On Thu, 2010-08-19 at 15:10 +0200, david blanchard wrote: > [David] For me the Gaia theme (not necessarily only the Gaia theory but > rather all the environmental/ecologic/sustainability context) is very > interesting to dig. It can be related to many events that occur around us, > it can be approached through many ways (politics, economics, daily behavior > of everyone, conspiracy plots between radical ecological sects vs big > corporations for instance, etc).
I obviously agree :D > Given that the game still evolves about > what is happening on the web (with necessarily a little tech touch), it's > well adapted for a niche of the players 1) who are interested by what is > happening around us 2) with a taste for innovations brought by the web and > 3) who want an 'intelligent' (in the sense that the game must imply a bit of > thinking, though not necessarily strategic) game that revolves around that - > and I think this is the kind of niche we're looking for. Yup! > For me Gaia is an interesting background, but we should hook the player with > a story that is directly related to his daily life and not too abstract, and > that builds some curiosity from the player. Agreed too - this is where the storytelling comes in. > The a) aspect is related to the way we'll unfold the story. I guess we > should not prepare as of now a very complicated plot with many changes of > paradigm (such as for instance two factions corporations and humans > representatives of Gaia who have secret agendas and are not what they seem > etc...), because if we do this we might never unfold the story and it will > take too much time to provide a clear purpose to the player. +1. I have seen this happening too many times in online games - would be good to avoid that trap. > So, with only one > 'faction' at the beginning of the game which will talk to the player/give > him an entity that will provide missions, how can we hook the player ? I > don't know but I think it's an important part of the work for the script > writer. +1 > To sum up this part, I agree with Xav that there should be a purpose for the > player since the first minute he plays; and I agree with the fact that the > environmental context with a glimpse of technology (the web) is interesting. > But I think the purpose could be moved from 'help the planet by doing this > and that task' to rather something about the discovery of what is currently > happening on the web with the raise of this new powerful environmental group > -or whatever-, that seems to have ways of impacting the world and that for > some reason needs my help. Both have to be challenged by the proposed storyline I think. Those are only examples, things to give an idea, but I hope we can end up finding something much better than those. > The b) aspect is that in the missions we provide, I see two important > things, the brain teasing and the fact of keeping it coherent with the > story. Because we have our game happening on the real web, we must avoid to > give to the player the impression that he is doing random stuff on the web > that he could do without playing the game, that's a risk I see. Not sure about this - it shouldn't be *only* the type of actions you can already do on the Web, yes, but I don't see why we should forbid ourselves from taping into the variety of actions that you can do without the game. It's already better than the endless leveling actions that we get in a lot of online games, no? It also helps to blur the lines, as then it becomes less obvious when you are affecting the real web, and when you are only in the fiction. > As an example, in our previous hackit game, the fact of hacking website as an > excuse to discover new web sites I don't know yet (like stumble open, and it > was a part of our promise) was not working imho because it was not related > to the game given that we could not impact the web sites. No, I think on that side it wasn't working because the "toy" itself of discovering new websites wasn't interesting/relevant enough. You can still try it right now - you don't end up on websites that are interesting for you (which is due to the way we chose the next website imho). > To avoid this impression of 'gratuity', I think most missions should have a > little brain effort (that gives an added value to the fact of just doing > something on the web) and a reward that either unfolds the story or give new > abilities to the player but that in every case reinforces the bond with the > player by making him want to experience more. Again, why limiting so much the range of possible actions? I think variety is key here - giving freedom to gamedesign and storyline to experiment things without putting too many boundaries. It will help us find the ones that are enjoyable, and also allow the player to chose. 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
