Last Update 9 Feb 2005
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© Gil Williamson 1999 and 2005 Last Update 9 Feb 2005 |
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Basically, it is an interactive quest game - now called an ARG see Unfiction for co-operating teams (say 3) of players on the web, but its interactive fiction roots should be concealed to a great extent.
Obviously, many individual games might be in progress at one time, and we might even allow two groups on the same quest to team up or compete if they arrived at the same point together.
Importantly, the players would not select their own team, they would subscribe for a game, and then be told the email addresses of their playing partners. In theory, they could tell each other as little or as much about themselves as they wished. We, the organisers, however, would advise them to operate through a hotmail or funmail address, and to assume a gameplay identity rather than their own. A set of pre-prepared images would be available for players to adopt. If the format of the image were standardised, players could supply their own.
Unknown to the players, we might substitute a DM or a computer player for a real one, just to spice things up, and to throw a few fast balls into the arena.
I envisage a co-operating team of what we would call "Dungeon Masters", DMs, (called Puppet Masters these days) if we were running a Quest or Multi-User Dungeon (MUD). The DMs would host parts of the game on their own websites, so that users could see that the game was truly cross-web, not a single-site adventure game.
If it's to be a success, I would expect the game to achieve its own dynamic. Let us say, for example, that a successful and qualified player might be invited to become a DM. We will quickly find that which works and that which doesn't, and the great thing about the web is that we'll be able to change the game without the embarrassment of a software re-release, simply by updating web pages.
Calling it "a" game is misleading. There would be a portfolio of several themes, each of which was being played by a number of teams at one time.
Each game would have a dynamic appearance, but would actually have a deterministic outcome. This is in common with a modern adventure game where there may be several paths or sub-goals to experience in any order, but every so often there comes a point when no further progress can be made until a certain subset of the goals have been achieved. Having passed that critical point, the possible paths through the game will diverge again, until the next nexus or the endgame.
The quests should concentrate on intriguing players, rather than running them at full speed. Again, the analogy of the interactive fiction game is good. One's best ideas come from quiet contemplation, often off-line, of the problem, and in discussion with like-minded players.
Each quest should follow the classic format of:
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