Topic

gamification and Glitch...

@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

Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink

Replies

  • Good read. Not sure I agree with all of. Not that I disagree either. So actually have nothing to add except to say it is a thoughtful interesting post that deserves attention.
    Posted 18 months ago by Lord Bacon-o Subscriber! | Permalink
  • What an incredibly well thought out post.  I know I share the common good, community interest approach to gaming.  I too would like to see the world of Glitch a bit more tactile, with the stacking and bumping and such.  You provided some wonderful examples and I echo your response in saying while the goals of Glitch sound amazing, it would not be the first time I was let down by the end result of a progressive gaming company.  I hope TinySpeck sticks to what their intentions are and develop a game that pushes its players to think, explore, and interact in a whole new way.
    Posted 18 months ago by Jepro Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't have a chance to watch that slideshow ATM, but... That was a beautiful post. I think you make some good points and I like your ideas.
    Posted 18 months ago by Purple Haze Subscriber! | Permalink
  • totally agree, zee. the slideshow was powerful. and did make me wonder how glitch fit in. it's a great start, but i kept thinking of all the games mentioned- i haven't played any of them. i want to build shapes with my crops and inventories, not just drop them at my feet! remember the super cherry that was just a bug? that was awesome!

    ceiling pig!

    decorating our houses- what if we could make our own decorations- needlepoint? paintings? legos?

    right now the slideshow doesn't apply. it's not foursquare (which i admit i love) but it's not creative, either. the party was fun- we pushed the limits, and the projects have some cooperative elements- i need this, ok, i'll drop it for you or give it to you, but that's about it. 

    the slideshow also validated my constant whinging about more quests: puzzles ARE what make games work.
    Posted 18 months ago by greenkozi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • +1 from me as well.

    I get the sense that the folks at TS are interested in more open-ended play, and that they will work on that aspect of the game after putting the basic elements of the game in place. I hope I am right.

    I was initially drawn to Glitch based on a vision of what I thought the game was, based on a few snippets of information (e.g., the trailer, articles, etc). I figured that Glitch was supposed to be a whimsical world where players try to understand the "rules" of the world, and use those rules to create and extend the world they live in.

    To some extent, this vision holds up. You need to understand that spinach lets you jump, and you can pet trees or help build a street. So those are examples of "understanding the rules" or "extending the world".

    But there is a deep way in which player participation does NOT help build the world. That street is going to be built whether you are providing the clicks or some other player provides the clicks.

    And there is also a deep way in which understanding the rules of the game is not part of gameplay.

    In the Zelda games, for examples, you would learn that doing such and such would lower the level of water, which would give you access to parts of the game board that you didn't have before. There was a deep way in which solving the puzzles in Zelda was all about learning the rules of the world and gaining mastery over them.

    In Glitch, there are plenty of rules (e.g., crushing X gives you Y, which you can stir to make Z, which gives you the B buff) but there is a kind of shallowness to them.

    The rules are there to be followed, not played with. You can't really experiment with cooking, powders, crop growing, or building things. All you can do is follow the precise set of steps for clicking on things in order to accomplish task Q.

    Anyway, I am enjoying the game for what it is, so I don't mean to be a complainer. But I wonder how long my interest will last if the core of the game remains: Click on X, Y, and Z 500 times in this exact order. To me, it doesn't matter if the art and writing tell me that X, Y, and Z are the ingredients for chicken soup or a recipe for extremely hallowed shrine powder or a fuel cell. In the end, I'm still just running around gathering stuff and clicking on stuff in a certain preordained order.
    Posted 18 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I took away a different conclusion:  it's not the puzzles that make games work, it's the building blocks that players can use to create a bigger game.  It is the player-controlled activities that make a game good, not the activities that the designers create for you. 

    The Second Life/Minecraft abilities to use basic in-game resources to create something that the designers didn't think of.  For example, in SL I created a portable photostudio that could either be toted to your favorite destination or could have a slide of your favorite destination projected as the background of your modeling shoot.

    So far, Glitch doesn't enable any player creativity.  We can play paperdolls with our avatars, but not design new clothes.  We can't even change the color of our bags. 

    If stoot thinks this slideshow is " a perfect expression of our philosophy in making Glitch", then we are quite early in beta testing, and no where near going live. 
    Posted 18 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Oh, wow.  Yes.  Exactly.  I think it's this kind of promise that drew me to Glitch in the first place and that keeps me here.  

    Are we asking the impossible?  I don't know enough about programming to know whether it's even within the powers of TS to make Glitch into something like you've described, but if it was...

