In order to start the discussion, here are some first notes that I'd be
glad to discuss. There are a complement to the first mail I sent on this
topic (http://farsides.com/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=6161&start=0&;)
1) Organization :
* I think we should sound very vague and very ambitious when we describe
the official long term objectives of the organization.
Staying vague would be useful first in order to be flexible for the
future and second because I feel we can introduce a first idea of
ambiguity by using this vagueness - for instance, an organization that
would want to promote something as vague as happiness among all human
beings , and which would state this as its goal, would not commit on the
means or on its definition of happiness - this could hide a lot of dirty
stuff.
* If we apply this to our environmental approach, I would see something
about a humanism approach, aiming to redefine the place of human being
among nature (referring to the age of enlightenment for instance),
something quite vague like that rather than something that sounds like
ecological activism and that would be too 'narrow' (not in general, but
in our situation) for me.
* Apart from the environmental approach, I think that one thing which
will be central in many missions and in the game in general is the
management of information in general and on the web in particular. We
should mention this 'expertise in treatment of information' (I'm not
sure how to formulate it) somewhere in the core activity of the
organization.
* Maybe we could say a word about the mysterious founder who gives his
name to the organization (Vincent Stark is the name currently. I'm not
very fond of Stark as a name but I won't start the troll here and now
:)). The typical demiurge i guess - He's the visionary founder, he's
everywhere and he's nowhere, nobody knows him, etc.
* There is also the question of linking the organization to
economical/political powers/social work, giving us some possibilities of
realism/conflicts of interests/ etc for future missions. Should we
mention in the presentation that the organization is backed up by
fictitious industries & gov agencies, what do you think ?
2) First mission
* should explain to the player why he is contacted. It's not a regular
recruitment process, recruitment processes don't happen this way. So we
need an angle here.
* by providing a first mission, should explain at the same time how it
is done (tutorial which should not look like a tutorial)
* should introduce the organization in brief (not repeating what is on
the web site though), and the various departments, though the player
won't have to deal with all departments at the beginning. But basically,
his goal is going to build trust with each department in order to climb
the ladder of the organization and learn more about it.
* the text should be brief - people don't like to read too much when
they start a game. If we feel that there are too many things we want to
say here, we can perfectly break down this first mission into different
ones.
* the first mission could actually be very brief, the objective of this
first contact being that the player wants to come back :) Actually, I
discussed with Aurélien about this and he thinks that if it looks too
much like a recruitment it will be boring - I tend to agree with him,
and I think Xav was mentioning something similar too. We could be more
radical, for instance : the player lands on the home page, and after a
couple of seconds something weird happens on the page and the chat pops
up, message asking for help to counter the attack by doing some action
(i see this as very matrix like, first image of the movie, actually).
Advantage is to give a more dynamic start. It could also of course still
be a recruitment process (fake attack in order to test the reaction of
the player). It doesn't have to be precisely this approach of course but
the idea would be to be punchy and to hook the player some way or another.
sorry for the long mail!
D
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