Idea - Acquistion

Social, Physical, Card-based, Web-based. 


Acquisition


Every student who participates in acquistion gets a card at the beginning of a game, with a unique code and some combination of +$ and +pts. Players represent start-up corporations who are competing to become huge players in the corporate world. Players earn pts as their final victory condition and earn $$ to buy "assets." Assets then earn the player's corporation additional $$ or pts or some combination of the two.

Here's the twist: at any time, players can choose to merge with any other player's corporation. The mergining player enters the acquring player's unique corporation code (found on their card) into the merger screen and then the acquiring player accepts it. When corporations merge, they merge all of their assets and all of their innate $$ and pts generation, as well as all of their current $$ and pts. This team then becomes co-operative, meaning that you can win as a large merged corporation with any amount of shareholders (merged players), although the main corporation's player is always "CEO." However, the cost of merging is that it complicates decision making. Whenever a corporation wants to purchase an asset with their money or acquire a new corporation, they must have a 66% majority of their shareholders' vote yes for that decision to go through. So the idea is that as you become big you become cumbersome, and as you get smaller you get more dexterous and efficient but you have to have some level of merging to stand a chance against big corporations.

Pros 

• I like how it simply + interestingly models a real world concept. Very Hampshire-y as well. 
• Cool social interaction, cool basic idea. 

Cons

• The physical aspect is very limited -- all you need to do is go and get someone's card code and they can just read it to you. Maybe if you flesh this one out it would need a stronger physical flavor/component?

Idea - Herd

Co-opetitive, physical space, (hopefully) inherently social.


Herd


Herd is a parking wars style micromanagement game about sustainability and resource management. Players sign up online to live the relaxing lifestyle of a nomadic animal herder. Players are given money and can purchase different kind of livestock with it -- these livestock have different values and prices, a la parking wars. Players then place these livestock to graze in different areas around campus -- Prescott, FPH, Enfield etc. You can sell your livestock at any time, and they start out worth very little but eventually grow and reach the point where they are worth quite a lot (of course, different growth rates etc etc). Selling your livestock earns you points which are the victory condition and you can also use to buy/unlock more animals.

Physical, Social aspects: Different livestock have different synergistic and detrimental effects to the area where they graze. For example, when there are a lot of sheep and goats in the same area those animals help each other grow faster or gain more maximum points or something. Some animals also hate each other, and will have detrimental effects, while others will be parasitic (+ to one player, - to the other). Players looking to earn the most points will have to co-operate with their friends to raise beneficial livestock together or chase out parasitic livestock from their fields.

As far as physical goes, there will be many different kinds of random events -- the life of a nomadic herder isn't always so relaxing! Some beneficial events like rain or high nutrient soil will be desirable, and some like mudslides or plains fires will be harmful. The only way players can see these events coming is by visiting the location, where notices will be posted around.  Players can move their livestock once a day, or something.


Pros

• Web-based and therefore really scalable, can easily handle more people than expected.
• I like the theme.

Cons

• Not really that physical -- the physical aspect is sort of gimmicky.
• Not really that social. Will have to really play up the social aspect to make it cool. Maybe different "sections" of these areas so small groups of players can gather and be interrupted. 
• Doesn't really have a great hook.

Idea - Castle Hampshire

Physical space, Card-based, Co-operative, kind of cool in the sense that it's like "how to use distributed resources in the best possible way"


Castle Hampshire

Castle Hampshire is a game about team-based competitive construction. Players come to a booth where cards are being handed out and are divided into two teams, the whatevers and the whatevers. It could even be game of thrones themed or something if that was a thing people would want (don't do this oh god).

When people come up to the booth, they get a pack of 7 cards. One of the cards indicates whether they're on red or blue team. The other card has brief rules and directs them to a website for extensive explanation. The other 5 cards are basic resources, something like wheat, brick, stone, oil etc... (settlers of catan feeling would be good here).

