The first in a possible irregular series. In today’s babbling piece I’m going to discuss a radically different publishing model for a game. Today’s game is, interestingly, not mine. I’m going to be talking about a game originated and written by someone else, and how I would consider publishing it were it mine.
Joshua BishopRoby has this game that he’s working on called Agora. Go read the little blurb, it’s a dang cool game concept. I’ll be here when you get back. I suppose that it’s only fair that I’m using Josh’s game as an example here since it was a blog post of his that this little article is in response to.
Okay, this next part could give you some context, but it’s not necessary: Josh has this playtest document. I’m going to say some things about the game to prove my points, but I’m not going to justify them with text. You can do that yourself.
Okay. I’ve gotten in a single playtest session of this with Josh via the Foundry MUSH. That means I’ve only ever played this in a synchronous text-only communication medium. I stored my character on my wiki (which is something I do with my characters in any online game, so nothing new there).
Here’s where we start talking about Agora specifically. The way the game is written, most conflicts involve to players: whoever’s turn it is to play their faction, and someone to play opposition. Now, the conflicts, once you get the system down, are pretty quick, so no one ends up idling. Further, the rules for Faction Lieutenants allow you to slot other players in pretty organically so that they can participate and contribute to the scenes fictionally and mechanically.
So you’ve got a system that has at its core two players. If you have those two players you’ve got enough to play. But at the same time it scales up rather smoothly if you have more.
Further, the resolution system has some important similarities to the See, Raise, See, Raise rules in Dogs in the Vineyard. Specifically, one player puts forth a Challenge to which the other player must Stand. Then the next player Challenges and must be met with a Stand, and so on. This works extremely well in the text-based environment because it nails down turntaking. When you play more traditional games online, it’s not always clear who’s turn it is to “talk”, and you will sometimes talk over one another, or worse, one player will type a big carefully worded bit to put into the game, only to have it obviated by someone else’s big carefully worded bit that gets put in five seconds earlier.
This problem isn’t a real problem in Agora because when it’s your turn to Challenge, then it’s also your turn to talk. And I know that my turn is coming up next, so I don’t have to worry about getting stomped all over and having no chance to contribute.
Further, the way the Obstacles and Factions change and are recorded are incredibly cool, and don’t require everyone to be there to pick up at least some of the significance of the changes. Every time an Obstacle is used it gets bigger, every time a Faction wins a conflict it gets bigger. Look over the playtest doc for yourself, but basically you could play with a group of ten people, and people could be missing for any given game and lots of fun could still be had. Then when whoever missed a session showed up and looked through the Obstacle list, they would get at least some sense of how things have changed.
So, to the point. I would write (or, more accurately, hire someone with the appropriate skills to write) a net application for the play of Agora. The game would be centered around a database of Obstacles and Factions, and have some sort of chat client (maybe a modified IRC or Java-based chat program). The chat-client would be preferrably web-based. It would have integrated tools for searching the database for Obstacles, and for handling all the mechanical stuff for the game, including the ability to click on dice to re-roll them, and the ability to roll in entire abilities by clicking on them, and the ability to create new Obstacles if there isn’t an appropriate one in the database.
The big draw for people is the Demo Game. Run a single game of Agora that resets every month or two. Anyone can make a Faction for this game (which means, yes, hundreds and hundreds of Factions and Obstacles in a single game). The time between resets should be calculated to let most people get just enough play to be invested and thirsty for more play before the reset happens.
People can log in at any time and play, as long as they can find someone to play their opposition. Hopefully people try to meet up with the same people over and over, where they have a shared history, and where they can build a community of specific investment.
But all of this so far is free, where does the money get made? Custom games. You let people pay you a flat fee of, I don’t know… let’s say $5, to start a new game. The game runs perhaps indefinitely, perhaps for a month or three (with the option to extend the game for another payment). If you’re the one who paid for the game, then you can authorize other players to join. Each new game gets a unique database for storing Factions and Obstacles, so only people in the specific game in question get to use the items created for that game.
Again, creating player accounts is free, you charge by the game. You bring them in by giving them a little demo of play, and then get them to pay you to get the full experience. People may play multiple games at once, nothing wrong with that. I’m not sure if it would be a good idea to have a system set up so that each player can only get one account or not.
I would also consider, though I don’t know if this would be good/necessary, tweaking Agora so that it had an end condition. At some point the game ends based on mechanical accumulation, or maybe there’s a game-winning goal all the Factions strive for. If such a mechanic was introduced then a flat fee per game (rather than some sort of monthly/quarterly/whatever upkeep fee) would probably work great.
So, that’s it. That’s how I would publish Agora. I’d be curious to hear comments on this model. What do you lose from the game (or roleplaying in general) when it’s played like this. I’d be especially curious to hear what Josh thinks of my butchering of his game.
Tags: Publishing
It’s like the love-child of pen-n-paper and MMOs. Freaky!
If I was really energetic and not bogged down with a dozen other things in life, I could code a close proximity of that for Foundry MUSH — just need the databasing to keep track of PCs and Obstacles, and that’s not even that difficult. Then “playtest” the ever-evolving game as people drifted in and out.
Notably, there’s also nothing in your web-app version that would actually conflict with publishing Agora in print, as well. Iiiinteresting!
Josh,
That actually occurred to me right after I posted this. In fact, I bet they’d make great cross-promotional things. “You like playing online? Then buy this book and you can play with your friends!” And conversely “You like playing with your friends. Imagine playing in a massive world that changes based on what people you don’t know do!”
I offer you whatever assistance I can (which isn’t much really, I’m more a talker than a doer) in making this happen :)
Thomas
Like Planetarion or Starkingdoms, perhaps only paid accounts can access “X”, like begin Obstacle #5 and onward, or something.
Ads are also a major possible revenue for such a game.
Ah, good call. You can only play so many scenes with one the freebie character. That could work.
Actually, I wouldn’t operate on a “partial access” model at all. This is basically a judgment call, but I think the best way to do something like this is to set it up such that you can get a fully-functional community of non-subscribers.
I’d just go with an auto-resetting game that anyone can join, and then (as I suggested) charge on a per-game basis for other games. This applies pressure on two fronts:
1) You’ve got to start all over every month. No matter how invested you get, or how many cool story threads you still need to wrap up, you’ve only got a month to do it. The temptation to start your own game, without that time-limit, should be high.
2) Multiple threads. You can only play a single character in the free game. If you want to explore two different things at once, well tough. Though you’ll have the option to explore something new when the game resets, you can’t do it simultaneously.
One thing that might work would be a simple limit on how many scenes you can play in the freebie game per day/week/whatever. So, one scene a day (which is what I would consider) would give you about 30 scenes, but you’d have to log in daily to get them all.
Thomas
Volity will eventually be a pretty good platform for this.