On Tue, 2010-07-20 at 21:14 +0200, david blanchard wrote:
> I looked at the game and I definitely like it a lot.
> I also like the simplicity of its development, and I agree that having
> a small and nice product on facebook can be very useful, both for the
> spirit and for the coming months of hackIt (will give us a channel
> towards players).
> Now, the question I still have is related to our image & our identity.
> The game you suggest Xav is a very good one, but 1) it already exists
> as a board game, and 2) I don't find it completely related to our
> editorial line (http://community.hackit.cx/wiki/Company_manifesto).
The genre exists, yes, but the implementation differs here - instead of
a finite group of players sitting around a table, it allows to
experiment within a social network.
The gameplay itself wouldn't innovate a lot, but it's not the thing we
would be trying to achieve here - we have Hackit for that. What I see
is:
* Experimenting with the Fabook audience and mechanisms
* Building an audience there, that allows to get more accurate
market data and start discussions with the portion of this
audience that matches HackIt's - by asking them questions or
starting to involve them in the project
* Gaining confidence - even a small success would make us more
relaxed to develop Hackit, and make it easier to convince
investors : )
* See how the competitors react there - Facebook is quite a
jungle, would be good to get a feel of what we are up to
And even though, I think it still matches a large part of our values for
a Facebook game. There isn't much blurring, but casual depth, fun,
affect and responsibility are very well matched by the game mechanisms
IMHO.
The only point related to values where I'm hesitating is the license of
the cards drawings. Unlike Hackit, where the complexity makes it much
more difficult to put out a fork, here it's simple and the product
lifetime is much shorter. Because of the very intensive and fast paced
competition on Facebook now, if players like it I think we could quickly
be facing a lot of forks from competitors with a lot of resources.
If we go for it, I think it's important to consider a non-free license
for the cards themselves, something like the Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike. At least for some time to make
sure the bigger fishes can't make us lose a competitive edge.
> Here, let me come back, once again :), to the factions game designed
> by Aurélien some time ago. Very simple, two factions, attack and
> identification points, more attack than identification so that players
> are pushed to discuss & elaborate strategies together.
I like this game, and I'd like to do it too in the future. The issue
with it today is what you mentioned - it requires to create a new
gameplay (even if we take small pieces out of games, it's still a bigger
work to put it together). We'll then have the same kind of
time-consuming process we have with Hackit now - it will take energy and
lots of iterations to get it right.
> My objective here, more than selling Aurélien's idea, is to have
> ourselves ask the question of the image we want project with this fb
> game, what do you think ?
If you want, we can play a few games from this genre - it's much easier
to get a feel of what we would project with this game when you have
played. This way you see if you like it : )
Xavier.
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