Social Games (again)

Lest you think I'm slacking on my designerly duties, I've been dumping hours of work into a Social Games wiki Orion set up. We're using it as a place to flesh out a new game genre we hatched when I visited the Bay Area; its not public yet, but here's a bit of a preview.

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[From the intro page:]
Social Games are multiplayer games played as part of a social gathering.

The basic premise of a Social Game is that players arrive at a party, and are free to socialize normally, but a series of goals underlie the evening, and the actions of players throughout the party affect the result of the game. Ideally, the social and game parts of the activity support one another: the game inspires social interactions, while the social setting provides a rich mode of game playing.

The closest existing game concept to the Social Game concept is the How to Host a Murder series, or other murder mystery games, where a mystery-based game underlies a party. One or more game masters (usually the hosts) organize the game and distribute information and game materials to the players that are supposed to have it.

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[From one of my initial game sketches:]
In the Secret Amnesiac game, there are [[secret roles]], among which there is a single “amnesiac”, and no-one knows who. Specifically:

- The game is different every time you play it, perhaps using the [[combinatorial variation]] idea. Every time you play the game, the theme is somewhat different, the basic mechanics work a little differently, and the victory conditions are different, especially for a special player, called the Amnesiac.

- One player is the amnesiac, tasked with finding out what's going on in the game, who they are, what their victory conditions are (from among a set of possibilities, determined each game). Other players have partial information on these matters.

- Other players know that there is an amnesiac, but not who it is. Some of these players want to help the amnesiac, some want to hurt him - but all have other victory conditions that have nothing to do with the amnesiac, to drive the action. Each of these players is secretly assigned a role from a pool of possible roles when the game is run, and not all roles are used.

The “normal” players go about their business of playing the game as normal, trading, stealing, gambling, whatever - while keeping an eye out for the amnesiac.

The amnesiac tries to learn what they can, but most importantly tries to remain hidden. They should try to appear to be playing the game normally, maybe going so far as pretending to have one of the “normal” roles (though this has its own risks). This can be tricky when they know so little about the game, and it may be safer to try to find one person they think they can trust, who can tell them enough to get by on.

The problem with this game is that the amnesiac might be revealled very early on. The game will have to either be designed so that it can be played many times in an evening, or will have to continue to be compelling once the amnesiac is revealled (simply becoming a Bourne Identity-like game as mentioned on the [[secret roles]] page).

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I don't know if that all works out of context, but I wanted to provide a taste. The wiki is actually getting quite robust - I'll get a guest account set up soon, so let me know if you're interested in checking it out.

Social Games

I love the way that games, especially board games, have the power to provide a social experience. The giant joystick in this clip certainly got me thinking about that idea:

http://www.areyouindie.com/showcase/profile.php?id=19

Part of why I'm down on video games lately is that, while they can provide a heck of an experience, its generally not a social one. That often makes the experience empty, somehow, if you ask me.

Mankind's earlier games, from board games to general acts of vaguely organized frollick, were inherently social, at very least by nature of involving one or more people. One could argue that this was out of necessity.

Let me back up a step: one major difference between a game and a non-game activity is unpredictability. You don't know what's going to happen next when you play a game, and trying to affect that outcome, and experiencing the results, is part of the joy of it. This is why we don't play games that are "solved", why we shun the broken strategy, why a game without depth loses its appeal quickly. We don't want to go through the motions, we want the thrill of uncertainty, and the challenge of affecting it.

So, early on, the easiest way to provide challenge and uncertainty was to pit players against one another. You want X, he wants not-X, conflict ensues, the outcome is uncertain.

But computers can do a bunch of stuff under the hood, can cut decision outcomes along time-discretions so fine that our performance is at the mercy of our more base reflexes, they can provide an uncertain outcome in our interaction with them.

And sure, a deck of cards for solitaire can provide uncertainty. A ball-and-cup game, through the finer points of physics can provide the unexpected bounce and twitch.

But for many people, the social end of gaming has become the exception.

Some people are fine with all this, I'd reckon. 'Gimme uncertainty, via a person or a magic box or whatever, I want to impose my will on the world. Thank god I'm not at the mercy of having other people around to get my game on'. I can't imagine anyone actually uttering that statement, ever. But you get the point, I don't think some people see the loss of a human element in games as a problem.

For me though, I feel like I need that social element. Believe it or not, this isn't even meant as some screed in favor of social interaction, its just what I'm finding I want from games lately. When I play video games, I strive for coop gameplay when I can find it. Even when I play a video game alone, I find myself looking for games that are going to promote social interaction after-the fact. I like my ownership-of-experience games (I don't think I've done my rant on this yet here) where I can tell someone a story of what I did that is different from the experience that every player has. I want something where I can compare achievements and high scores. Bioshock's coming out, and I'm stoked to play it, but its at least partially because I want to talk about (what's shaping up to be) a landmark game, with other game lovers.

Side note, I played the demo, god damn. An enormous, abandoned 1950's underwater city, ready to collapse under the weight of the ocean at any moment, filled with period propaganda, magestic architecture, and crawling with maniacs. Abandoned, underwater, 50's, metropolis. Jesus! Best video game atmosphere ever? So yeah, I'm still a sucker for the solo elements.

This comes into board games too. They're inherently social, but I'm finding I want to weild this in ways other than outright competition. Not just because of my game-based neuroses, though I'm sure thats part of it, I feel like there are other kinds of interaction that can be inspired by games than I-win, you-lose. I'd like more cooperative games, and even games that encourage creative expression, for example. That's a lofty enough goal, I'll stop short of games that let you share your feelings.

To get back to the initial inspiration, I love the idea of the giant joystick. It's collaborative, but furthermore, it allows people to choose their own approach to the collaboration. Its cooperative, but there's a negotiation there, I can imagine. Its a creative act, just playing it, just deciding how to play it, and one that multiple people participate in. All this despite being a video game. Delicious.

I can only dream of a board game design like that: one that allows people to choose their own mode of interaction, while providing enough of a framework so that the whole exercise doesn't fall into disarray.

It seems impossible, but as if often the case with these posts, I'm warmed by the promise of the idea's distant glow.