The game then plays out a little bit like a co-operative game mix of civilization and settlers of catan. Players can trade with their own team or even the other team for resources to build their plan of Castle Hampshire. It's as simple as this -- players combine resources and then trade them in to me/someone else at the booth (open daily 2-4 during game week or something) for other resources or valuable cards. All cards have point values, and at any point players may permanently trade those cards in for their point values to go towards their team's point total at the end.

EX. Wheat + Wheat can be traded in for a person card. Brick + Brick makes a house, maybe. Person + House makes a home. Wheat is worth 10 points, People are worth 60 points, houses are worth 70 points and homes are worth 200 points. There would also be cards with powers -- say a tax collector (person + money) gains 50 points for each home you have in your city. Many of these would be different and interesting + the fundamental game of finding people who have resources you want and trading with them or bringing them to the booth to trade in for a thing would be cool, and then on top of that organizing with your team for the best resources. Some resources would be rare so you would have to hunt down the people who had them. Some combinations would be rare as well and very valuable.

Pros

• Players like construction and building and teamwork. Very -ville esque, but with some oomph from the social interaction part. 
• Inherent social/physical interaction. 

Cons

• A little boring, maybe. 
• Difficult to get people to play if they don't want to go up to the desk or can't find it or whatever. Very micromanagement intensive and requires a lot of effort from each individual player. 

Idea - Dead Drop

Inherently Social, Uses physical space, Co-opetition, ARG style 


Dead Drop

Dead drop is a social game about secret languages and messages. When players sign up online, they are split into two groups randomly -- they are either a Smuggler or a Detective.


Smugglers
Your first job as a smuggler is to enter a secret code into the website -- any string of letters or numbers. This code becomes your first deal. Whenever another smuggler enters your deal code into the website, they get points and you get points based on how many smugglers have found your deal so far. Whenever you enter another smuggler's deal code into the website, you get points and they get points. However, if a detective finds and enters your deal code, you lose points and that detective gains huge points based on the amount of people that have entered your deal.

Bulletin boards on campus are designated as "deal" locations, but presumably students could use anywhere to try to set up these deals. (uses the physical space of campus in this way)

Detectives
Detectives try to find smuggler's deal codes and enter them on the website themselves, thus "busting" the deal.


Somewhere in the middle of the game, smugglers and detectives swap roles maybe.

Pros: 

• Has a kind of cool secret element

Cons:

• Seems pretty small and self-contained, maybe difficult to make a larger game around.
• Why won't players just use alternate modes of communication, like web-boards and other things that destroy the physical/ARG element of the game? (difficult problem, will need to solve in any physical game, cards solve this). 
• Why won't players "make sure" that other players are smugglers/detectives by requiring proof? (possible solutions: smugglers get huge pts if they know the nickname/name combo of other smugglers, and those smugglers lose huge pts (to prevent point trading)) 

Brainstorming #1

So I've been thinking about it a lot and think that the best way to go about this is to set out a number of goals for myself and then do a shotgun design approach, where I just come up with 10+ game ideas that I could flesh out into one "larger" scale game (most likely possibility) or several smaller scale games (least likely possibility). So here are my goals.

Also, because I've never done anything like this, it's possible that the best way to do this isn't to go gung-ho on one project idea, but instead to start working on an idea and then let it evolve organically as I begin to understand the constraints/possibilities of what I'm working with.

Additionally, because these game ideas will be small they will probably end up being the core/foundational idea of a larger game if I end up making only one game.

Possible Goals (on a game per game basis) 

• Turns the world into something that could be part of the game -- ARG style. 
• Greed
• Co-opetition (Co-operative/Competitive) 
• Status/Reputation
• Popularity (Fashion, trending, memes - frankgame) 
• Card-based

Probable Goals (most games should include these) 

• Use of physical space (this will be difficult -- need to find a reason people would need to communicate through physical space instead of just the internet -- use of anonymity, bulletin boards, cards etc) 
• Inherent social, viral. 

Div III Blog

So, just figured I'd make a blog to organize all my Div III thoughts and processes online so I can document them. Later, when I go back to write stuff or maybe do a gallery show this will probably be helpful.