    And yes, more quests.  More difficult quests.  And totally agreed about the need to tie higher skills to higher, more rewarding tasks.  And glitch pyramids, and ceiling pigs.
    Posted 18 months ago by Tradescantia Subscriber! | Permalink
  • what glitch is now is almost entirely *prescriptive*.

    i know that i am incredibly bored of all the prescriptive game elements, which is what leads me to trying to eek out every scrap of creativity i can out of ever nook and cranny or the game that is un-prescriptive  .. which is what lead to spending time developing techniques for climbing other drop, jumping games and now dropping games.

    but .. based on developer statements we know that the game will not always be so prescriptive. so it really is just a matter of continuing to wait until the philosophy of making glitch manifests itself.

    we should also keep in mind that a lot of people WANT to play purely prescriptive games and aren't interested in collaboration unless there is some personal reward offered for it. i've realized that in order to satisfy this element of the player base there will have to be 'trophies' for most everything in the game, with dynamic collaboration and creativity always fighting its way through more prescriptive play styles.

    the best we can expect is for there to be the possibility of playing in this way. we know from developer statements that this play style will exist as a possibility, but nothing has been said about it being the easy road.

    so let us set our expectations very, very low. take as given that solo, prescriptive play will be prioritized and be ready to pounce on and make the most of whatever non-prescriptive scraps we get.

    limitations breed creativity after-all, so we should remember that this struggle is for our own good.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I was also surprised - but for a different reason. My impression was TS posted that tweet for networking purpose, etc. etc.

    The slide show was way too long and didn't really make the "gamefication argument" in a clearly concise way. I enjoyed seeing websites to other games, and although I saw many pics of GO, didn't see any of chess, but didn't sit through to the end.


    Did enjoy checking out the Mindbloom website, which is very well done, and free.
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • One thing that makes me nervous is that the elementary building blocks don't seem to lend themselves to more creative play.

    Instead of having lots and lots of items that differ only in name and art (really.. how is a mangosteen different than an orange), I'd love to see more thought on giving items in the world deeper properties that would lend themselves to creative use.

    For example, you could imagine that parts of the world were made of "wood". And there might be a rule that wood floats. Or that wood was flammable. Or that you could use a hammer and nails to turn planks into cubes. With enough of those types of rules, people could set about trying to make bridges or rafts or whatever.

    As it stands now, items have very specific properties that are preordained (a focusing orb lets you meditate, while an earthshaker protects you from energy loss while mining). And as such, it's hard to imagine how players could take part in creating their own items.
    Posted 18 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • looking at mindbloom .. also very prescriptive.

    basically you are given real life "quests" to complete, articulated in great detail. complete the quest and you get points.

    that's swell, but it is a crutch really. i need to be able to create my own quests to go on, if i am to truly have agency and ownership over my actions.

    granted - the site does offer the option of creating quests from scratch and most everything is editable, but the interface is so full of distractions that this is very difficult to do. you are swarmed with so much visual and auditory stimulus that there's very little room to think, only to follow.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • there is room for creativity: what if you could make your own food once you have a grasp of the tools and the ingredients? you could make your own gases once you have tools and ingredients? (etc, etc) people have suggested flowers, you could make your own bouquets, which may be more possible, since it would just be for decoration.

    but so far, i don't see it, and i hope we do.
    Posted 18 months ago by greenkozi Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I agree, @greenkozi. I think creative cooking should be added, and I would find it fun.

    But let's play it out. Suppose I invent a "spicy cabbage slaw". And I either choose from a wide range of available artwork or I add my own.

    Unless some other elements of creativity or experimentation are added in, all I've done is create "Generic food Y" and given it the name of "Spicy Cabbage Slaw". Would that feel more fulfilling than, say, naming a pig?

    One side of me says, "perhaps", because it allows us to do more pretending. In the future, maybe I could open up "Magic Panda's cuban-turkish fusion restaurant" and those named dishes would be important to the experience.

    But part of me says "perhaps not", because it's all just "generic food Y" with a different name.

    What I'm craving is more pieces of gameplay where items have properties and those items can combine with other items in novel ways based on the rules of gameplay. Maybe that's just too much to expect?
    Posted 18 months ago by magic panda Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "Instead of having lots and lots of items that differ only in name and art (really.. how is a mangosteen different than an orange), I'd love to see more thought on giving items in the world deeper properties that would lend themselves to creative use."

    Glitch is in many ways extremely conservative in philosophy.

    The devs and artists create, and we consume.

    What we choose to consume influences what they choose to create.

