David, what you write is very useful and thoughtful. It's good base to build on. Let's start discussing and exchanging Organization Contexts and Mission Approaches. Everybody, please feel free to participate and have fun.
Here we go with my first thoughts... - the site has a POLL on ecological themes, maybe 3 questions (When do you plan to buy an electric car? Within 2,3, 5 years? Would you switch to Wind powered energy at home, even if it increases your payments by 2, 4, 7, 10%? Do you help friends or family to change their habits towards more eco friendly solutions, if yes how?) After answering the questions, the chat box changes tone completely. “You have entered the BTL zone”. It is asked to answer what BTL means : (can you guess what BTL means?) and lists the 7 k words the user has properly used to open the zone, as he or she was recognized by the system. In other words, the visitor seems to have been mistakenly granted permission to enter a secret portal where secret underground ecological mission are taken place. The visitor could be presented with a new questionaire asking him/her to create a new profile/identity, good for an undisclosed period of time. A new chat box appears, more personal in its tone, this is a real person on the other side talking to you (of course it’s a fake). It’s as if the visitor, who answered the 3 questions, actually entered a secret zone available only to agents. On Mon, Dec 20, 2010 at 11:45 AM, david blanchard <[email protected]>wrote: > 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 > > _______________________________________________ > Farsides mailing list - [email protected] > > Wiki: http://farsides.com/ > List: http://farsides.com/ml/ > Forum: http://farsides.com/forum/ > Ideas: http://farsides.com/ideas/ > Chat: http://farsides.com/chat/ > -- Best, Alex Vachon cartouchecreations.com Follow me on Twitter <http://twitter.com/cartouchefilms> Follow me on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=602172865> Montreal Loves New York Loves Montreal<http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_135269469856078&ap=1> New York - Montreal - Vancouver
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