On Tue, 2010-07-13 at 11:30 +0200, david blanchard wrote: > [David] Agreed, I also had the discussion with Josselin in mind when I wrote > my first mail. But it helps me work on very concrete stuff and possible > first prototypes features in order to think about the macro side of things. > I believe that mixing top-bottom (think macro and deduce features) and > bottom-up (think about a short term prototype/features and deduce what kind > of a game you want to do) is an interesting approach.
Of course - I'm even strongly in favor of the second approach, as it helps to not become stuck in one way of thinking about the game. Actually, I don't think I'm having a top-down approach here: the image I have the game changed because of the game you are perpetuating here is still mostly the one we have had from the start - ie a mafia-wars like strategy game. We've had our short-term prototype/features, now we need to revisit the concept of the game in light of the concrete reactions we've seen - we have had a lot of comments, opinions and experiences that show that a lot of players don't think about the game in a strategic way - I have yet to talk to one player who becomes thrilled at the idea of "controlling the biggest part of the Web". Hacking one or two pages is fun, but accumulating pages to earn more hack points doesn't seem to entice people a lot... > First, I've merged the two pages and revamped/simplified the structure - I > think it's easier to read because it gives an overview of both the promise > to the player (experience) and who it is for (positioning). Please let me > know if it suits you. It's here -> > http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/HackIt!_Positioning_and_overview_%28V2%29 Thanks for the merge - it's true it's easier in a single document. > Therefore I removed the promise, because for me 'things you own end up > owning you' is only a part of the game (it's the ambiguity of the > relationship AI/player that we can develop in the long term, yes) but it > does not sum up the experience according to me. Let's discuss it and then > I'll eventually rework this promise. First, it's really not a promise - it's what I wrote, a message. : ) Something that is communicated to the player. "Things you own end up owning you" doesn't need to be a big feature where AIs wake up and stop listening to the player. While the game is small, it can be as simple as making us feel, as players, that our quest to gain more AIs/websites is not purely to help AIs - it's also to help ourselves and own nice toys. > On this topic, right now I've also removed Pokemon because for me it's > creating a confusion, I don't see our game as pet caring (even if we have a > relation with AIs, level them up, discover that they have a will, pet caring > is not the main purpose for the player for me), can you elaborate. I think it could be a fundamental part of the game mechanisms - it could be the main thing that makes the player come back every day. We can come back to not lose a website, but if this website is incarnated into an AI that need anthropomorphic care, you get a much strong tie. > I'm not sure that our core target as you started to define it is compatible > with > Pokemon, though I believe the rest of the references are compatible. You're right about the audience, it's probably closer to the Sims here than Pokemon for the relationship we have with the AI. I've replaced the reference. But it actually draws us even further away from the strategic genre - in the Sims there isn't any fight left... > I put 'adventure' in the genre - adventure is vague yep, but in my mind it > involves a storyline that creates milestones in the game, and can display > very different gameplay as long as the feeling of the adventure is there. I > mean, click and points such as monkey island, Zelda, GTA, I can call of > these adventures, so the drawback is that it is not very precise but I don't > see something more precise right now. I like the adventure theme, though it's probably too large here, it doesn't say what it is precisely. And btw, adventure doesn't necessarily mean war or even combat... Let's try to find a mouthful expression to make it more precise; for me it draws from the following genres: - Alternate reality games (for the story-telling part with a community) - Pet caring/life simulation games (taking care of the AIs) - Sandbox games (the GTA missions/story in a vast place that can be explored) It could give "life simulation alternate reality game" - ARGs encompass the adventure/social/storyline part, the life simulation encompass the AI caring part and the sandbox-style play style. > Speaking of storyline, I'm not sure Xav what you mean by story-driven. For > me story is a secondary mean that must enhance what we want to do - an > adventure on the real web - and create milestones that mark the evolution of > the world, the dynamics of the war that is taking place, if we have a war. > What is story-driven according to you ? I think about games like In memoriam here, casual ARGs. Another way to represent what I'm talking about would be to imagine In memoriam, but where the puzzle games are replaced by tasks asked by the AI to make it evolve, and with more social interactions (multiplayer missions more like what we find in traditional ARGs when you reach a certain level). Xavier. _______________________________________________ Hackit Bar mailing list - [email protected] Wiki: http://community.hackit.cx/ List: http://community.hackit.cx/ml/ Forum: http://community.hackit.cx/forum/ Ideas: http://community.hackit.cx/ideas/ IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/#politis
