Let's talk Subjective challenges.

[VashtaNeurotic]

I (obviously) agree with Ariel on this. I LOVE creative challenges. I think they allow people to make beautiful things, whether they be funny, pretty or intriguing. I also feel like things like creativity, persuasiveness, artistry and sometimes just being funny are in fact skills in themselves and while they are difficult to measure and will always have some variance, they're worth measuring just as much as other easier skills to measure are. I also agree that the keystone part of Survivor, Tribal Council is literally based on convincing people to keep you around/vote for you to win, so it's not like Survivor is a game that is built on complete objectivity (in fact you can easily argue the exact opposite). I'd also disagree on the claim that for other challenges you're usually the sole reason you lost, there's tons of reasons outside people's control they have the skills/resources you do and sometimes just having to do a challenge on an "off day" caused by something someone else did can alter your performance, it's just here the aspects outside of your control are a bit more obvious.

I assume Haschel is speaking from experience on the reaction from players (though honestly I'd love to see data on the reactions of people to different challenges, since if EVERYONE hates a challenge, then yeah, don't run it regardless of the principle) but in case it's more theoretical I will say it's not really the case for me? Like when I win....I'm usually more focused on the fact that I won than the idea that I won because 2 judges voted for me over another. And if I lose, I don't feel it's any different than losing another challenge (and hey I can even just go "nah, it's the judges who are wrong" as some small consolation).

I will say that a creative challenge done wrong can feel arbitrary, and if something feels completely arbitrary then it won't be fun. Which is why it is best to give some clear criteria and judging profiles for a challenge so players can play to a judge's interests and to make sure there is feedback given to the players so their efforts aren't just wasted with little chance to improve. After seeing how the challenges went this last game, I also realize it is better to make them more collaborative in nature, since then people can bond over the story/other thing they've made and it's a lot less likely there's identifying info in at least one submission that makes you go "maybe we can't just share these all publicly" since one of the huge benefits of these challenges is getting to see what everyone made and getting to go "oh, that's cool". When they're an individual challenge, I also do like putting them in places where multiple people winning is a fine outcome , since there's a decent chance that if you asked more people, 2nd place might swap with 1st.

[VashtaNeurotic]

While I think "Sell Me This Pen"/Pitch The Idea ended up going fine (and produced some amazing pitches), I won't disagree it could have been improved in a number of ways. While the broadness of the mediums did results in some very good ads, it was also clear from Alberto/bippy's submissions (at the least) that some incredible pitches could be instructed with just text and images, and as such it probably would have been better to just restrict it to one medium (probably not videos since not every has easy access to video editing software and learning in a 36 hour window would be very stressful). Dannflor is also right that restrictions themselves can breed creativity.

I do disagree on the thought that we're JUST trying to replicate the T.V Show, we're adapting it to another medium and take inspiration from the show. After all we do several twists/challenges that predate their use on the show by a while (like the "un-merge" or even Haschel's FTC format) or just would never be on the show due to logistics or other reasons (like they're never gonna end up playing a rhythm game, geoguesser or Hanabi on the show). I personally think that creative challenges improve on the show format because they challenge skills that are harder to test, and you get some pretty things out of it. I also personally like getting to create things, even though I've mostly placed middle of the pack in the creative challenges I've been in. I do feel judging profiles solve most of the "out of my control" aspects of the challenge, and they have been shown to influence what people submit (unless people were already gonna write about dinosaurs a lot in a science fiction writing contest).