    This is basically the current and constant state of the consumer society. Not very novel, but damn people love it. You can't blame glitch for going this route, as it is tried and true.

    People do want agency, but what they really want is to *feel* that they have agency. Regarding Oranges and Mangosteens I am reminded of the old nugget about how the same company would put out multiple "Brands" of Laundry detergent that were all essentially the same, because market testing showed that every couple of years consumers would want to make a switch just for the sake of making a switch. The obvious response was to flood the market with seemingly competing options so that the consumer would [often unknowingly] switch brands but remain buying essentially the same product and profiting the same people .. all while feeling good about themselves for *feeling* like they had agency in the choice.

    Ultimately this is all Glitch needs to do. Provide a *feeling* of consumer choice, agency.

    Mad Men is a flawed show in many ways but there is an incredible scene from the second season that is all about the very personal, psychological aspects of agency in the consumer society. it is a brilliant piece of writing ..

    Actually, just watch it here ..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deXGXYJo4-0

    p.s. such a well written scene, i love the little ironic twist when Don says "i'm not even allowed to pick where i sit".
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @striatic that's true.. But I really hate it!!!! It's so deceptive. Thank you for reminding me why the world frustrates me so. :-(
    Posted 18 months ago by Purple Haze Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @SourGrapes .. Deceptive .. well, not intentionally so. Mostly it is unintentionally self-deceptive ..

    as in that Mad Men scene .. Don actually believes that he is *enabling* choice, agency. He cannot fathom the diminishment of his wife .. his market .. that is inherent in his actions.

    Here is another great scene from Mad Men to chew on..

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0L8f1IY1Vk

    "Advertising is based on one thing .. Happiness, and you know what happiness is? It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of the road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing, it's okay. You're okay."

    Which is what Glitch does whenever it wraps Farmville up in the safety blanket of community and intellectual game philosophy.

    It doesn't even matter if these elements actually exist in-game. The words themselves tell the consumers *and* the creators that what they are doing is okay. they're okay. Only a veneer and a cloud of rhetoric is required for that.

    The true horror of that "It's Toasted" scene is that is isn't at all machiavellian or intentionally deceptive. All those characters smoke. They are as much the target of the ad as the people driving by the billboard. They are all slowly killing themselves but are so scared of their weakness in the front of a poisonous yet addictive substance that they need constant reassurance that what they are doing is ok. They believe that they are enabling freedom, agency. They aren't controlling the consumer, but *supporting* consumer choice, freedom, agency.

    The supreme irony being that they are supporting the use of a physically addictive substance - Tobacco - that has more to do with slavery [in a whole host of ways] than it has to do with freedom or choice.

    Philosophy can be a method of reasoning that lies behind considered action. It can also be used fetishistically, a mystical talisman held out in reassurance, letting you know that whatever it is you're doing, it's okay.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • New research at the University of North Carolina about achievements and predicting what we will want to do next
    news.ncsu.edu/releases/wmsr...

    One interesting element of these findings is that the achievements that are highly correlated – or part of the same clique – do not necessarily have any obvious connection. For example, an achievement dealing with a character’s prowess in unarmed combat is highly correlated to the achievement badge associated with world travel – even though there is no clear link between the two badges to the outside observer.
    Posted 18 months ago by WindBorn Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I knew when I posted that that someone would bring it up in the forums and I especially knew that there would be a dose of "hey! what the?" when holding Glitch up to the candle of that presentation.

    (And it was quite a candle! Not just the stuff on play & games, which I've been kind of obsessed with for the last decade but also the philosophical underpinnings and design theory — it's like all my intellectual passions in rolled up into one punchy, cogent, juicy and delicious rhubarb pie. Candle. Pie candle. Yes.)

    Here's why Glitch doesn't live up to its own design philosophy: it's really, really hard! I'm not complaining (I work 60-70 hours a week because I love this) and I'm not making excuses. But it is hard in so many ways:

    — as a software design challenge, it is "difficult" (in both the sense of requiring a lot of skill to accomplish and the sense of there not being ready-made solutions or even obvious best practices for the approach we took) and it is also "complex" (in the sense of there being a lot of code, a lot of features and a large number of components that have to work together). In my 15+ years of doing this kind of stuff, this is by far the most complex thing I've ever dealt with: it makes building almost anything else simple by comparison.

