unfamiliar with the game. )
I think what they did was skim these and cut everyone who couldn't follow directions or spell. Then they sent out a 50-question multiple choice test, which they would use to cut the field to about 100 people. It's clever to do it in that order because right away it weeds out people who won't take the time and effort to write the essays. However, it does kind of suck for those of us who made it through Test 1 and failed to make it through Test 2, since our time on the essays was sort of wasted. Those who did make it through will face Test 3, an actual design challenge. Their essays will be read more carefully, I'm sure.
I made it through Test 1 even though in my desperate haste to make it under the deadline I didn't quite make the word count for a couple of the questions. Sadly, however, I appear to have flubbed the second test. They haven't released the actual correct answers, and I don't know if they will, so I'm frustrated not knowing which questions I answered incorrectly. The only things we do know are that you needed 44 right to move on, only one person got all 50 right, another got 49 right, and no one got exactly 48 right.
We were warned early in the process that Test 3 would require us to come up with our own world/setting, which would be home for all of the future design challenges. We were advised to start that worldbuilding process early, in case we moved on, because the actual duration of Test 3 is a mere four days.
I was actually starting to get pretty enthusiastic about my setting, so I'm extra disappointed that I don't get to move on and do anything with it. In theory we can post our stuff to the Wiki, and designers who _did_ move on can use a limited number of our ideas, possibly to demonstrate their ability to recognize good design. So I suppose I could continue with my ideas and possibly something would come of them, but it's much harder to build up enthusiasm now that I know that I'm out of the running. Oh, well.
