Okay, as you said, now we're getting somewhere... or at least I'm
starting to see the missing piece of the puzzle.
You are right when you say I see a little too far ahead. I guess I
presented my idea with what excites me the most: the multi-super-open-
anything-goes-players approach. And you are right: it's hard to
present something super exciting if the first missions is "meh,
basically you're in a jam and you need to get out of it". (sounds like
about everygame in the world, so not very convincing).
Of course, this requires some "heavy" thinking.
I'll be away the next two days (probably without an Internet
connexion) but I'll think about it and I'll do my best to come back
with a proposition I'll hope you'll find interesting.
While I personally like sci-fi a lot,
I believe that independently of the way we present things and write
the
script, environment has more potential than AI theme to start with,
for what
we're trying to do here.
I'd really like to understand better your views on this point
specifically,
independently of personal taste.
-------------------- Well there are two aspects:
1) Environment is definitely catchy and right in people's mind
nowadays but I think it limits us. As I said, it would be nice if the
game evolves into something that can reach all the topics of our
society: environment AND politics and media and and and...
2) The more I think about it, the less I found problems linked with
AI. For starters, Steven Spielberg directed a movie called AI. That
alone means that half of the worldwide population knows what it means.
They may not all like it but they won't be scared of it or felt
intimidated by it. Then it is up to us to present AIs as, on one side,
the most teachable/absorbing/malleable pet, and on the other side,
entities with their own (funny, quirky) logic. Think of it as a Pixar
movie. In Monsters Inc., they don't care whether people like monsters
or not. Monsters in their own world have their own logic and this is
what makes the movie great. It has a great "inner-logic".
The game could be a little like that : "if AIs were among us, how
would they think? what would they think? not humans' thoughts but AI's
thoughts." And I think a lot of people would find it as appealing as a
Pixar movie. Also, they did a remake of Tron and it was very
successful. Nowadays, computers are not scary but appealing...
depending what the angle is, of course.
Question n°2, I think I understand that you
think that the theme (AI or environment) is secondary, that all lies
in the
way we'll present things, can you elaborate a little to explain how
for
instance AI could be presented in a way that does not repulse people
who
don't like SF (maybe the question is biased ;)) ?
------------ that is what I was trying to get at when I threw names
such as "internet offsprings": nowadays people live and breath with
their computers (especially people who want to play online games -
even people who play once a week to some FB game). And our game is
supposed to take place at our day and age. So the AI notion is just a
little "trick" and I think it will be very easy to convince people
that the sci-fi aspect is kept to a minimum. Think about books like
Flowers for Algernon or movies like Groundhog Day. There is a part of
Sci-fi to it but that is not the key element. I see the potential of
the game in something of that vicinity.
I'll go one step further: the game is about nowadays and the potential
that is Internet. We use a little sci-fi - just one fun element to
stir things up, to live things up a little but it is really NOT a sci-
fi game (ie Groundhog Day, Flowers for Algernon...)
question n°3, don't you
think that if we take environment, there would be a way that would be
appealing for someone like you (in the sense, find something that
relates to
you more than Gaia/spirits) ?
------------------ I was trying to think about it and I found a lead.
I'll give you a pick, just to see how you like it, before I push it
further.
Based on our discussion of last week, and the idea that with one
magnet, you can delete the memory of a computer.
So I was thinking of that all notion of "reversing of the pole". I
read a couple of notes on that and I didn't find what I was looking
for but since it's all theories and speculations, I guess we can add
what we want to that.
My idea was that a reversing of the pole is coming and with the
electro-magnetic disturbance it will cause, everything stored on
computers will be erased. So there is a huge fight that starts with it
for the rewriting of Humanity's History.
I know I didn't have much of an environment angle to it - I guess
because I just don't see the appeal to it - but my take on how we can
have some cool interaction between the planet and computers/Internet.
Again, if we want to have some tension in our missions (whether they
are solo missions or multi-players), we need to have some kind of
impending doom coming. If we observe some phenomena that will take
place within a few hours, there should be a little more "urgent" feel
to it, compared to 'the Earth is pissed at the humans, it will do
something anyday now, as soon as it finds us relevant enough to
care' ;)))
I'll try to come back to you with a strong idea for what you call the
context of the game either tuesday evening or wednesday morning.
Take care y'all
Michael
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