    — as a creative work, it is never ending and we probably set the quality bar much higher than we should have (at least at this point) to produce as quickly as we want. Just scheduling, reviewing and co-ordinating the illustration, animation, level building, writing and music is more than one full time job. But, we want to build something beautiful and perfect and just so because we are fortunate enough to be in a position to do so. And, no one else will ever build Glitch if we don't ;)

    — it is vastly "overplayed" for the its current point of development. Most of the people who say that they are "bored" of Glitch have played more than 100 hours (and many have played way, way longer than that). The typical AAA console game with a $20M development budget (using a pre-existing game engine) is planned to have 30-40 hours of playable content. We can get up to several hundred hours, but it will take a while (see the first two points above).

    — most of all, the fundamental design problems is VERY hard: designing a great single player video game is hard (think Ms. PacMan or Tetris or Bejewled or Grand Theft Auto or Angry Birds or whatever it is that you like). The "flow" has to be there; the feedback has to be right; not too easy, not too hard; players have to be able to get better and increase their mastery in a way that's fun itself … the challenges are numerous. Making a great multiplayer game is at least as challenging, but has the additional challenges of balance and adaptability to different skill levels.

    But, making a great persistent-world massively-multiplayer game is a whole other level of challenge. Rather than carefully controlling a player's progression through the world, pacing the introduction of new challenges and new tools to go along with them, one has to create a space that thousands of players with different attitudes and different inclinations can simultaneously inhabit and go about their business. And they're all at different levels in the game, with different skills and different goals.

    The locations are not linear left-to-right "designed experiences", but places in a world that different people will enter from different starting points. Some people will have this place as their destination while others are just passing through; some out foraging for resources while others are exploring the world for the first time.  The items and tools and production rates have to be balanced so that there is enough world and enough stuff for everyone, but not too much so that everything loses its value. The ecosystems/ecologies/economy should be robust enough to avoid collapse while being dynamic enough to remain interesting. And there has to be enough variety that people can experiment and explore for a looooong time.

    And all of that is just scratching the surface. The details are endless and the constraints introduced by one implementation decision for one goal ripple through and effect everything else — if we could start all over again, there are definitely things that we would have done differently (not to mention everything we've thrown away so far … Glitch is very, very different than it was in its earliest embryonic stages a year ago). But that's the way iteration goes. And the core is there to build something great.

    So, to summarize the above: (i) it's hard! and (ii) it is not yet realized enough to live up to the design goals. (I don't say "it's not done yet" because it is unlikely to ever be "done".)

    In a way, Go is a great inspiration. Or Chess. Or Little Big Planet. Or Katamari. Or Minecraft. Or many other things … but all of those have the immeasurable advantage that you start over all the time. You can clear the board and start a new game. Or try it again with your new strategy.

    But if the same world is to persist throughout "the game" and then grow and evolve by the actions of the players and at the same time remain a game (as opposed to a virtual world) then there are avenues that are harder to open. Magic Panda makes a very insightful comment above (read it) about what would make a satisfying creative input. Being able to change the skin is not enough: new things have to discoverable, properties and attributes recombinant, and the extent of possibilities have to be greater than what we're able to anticipate.

    But IF that kind of creation happens at the level of game items and skills which are core to progression, leveling, resources, economy, and so on AND the world can't be reset THEN the game will be over right away: as soon as someone creates a new thing which gives infinite energy (or infinite anything) there is no artificial constraint we all agree to abide to in order to play the game. It could still be cool, but it is not what are trying to do.

    That's not to say that there can't be generative systems within the game (we've had a design for collaborative music-making for a long time and it will someday become a reality which will cause me to spaz with glee). And likewise color-changing or contributing designs and certainly much more decorating will all happen (some sooner, some later). Maybe even level-design (all the tools we use to create the world are already inside the game itself). Plus minigames, more quests, multiplayer sports — it will all happen. But we already know that won't be enough of an elder game.

    So, what's left? On one of the slides in that presentation, Sebastian writes:  "At its core, play is not about any tool or object — a toy or game — but about the ability to reframe one's attention around a voluntarily chose, self-defined activity, goal, challenge, story, in which one may experience freedom — to either master it (which would be more gameful) or creatively explore its potential (which would be more playful)."

    A series of meaningful decisions can make a great game. And what could be more meaningful than deciding "who I am"? The creation of an identity in the game world tied to decisions about skills & specialization and more broadly the "role" one "plays" in the game — both the economic/ecological sense, but also in the social sense, can make a long and interesting game with near-infinite potential for creative exploration and mastery, especially if the world evolves along with you.

