The reality is that it is unlikely to ever get back to that, you need to think about what made it the success that it was then :

  • - Financial boom, lavish high-budget TV shows could be made in abundance (£250,000 per ep for RW!)
    - Financial boom also meant hundreds of teams willing to have a go at taking part
    - Gradual build up year on year to a 'peak'
    - Supporting programmes such as Technogames fuelling interest at the grass roots schools level
    - Growing hype leading to magazine publications such as 'Real Robots' driving interest.


What you had was a real cycle of hype driving things.... which leads me to an IT way of looking at this :

I would suggest looking at a concept like the Gartner Hype Cycle - this is usually used for modelling technology adoption within Enterprise IT organisations, however it seems rather fitting here.





  • - The 'Technology Trigger' was the start of Robot Wars on TV which resulted in a rapid adoption due to prime-time billing on TV.
    - The 'Peak of Inflated Expectations' came around Series 5/6 when it was uncertain if the hype around Robot Wars would continue to be sustained - clearly it wasn't and all came crashing down at the end of Series 7
    - The 'Trough of Disillusionment' were then those dark days of the community working out what to do, the formation of the FRA leading into the 'Slope of Enlightenment', Roaming Robots and others filling the void.
    - We're now at the 'Plateau of Productivity' - in a stable state, with no factors externally influencing us in either direction.


Perhaps a slight over-simplification, but you get the idea !

It is very unlikely that we will ever get back to that peak - things rarely do. What we should be hoping and aiming for is to maintain where we are, improve what we do but most importantly ENJOY what we do.

I still think 2013 will hold some surprises along the way though