Recce Challenge Update
From: J Vermaak – Challenge Host
To: The Participating Team Leaders
The content contained in the resignation of the 75th as participating team, has reference.
We received the content with respect and have spent much time interacting with a wide range of people to understand it in full.
This notice deals with the end-results and what has been learnt from this. I present this in point form, so it stays a notice.
• Firstly I want to thank all for their candid inputs. It has helped me to get a clear understanding of what we must get right to be a TOP OF CLASS challenge.
• It is clear that I personally underestimated the volume of work and skill-sets required to present the challenge.
• As the workload of the challenge has steadily increased – it lead to delays, and eventually into gaps that spilled over into in mission changes.
• These shortcomings were not met with the expected transparency and inclusiveness to fix – and the responses that were put out were sub-standard.
• It is clear now that the “production platform” is not equipped to deal with the volume of work and needs broader community participation.
• As RECCE we are all about taking ownership for self and for result and this challenge can be no exception. We accept responsibility for it.
This reality has prompted the changes required to get all on the same footing going forward so we can play with the intensity and rivalry that is required from these challenges.
1. Let us re-confirm the intent.
• The challenge acts as base to tell the story of soldiering in Africa’s forgotten front. It is presented as a challenge in the neutral African Bush, not as a prize fight.
• The challenge is done under the context of “the bush is neutral” – and the outcome must rely on the skills of the player. This is how the war was – both sides were equal…it was true Blue vs Red.
• The challenge is being hosted on a very limited budget and needs support from all parties – and in this we need contributions from a variety of people and players.
• The challenge is designed to be responsive and adjust to inputs from the gaming community to make it a great experience for them – that’s why we avail the soldiers to talk to them.
• The series will be played mission by mission with a live playoff of the top 4 teams at the end.
• The winner will hold the Title of RECCE GAMER CHAMPIONS – 2019.
• The current prizes budgeted that comes with this title is as follows:
i. 1st = Gold plated Recce Gamers dog-tags with winners names. (x8 – approx. R1500 each)
ii. 2nd = S/Steel Recce dog-tags with winners names. (x8 – approx. R250 each)
iii. 3rd = 8 x Bronze Recce dog-tags with winners names. ( (x8 – approx. R200 each)
iv. If teams a are bigger or smaller, we will adjust the numbers to suit up to a max of 12 for free.
• This challenge will be repeated every year in the same format that builds on the infrastructure as we move forward.
2. Mission Build & Hosting
• We have done round one in full – this was made possible by player support and involvement – without that we would have crashed before round 1. Thanks to all that assisted.
• We will need more of this going forward – but need to prevent the suggestion that some teams get access to info that assists their teams in the actual game play.
• On advice we will implement some adjustments to the mission build and setup the main ones being as follows:
i. Mission template will be done and managed on Git Hub on the RECCE INC server that provides trace-ability.
ii. We have solicited some help form 3rd parties whom have indicated their help in managing this process – this allows all to add script and code as open source.
• The focus is creating inspired authentic challenges and not struggling with code. This will allow more free forming game-play missions to develop. We want to test the players – not the code writing skills.
• Submission file standardization has been implemented to limit workload post game.
• Live scoring and panel review has been added.
3. Scoring build up
• It is clear that not all teams will play all missions – this is the biggest hurdle in getting a set of rules clear.
• To accommodate this reality -and acting on advice -we have introduce “the best of” principle meaning:
i. Top 8 scores to count towards the teams total after the knockout phase of 10 rounds.
ii. Top four to play out two missions on live streaming basis at the end of the series.
iii. The knock out missions will be a re-work of previous missions in the series but with almost no rules.
• The only team impacted severely by changed mission files in Ops Zeelie was the 75th .
• With their resignation we do not have to treat the mission as neutral anymore so all scores attained will remain as full scores for teams that played.
4. Next Steps
• We trust that this highlights and reflects what has been discussed in depth with many stakeholders over the last 72 hrs.
• The rest of the comms will be done in a structured fashion with the team leaders so we stay aligned.
• We have done team briefings for Top Hat. Based on input we will make some changes today to allow more free flowing tactics to develop.
• We will complete this round of TOP HAT as intended with this finishing During March.
• On 1 April we will start Round 3 – It is a para-drop insertion to do a base attack.
Last but not the least I must state my appreciation by the quality of the discussions that were held – including those from the 75th.
We wish all the teams luck going forward.
Sincerely
J Vermaak
PS: Commercial Sustainability
• We confirm the intent is to get this to commercial level where we can get channel sponsors to sustain the event.
• This will only be possible if we attract enough attention and use the challenge wisely to get 3rd party attention.