    We've never said this publicly (because it sure makes for lousy marketing/positioning) but: Glitch is a game about creating culture. We have a LOT to do before that can even start to be realized. A LOT more of the kind of things we've already done, and a lot of new/different things (social- or cultural-level tools). Some of that will be done before beta (there are two big features left, along with innumerable other little things and the never-ending stream of bugs and tweaks, etc.) but most of it won't happen till after. And some of it will take another six months. Or year. Or year-and-a-half. Or longer. (Some of you might want to take a break and come back in a few months ;)

    ANYWAY, to anyone interested in this stuff (probably you, if you read this whole thread), I'd really recommend taking the time to read/watch the whole slideshow, full-screen, with few distractions. Really great stuff.

    And zeeberk, thanks for posting it and starting the discussion. I agreed with most everything you said. You thought your post was long? ;)
    Posted 18 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • @zee - thanks for putting into words much of what I couldn't frame gently.

    Oooooo.... a blog post :D
    Thanks for that. And thank you for bringing up some of the 'longer term' projects TS has lurking in the background. Just knowing crafting/creation (of new recipes, items, music, potentially street building), is still 'on the table' just shifted into the way-way-off. It goes a long way in soothing worries about the overall direction the game will take in a year, two, five.

    I know I'm one of the 100+ hours folks, and yeah... I'll probably take a break. One thing you've done really, really well is provide a rapid pace of change. So, even though I've long since run out of 'directed' things to do... I'm constantly trying to figure out what changed, then setting personal missions to explore and understand the change, then the missions to *do something entertaining* with it after the exploration phase is over. I'm anxiously awaiting Unlearn, as a means of 'resetting' my own world to challenge myself - all obstacles I create to generate a more entertaining 'play' for myself. 

    Given the breakneck pace 'new' has been released in the final mile 'sprint' to launch in this marathon, I highly doubt I will run out of self-directed missions before reset and launch. If I do, I'm sure I'll be back to see what has changed. 

    Also worth noting, I've accepted the need for self-directed missions as an 'artificial constraint' for the activity to continue being a game, and spend time thinking of how to generate new play... in much the same fashion that a child kicking a ball against a wall is playing a game. Now I'm seeing how many times I can do it in a minute with the ball hitting half way up the wall, while spinning in circles and hopping on one foot between shots. 
    At some point I stopped playing the 'designed' game, and just started playing my own. 
    It's actually been a lot of fun that way. 
    Posted 18 months ago by Travinara Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thanks for the fascinating, informative, thought-provoking look within, Stoot. 
    Posted 18 months ago by ElleD Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Excellent post Stoot giving so much insight into how it was/is/will or may be.

    Thanks;)
    Posted 18 months ago by ♥joby♥ Subscriber! | Permalink
  • This was an interesting presentation and I have enjoyed reading through everyone's posts on this topic.  For me, it highlights the aspects of game play that I expected in joining this game, but I didn't see, and have often attempted to post about.  

    While in some areas, we can be rather creative (within limits), in others it seems like there is little flexibility in players' choices to make this game their own - which I thought was the point of the game. I finally resolved that the concept of 'building the world' really meant only the street expansion products not anything that would involve my own personal choices in game.  I'm glad to see from stoot's comments that while that may be the current implementation as they get the baseline in place, that's not really the intention. But I have to echo Windborn's comment - if this presentation provides some of the goals of the development of this game, then we seem to be a long way off realizing that goal.

    Just to be obstinate,  I currently play excluding a major element of the current game as it stands.  While some would think I'm missing out (or not playing it right, etc)...for me, it seems that it has actually served to extend the enjoyment of gameplay for me since it actually slowed down some of my skill learning and I still have many more skills to learn and quests to enjoy (which I do enjoy quests and rewards - call me a bit of a Skinner rat).  But from posts, it seems that I'm less bored than many at my level, and I've had to find alternate ways to earn xp. Has it been somewhat of a roadblock to play this way? - oh yea, but I figured what the heck...I want to play my way...and if they can't give the flexibility to play the way I really want, I just won't play that part of it at all.  It's been an interesting experiment.

