On 08/12/2010 17:24, Alex Vachon wrote:
Yes, absolutely! Bring it on!
On Sun, Dec 5, 2010 at 1:41 PM, david blanchard <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Are you interested ? If yes, I'll be glad to discuss this with you
more in depth.
A few notes about the way i see things :
The tricky part here is that we need to introduce the game but we don't
have a bible with the whole storyline and context, and we won't have it.
All we know is that there is this organization, officially dedicated to
environment protection, with secret activities. And we know that the
player is going to be a part of it. So the challenge is to grab the
attention of the player but not reveal too much because we need to keep
doors open for the future definition of the story. The second challenge
is to keep these texts as short as possible, for accessibility reasons
(long texts in games can make people run away basically).
1) Text related to the home page of the organization (http://hackit.cx/)
* it is the home page of an official organization that is into
environment protection. It is a very simple page, with no links (as of
now), that introduces the organization.
* It should be a corporate tone, sounding like a big NGO/foundation
* It can remain vague on the means and the activity
* We could keep three small texts (as it's displayed today on the home
page). I'm not sure about the content, maybe a) Issues b) What we do c)
About us ?
2) Text related to the introduction mission (see current text here :
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~hackit/hackit/trunk/annotate/head%3A/missions/introduction/introduction.php)
:
* the context : the player is on the home page of the organization, and
suddenly he sees something strange : a chat is opening and someone,
apparently from this organization, contacts him.
* The objectives of this introduction mission are : to justify the fact
that the organization is contacting the player, and to introduce to the
player the first tools of the game
* this mission could be like a recruitment: the organization is about to
recruit the player. But this is not a traditional recruitment (usually
recruiters don't pop up through a chat :)), so we need to find a reason
to justify this. The easy way for this would be that the organization is
looking for under-cover help and has identified the player as a
potential candidate. But maybe this would be too much deja vu... Maybe
we could present this as an experience the organization is leading,
contacting random persons for a test. And the whole recruitment thing
would be explained later, in another mission ?
If it's a recruitment, we should explain what is expected from the
player, and we could maybe talk about the fact that the salary is
competitive (which we can introduce with the virtual money that'll be
added later on in the game).
All in all, we should not reveal a lot about the secret activities of
the organization - everything that is said should be coherent with the
corporate presention of the web site, though it is possible to say
between lines that the organization is much more than it seems.
* So, whatever solution we keep regarding the bullet point above, the
player is going to be asked to take some sort of a test. This is the way
we'll introduce the first tools to him. These tools could be : missions
(chat, reply), the URL bar (navigating through web sites), the
validation of a text that he submits (through the URL bar currently),
the creation of an account in the game, the use of the mission menu. I
guess this test could be a quick treasure hunt on the web. The player
would learn how to use the url bar, he would look for a website; finding
it would trigger a search for an information that he must provide to the
organization. Once the player finishes the treasure hunt, he is told 1)
that there are some other tests he can train with, available in the
mission menu, 2) that he can join the organization (or at least a group
of contributors the organization wants to stay in touch with) by signing
in, 3) that he'll be contacted again, the same way, if he decides to
sign in.
* I'm eager to know your ideas regarding the tone we should use. The
contact needs to show some personality - he could be for instance cold,
almost rude (treating the player like a newbie who should feel lucky to
be contacted this way), distrustful ('if it had been for me i'd never
have contacted you', 'we keep only 2% of the candidates', etc); this is
just an example - we need to find an angle.
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