There are currently eight ongoing normal games and only one ongoing open game. While some of this may simply be due to more demand for normal games than open games, I believe a considerable amount is due to the Open Games Queue. I originally wrote lot more here about the nature of queues and why we have them, but it's probably pointless.
I believe the main problem with the open queue is that unpopular games can grind the queue to a halt. With normal and newbie games, there's really nothing to select before you sign up for a game, with the exception of maybe the moderator (and in the case of normal games, what size of game you want to play in). And we can see that those are currently the two most popular queues. With opens, micros and mini themes, you specifically select which setups you'd like to play before signing up for them. In the case of opens, I think this leads to major problems if games start to halt the queue (and the same case could be made for mini themes, but I'm not here to make that today).
I don't mean to turn this too much into specifics or into blame, but currently in the open queue is:
- Switch (Setup), a nightstart game with a cop and a serial killer. I think this setup has a lot of problems (funnily enough, this was another thing mathdino took issue with), and although I can't know this, I expect that a lot of potential players do as well.
- And Hard Boiled, a setup which, as I understand it, has a breaking strategy. This setup has also been in the queue for about a month, is not close to filling, and has not been pulled.
What am I suggesting to solve this problem? If anyone remembers when the Micro queue had a separate "Tiny Games" slot, I think that something similar should be done for the open games queue.
Currently, the way the queue works is that mods sign up, and then there are always two games in signups at once. When one game fills or is pulled, the next mod in the queue is put into signups. I propose that the open queue have three "slots" for signups, each "slot" being something specific: one slot for "mini" open setups, games greater than 9 players, one slot for "micro" open setups, 9 or less, and one slot for experimental setups. This is similar to what already happens in the Normal queue, where there is always one mini normal and one large normal in signups at once. So, for instance, if a micro open were filled or pulled, the next game in that "slot" wouldn't necessarily be the next mod in the queue, it would specifically be the next mod with a micro open setup. (Perhaps I'm overexplaining something that everyone already understands, but I'd just like to not be misunderstood.)
I think that this would at least do work to alleviate the issue of queue blockage. In the first place, having three setups able to be in signups at once reduces the chances of all games in signups being unpopular. Second, even if they were to still fill at a slow rate, micro games take less players to fill, and as such ensuring that there are never only larger games in signups should help the queue move faster. Third, and this is less to do with queue blockage but perhaps still relates, giving a dedicated slot for experimental (or "new") setups I believe will both encourage the creation of new setups as well as incentivize more people to play open games. It's been a noted problem of the monthly open game challenges that very few of the setups are ever played, even the winners.
There are some problems with my suggestion that I know. The first I can see is that of "splintering" -- I went more into this in a longer version of this post, but basically if we had every mod in queue in signups at once, it would likely lead to players being spread out across games rather than coalesced into one or two games, which could actually lessen the rate at which games fill. Having three games in signups at once instead of two would theoretically increase splintering. That being said, I think that micro games alleviate the problem of splintering, and ensuring one is always able to be in signups should help that. The second issue is that of overlap with the Micro queue. Micro open games can already be run in either the micro queue or the open queue, and it may be said that giving them a dedicated slot in the open queue will only serve to hurt the micro queue. It is true that this change would take some games away from the micro queue. However, having the open queue have a dedicated slot for micro opens should free the micro queue up and allow Micro Normals or Micro Themes to reach signups faster. In fact, this problem already exists in some form in the fact that Micro Normals can be run in either the Micro queue or Normal queue.