    I'd also like to point out, much to the chagrin of some of our non-fans, that probably the reason why so many of the former FSers were so passionate about the loss of our game, was that it truly incorporated so many of the elements talked about this in this presentation. I'd like to make a statement to set the record straight - the game did not fail due to the elements of the game itself...it is closed due to a frankly rather bad business decision (or probably multiples of poor business decisions (mostly resource based) strung along to make one big bad one). The game itself was rather brilliant, and why the players became pretty passionate about it.  Players had their own worlds (spheres) where they could unleash unlimited creativity as exemplified in the brief by the farmville creativity. Yet there was the rest of the world (rock gardens, polar areas, beaches, underwater worlds, etc) where players could interact and be social.  There were other creative elements, like here, of cooking with similar restrictions that we see here.  Like here, there was a both a game/vendor and player market to create an economy.  There were no leaderboards except in community projects (similar to street projects here - though the street projects do offer more diversity in the changing elements required to complete).  One of the things that kept the game from getting too boring was that players had multiple avis (only one could venture out of the personal space at time).  So players would develop multiple strategies for play.  Some had goals to get all their avis to a max level (20), some had a goal of having the same type of avi (15+ to choose from) in their personal space, etc. The avis could be released to make space for new ones, and thereby a mini-restart to the game with each new avi.  In some ways, the game was what the players made it once they got through the baseline quests - some cooked or gathered and sold items, many had self made goals for their avis, and player initiated games (hide and seek was one of my favorites).   I would say that I played for nearly a year without it getting overly boring - I'd say easily 400+ hours (probably more), which is way higher than the metric mentioned.  While the game had it's flaws - some tasks got repetitive, new worlds didn't open fast enough, etc; for the most part it was a wonderful example of the elements discussed in this brief.  It's almost a shame that the best practices couldn't be plucked to be implemented here, but I think this brief may highlight many of those - so yippie! 

    I am glad to see that many of these concepts are at the core desires of the developers. I think that is something that many of us have hoped for, but are frustrated that we still don't see yet.  However, I think you have us curious enough to stick around to see where this might go.  I just vote for more player options (lots of parallel paths) and flexibility in interacting their world around them, and look forward to many more player creative elements so we can design unique personal spaces/items/etc. I'd like to see the game to appeal to the broadest of a player base (hopefully mostly adult) without losing its edginess.  To me, flexibility and options for players to make this their own game are the key.
    Posted 18 months ago by b3achy Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Thank you Stoot for taking the time to explain, it must be incredible inside your head! So much you obviously want and plan to do. So much for us to look forward to.

    100+ hours? If the game is open for 3 days = 72 hours minus some sleep time, many of us will have easily hit the 100 in two tests. Umm, yeah maybe I don't need to know how many hours I've played lol, but still enjoying almost every minute.

    I'm sure many of us are playing like Travinara, finding different goals to fulfill within the game. I did that in Animal Crossing, but it is so limited both in area and as to the number of people you can interact with. At one stage I was playing 3 DS towns simultaneously. 

    I love how the Glitchen world is expanding almost every test, busy places with new friends I havent met yet, and of course catching up with old friends. But also enjoy the quiet areas when I'm seeking some solitude ingame, and now she has clothes that I really like, I finally felt at one with my avi this test :)
    Posted 18 months ago by Teena Subscriber! | Permalink
  • with stoot's post, it is clear that players need tools for content creation.

    since living up to the design philosophy is so difficult, tiny speck is going to need help. even "several hundred hours" of playable content is simply not enough to sustain a subscription based game. the game will need 100ish of hours worth of playable content *every month* in order to justify the highest priced subscriptions.

    i don't see any way this is possible without heavily leveraging "user generated content" in some way [zille damn i hate that term].

    i suppose world of warcraft and other MMOs get around this through a combination of grind and gear and raiding and multiple characters, but glitch has the deck stacked heavily against it in this regard.

    ~ grind in glitch versus grind in WoW.. progress bars versus a variety of interestingly animated attacks that may be employed using different tactics

    ~ glitch has no gear system yet, but even if we had 25 different varieties of mining pick at various power levels, they aren't going to be as cool looking, mechanically varied or "show-off-able" as the stuff in WoW.

    ~ multiple characters .. i could start a different character with a different skill set, but glitch avatars look so similar to each other in comparison to the greatly varying race and class appearances and playstyle roles in WoW.

    ~ raiding? maybe glitch will catch this through some combination of group halls and projects. I hope so.

    ~ I also forgot PvP. not sure what the equivalent would be glitch. Race courses I suppose. glitch has a decent foundation there.

    in almost all the core categories for indefinite gameplay I don't see how glitch gets from here to there in terms of moving away from 'exhaustibles', as the presentation puts it.

    which means going a different route, right? since the goal of glitch is creating culture, as stoot puts it, you gotta figure there is going to be a heavy, heavy emphasis on user generated content and yet so far we've seen exactly 1 tool specifically for that ~ notes, at a point where people are already paying for the game.

    okay .. 2 tools if you include gnomes.

    i know it is difficult to produce heaps or artwork and levels and items and clothes at a high quality .. but that is precisely WHY we should have more player generated content tools by now, not why those tools have been held up.

    still, i am very excited to learn that creating culture is the point of the game. i just hope that players get to create some of it instead of learning it second hand by clicking talking chickens, and that the client and game structure haven't been developed so specifically for expressing developer culture that the player created stuff can only be awkwardly shoehorned in.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "Glitch is a game about culture." stoot barfield  - and to help create this culture - we must focus on the innerGlitch.

