@PlayGlitch tweeted a link to a brilliant slideshow that discusses the pitfalls and potentials of gamification in applications. While the presentation is really more about adding games to apps rather than games themselves, it's worthwhile to view in the context of where Glitch is in development.
I was surprised that the tweet included, "A perfect expression in our philosophy in making Glitch", not because I doubt the sincerity of this but because of how little Glitch currently lives up to that philosophy. I'm hopeful this means more good things are to come, but - as a tester - critical of what I see now in relation to the concepts expressed in the slideshow.
The slideshow is a lot to digest, but an ending line there expresses, "To seek out and determine our challenge and our freedom in the hand that we've been dealt, and to play it with mastery and cunning , with creativity and style," or "how to live well in the face of change and fate." Much of what I discuss below assumes having gone through the presentation.
There are very few places to play between the seams in Glitch; indeed, some tweaks have been made that take away player creativity rather than enhance it. This bugs me, because I do want a possibility engine rather than an exhaustible, and much of Glitch is simply about clicking enough times to make it so. Every achievement is doable with enough time and no skill. I'm not taking about 'skills' as the game has them - mining or teleportation or what have you - but skills in the sense of mastery of techniques. Everything gets a reward, which encourages people to go after the reward, not the process of building or creating or playing.
For example, projects were a great hope of multi-player quests where the rewards barely covered your expenses in completing the project and people had to coordinate together to complete the project; then trophies were added, which I think diminished the projects as an ends onto themselves and encouraged hoarding, pillaging and the general expectation of profiting from doing something in-game. This is not to say that all people now contributing to projects are hoarders and profiteers - but coordination isn't what it was when they were first introduced.
While Glitch certainly has a lot going for it in terms of self-determination (there is no true end goal, you can direct your character down a given path, 'voluntary, self directed activity'), I do wish it had more building blocks for us to play with and more real game-playing skill as you level up (so, both more ludus and paidia).
In terms of ludus, the challenges we face are not exactly scaffolded, although the mechanics are such (it takes much more XP to level up from 40 to 41 than it did from 10 to 11). But gaining XP is still exactly the same for a level 40 as it is for a level 10. The tower was pretty cool in terms of needing to know in-game tricks (something may be hidden behind this pillar) and being maze-like (which corridor or door should I enter to get to the ghost?). However there is a disconnect in the level 12 requirement and the complexity of the maze. A level 1 could complete that maze, so adding in the level 12 requirement only serves the purpose of giving a level 11 something to strive for - it's artificial in the sense that the requirement doesn't give you the know-how to complete the maze. I'd like to see more structured puzzles that rely upon actual mastery of game skills - similar to the moving crystal ledges in some of the races, where you have to know how to click to get the timing right.
Did you know it is possible to go from the floor of The Other Drop to the top of it? Or that you can hang your character in the sky after making a high jump? I'd like to see more quests that take advantage of that sort of skill. The new locked street in the Deeps is a good example: you need to know where the key spawns in order to gain access to the street. But that sort of knowledge quickly becomes a spoiler - "the key is here, stand there until it appears". That's not much of a challenge, whereas an Angry Bird spoiler still relies on your ability to pull the slingshot just so. How about putting the key somewhere where you need both the spinach and the meditation orb to reach it?
In terms of paidia, please, can have more? Plz? There are not enough seams to explore - most things are on a fixed track of exhaustibility. There is little room to be creative, and I don't mean creative as in changing your avatar's clothing. The slideshow makes a great point about how expected, intrinsic rewards reduce the motivation to do the thing as it curbs autonomy through control (leaderboards are cited here as devaluing the activity... and my experience bears out that leaderboards = clickfest). I'd like to see more small pieces loosely joined. But that is removed in the game more often than added One example was pig fountains (they created too much lag, so were taken away and sad pigs were introduced). Another was sticking a pig to a ceiling, which I did report as a bug but afterward got to thinking about the creative potential for something like that in game, where I could modify the landscape around me with stuff. Some people do this at parties by hanging spinny wheels in the sky.
I'd like more interactive ability to shape the world - it really feels pre-determined. What if through the magic of sticky pigs, we could find ways to stack objects atop each other in-game or influence another player's motions? In other words... we discovered conga lines (which were a by-product of finding the edges of the follow feature), what if we could discover player pyramids by stacking ourselves atop one another? Or bumping someone when jumping into them - that pig tossing game got me to dreaming of the possibilites of an object in game being able to impact another object. I know those examples sound insignificant, but the point being that the more playful ways I can be in the game (such as pilot & bombardier), the more fun I actually have. Oddly, I don't really want quests tied to this thing. Peter-out-pete was introduced after players discovered the possibility of barnacle collection.... but the quest is tied to a reward, so people do the quest for the reward, not for the obvious benefits of coordinated collection. In fact, it's still a struggle to get players to grok the concept of shared resources and group activity - we have dirt piles and rocks and barnies, all of which are more efficient harvested together, but it takes a lot of concerted effort to motivate people to do these things. I propose this is because the world is too structured and leaderboards encourage the opposite of collective action. Because there is also too little 'play' (paidia) in the game.
Then there is fate. The bit at the end of the slideshow really spoke to me, the part about Aristotle and Heroes and fate. That the measure of us is not how victorious we are in life, but how we deal with adversity. How can I make a story of my Glitchy character - what trials did I go through due to either bad luck or consequences of my earlier activities?
I know, stoot, I was again "too long!" but but this really speaks to what I was hoping for out of Glitch and the possibilities I still see with Glitch. :D