> Xav and I are going to discuss soon with a game > designer so that he can give some feedback on these ideas.
[David] We had the chat on game design of HackIt that I had mentioned
before, here is the feedback :
* 1) First reaction after reading the game design page is
incomprehension because of conjunction of two things :
o A hardcore context : dry context and gameplay mechanics with no
emotional involvement (partly because of the absence of avatar and game
world, and therefore lack of identification/immersion), science fiction and
AIs.
o An intent to aim at a very large target by positioning ourselves
like the sims.
So the first conclusion was that the mix of the two does not
make much sense; but that we can make a good game if we accept our initial
choice of a dry sci-fi context. Then, if we make this choice, we should go
all the way through it to make a good hardcore game : lots of tech stuff and
elaborate complex gameplay and storyline, technical rather than organical,
competitive gameplay, etc. This would be for a small niche but it can be a
good game.
* 2) Then we explained during the call that actually :
o the core gameplay is based on an adventure/exploration on the web,
on missions that require a little bit of brain teasing but that are not
necessarily tech.
o then this game is for a niche, yes, but not a hardcore tech male
niche, rather a larger niche of people interested in using the web and
curious about its new developments, with a taste for stories that happen in
our real world and that can involve virtual worlds, conspiracy theories,
etc.
o and we believe that in parallel to this web adventure gameplay, it
makes sense to add some sims-like mechanisms in order to create a strong
solo daily experience based on traditional leveling and life sim mechanisms.
* 3) Then the game designer started to understand better what we try
to do and came with a few recommendations :
o If we want to avoid the hardcore feeling, we should really rethink
the sci-fi and AI idea and be open to other contexts that while preserving
the kind of experience we wish to provide, don't give too much of a tech and
dry feeling that will repulse part of the potential target (according to him
the AI have this effect).
Other way to put it, we should inject some human factor in our game
experience, & some possibility for empathy.
And try to relate the game to the life of
people. See the success of many fb games that relate to the life of people
(restaurants, gardening, fish tank, etc.
o We definitely need to find a way to understand better the profile
and size of our target.
o We need a good story because it is going to be critical for our
game, but we need to keep in mind that most people don't like to read too
much text in a game. In current console games, most of the story is provided
through cinematics or voice, there is a minimum amount of text. So we need
to be creative we the ways we unfold the story. For example, we can remember
that on In memoriam 2, there was very little text but the story was unfolded
through videos that the player kept discovering as he progressed in the
game.
* Next steps :
o Continue the brainstorm on the three elements
(gameplay/missions/target) in parallel because there are of course very
interconnected and we must keep these three sides in mind when we work on
one of them.
o Dig into marketing for a better understanding of our target
o Start listing possible missions on the web. This in return can help
us think about the gameplay and the positioning/target.
* Other misc stuff :
o The latest FB games (frontier ville) are not really 10-15mn per day,
it's always possible to do a little something whenever the player comes,
even though he can't play it 4 hours in a row. We should have a look at that
to see what we should do on our side.
o In the mid term, let's not forget the possibility to partner with
web sites where we send the players for missions, creating traffic for these
sites.
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