    And I'm going to revisit the slideshow until the end.
    Posted 18 months ago by MeherMan Subscriber! | Permalink
  • as if i haven't said enough but this is important .. really!

    stoot mentions people creating infinite energy machines. i'm sure there are people who'd love to break the game like that but what people have been asking for in terms of customization have been largely organizational and cultural and creative - not mechanical.

    you take care of the physics, we'll take care of the rest.

    there are different ideas about what constitutes "the rest", culturally and creatively and so on .. but i wonder if the staff ever worries that by focusing so strongly on a single backstory, visual aesthetic and gameplay direction that they are in effect "locking down" culture to the point where it isn't so much inspiring players as it is blocking avenues for player directed creativity.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Striatic, I think what you're looking for already exists: right here.

    And no, I don't think any of us worry about building a game/world will block creativity any more than the pre-existence of an actual world/culture prevents real life human beings from creating culture in the actual world.
    Posted 18 months ago by stoot barfield Subscriber! | Permalink
  • That's not at all what I'm looking for or what i'm talking about. I mentioned a baseline setting, which doesn't really exist in second life, as being inspirational.

    ie. "a good thing"

    A better example would be Dungeons & Dragons "Points of Light" concept. You can sum up "Points of Light" in a paragraph..

    "Civilized folk live in small, isolated points of light scattered across a big, dark, dangerous world. Most of the world is monster-haunted wilderness. The centers of civilization are few and far between, and the world isn’t carved up between nation-states that jealously enforce their borders."

    That, and a *very* vague cosmology and description of some general cultural qualities of the various races is all you get .. and yet pretty much anything you conceive of within this framework is unquestionably, aesthetically, narratively "D&D".

    Now of course D&D borrows heavily from general fantasy tropes that are almost universally familiar .. but that's the thing. It's *trope driven*, not content driven.

    So you get something with an aesthetic unity and common framework for play and inspiration that keeps everyone on the same page without turning that page into a paint by numbers colouring book. 

    As for existence of a world culture preventing human beings from creating culture in the actual world -Surely you recognize that 'overarching' culture in the actual world has been created over millennia and in many different forms by a great diversity of different people from different backgrounds, and that for this reason there is tremendous flexibility that does not exist in a specifically detailed and structured world created by a small group of individuals in vancouver, using an extremely specific aesthetic style. It is sort of like comparing a centrally planned economy versus a free-market one and expecting the same diversity of products in each just because they are both "economies".

    Glitch doesn't have to be as open ended as the real world or points of light .. but c'mon .. there is at least the *possibility* of continuing 'content creep' narrowing possibilities here.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • stoot! you make me laugh with glee with that last response!

    Thanks for your long response earlier, too.  I'm not faulting you and the team for not being more like x,y, or z, but just hoping for more... and your response gives lots to consider because it's all deep and broad and, well, thoughtful, which requires reflection.  But I do know you guys have a lot of plans and lots of iteration to go, and I'm still here for the ride.  

    One thing I do want to note is that you mention is, "Rather than carefully controlling a player's progression through the world, pacing the introduction of new challenges and new tools to go along with them, one has to create a space that thousands of players with different attitudes and different inclinations can simultaneously inhabit and go about their business. And they're all at different levels in the game, with different skills and different goals. "

    I agree.  Really, I do - you're building something unique and making it big enough that we will be able to create the 'story of me' and 'the story of our culture' within the game.  And I love that about Glitch (even if it's not fully there yet).  What I would like to see tweaked though, to be more in keeping with 'leveling up' or obtaining a skill is that as we progress through a given skill tree and get quests, that they actually be challenging.  Since the last reset, I turned to the green thumb/gardening skills after getting a lot of cooking/mining down.  One of them (can't recall now which, and I meant to write a post about it) seemed ludicrously easy after having been in the game for some weeks and petting/watering trees and such.  I recall thinking that it felt totally kindergarten for being triggered by the last skill in that track.  So, that's what I meant earlier by scaffolding.  Review those quests for the skill tree to see if they can be better scaffolded.

    But that's a specific and the topic is about generality... and I'm excited about the 'who am i?' stuff in Glitch (and creating culture), so I'm glad you spoke to it directly.

    Back to striatic's desire for UGC (ugh - marketingspeak) in-game: I'm curious what that looks like, stri?  As a non-design person, I'm not sure I'm interested in creating my own clothes/backgrounds/house furnishings.  Food/drinks maybe.  Levels for sure - I'd love to be able to create a street.  I mostly want more to play with in-game.  But with UGC, I worry about copyright/copyfree wars (YOU STOLE MY DRESS@!!@@111111 THIEF11111), spam (BUY MY CRAPWARE THAT I MADE WITH TEH DESIGN TOOL11111), and just a general devolution to playing dress-up.  But I know you're not about any of that, so can you go into more what UGC might look like in Glitch?

    * note: you posted just as I hit preview, so maybe your above post answers my question.  I'll read it a bit.
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "I'm curious what that looks like, stri?"

    well .. you know the legos that are all over that presentation?

    okay, say that is minecraft.

    now remember back before lego got involved in all the crazy content licensing they do now?

    they'd have a generic "castle" theme and a generic "space" theme with more trope-y stuff than you could make with just the blocks alone .. far, far better than just the blocks for creating lego-ey things that you could then use in play narratives, and still having a very defined "legoland" branded and easily identifiable aesthetic tho. still very much marketable. that would be my personal ideal.

    course i won't get that, nor should i because i want other people to play with and i don't think that'd be very popular .. there does need to be more structure than that.

    i mean, like in D&D you get the trope-y aesthetic plus you also get a very vague pantheon/cosmology that isn't integrated into the game mechanics so you can borrow from it or ignore it with more flexibility, as well as racial/cultural characteristics .. tropes that importantly get players on the same page. All this stuff is important and present in an MMO like Glitch, which is good.

    but there is too much of a good thing, y'know .. and too much of this stuff .. content creep .. and it starts to stifle how people perceive the game world. narrowing it.
    Posted 18 months ago by striatic Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I have found the forums in Glitch very enlightening, but playing Glitch for enlightenment?
    Inner Glitch, "Who Am I?"  Try studying Zen Meditation for about 25 years working through the Koans and doing at least a handful of 3 month solo retreats. Not to mention the 3 year retreat done following the Tibetan path. Or read the stories of the Saints.....the poverty of St Francis and the austerities of Milarepa, the extraordinary  ways of the Heyoka Medicine men. Whirling Dervishes, (dancing, dancing, dancing). Sacred chanting from  Hildegard von Bingen. The devotion of Naropa to his teacher. This game doesn't even scratch the surface of the depths of those paths.  And there are many more examples from countless cultures throughout time and geography. But Glitch for enlightenment? 

    Simply put, I play Glitch for fun, and I know it's my idea of fun: I want to play solo and I want to play interacting with others. I want to build and create my own space, and go out and explore. I both hate and love it when unexpected things happen. As Glitch exists right now, it does not allow me to create my own space. It does not have enough of the chaos and randomness happening that I have such a love/hate relationship with. I do understand that it is hard to create such a game. I am hopeful that the devs will be able to bring their ideas into reality. From what I am reading here, that will not be soon.

    I would love more "building blocks" that interact in ways that surprise and amuse. I have played with the inventory items and tried to create, but have not had too much success....I did discover that you can put hooch inside the extended arm of the emo bear and it looks really cute on the floor, like he went on a mind altering trip! I would like more of those kinds of things!  

    TY b3eachy for voicing the aspects of FS that made for player retention: personal and communal space, multiple avis with different purposes, game and self directed quests and goals, community activities, and randomness! I didn't know what I had till it was gone.

    I do hope that Glitch will not follow the Fitness Club routine: sell lots and lots of memberships and count on 6 weeks of involvement.
    Posted 18 months ago by 1padme Subscriber! | Permalink
  • I don't know how many of you have read "Ender's Game," by Orson Scott Card, but here's this anyway. In the book there is a digital world in which Ender, the main character, can enter and interact with anything and decide for himself what he wants to do. Much of the game is predetermined but eventually, because Ender is special, he breaks the boundaries and begins to explore the world the computer creates, beyond what anyone has ever seen. His superiors are baffled and simply cannot understand or comprehend what the game is doing.

    Anyway, perhaps I misunderstood both the slide and zeeberk's post, but I think I agree with Tradescantia. Is this almost endless world of possibility and creativity zeeberk so eloquently described impossible?
    Posted 18 months ago by goober Subscriber! | Permalink
  • We've never said this publicly (because it sure makes for lousy marketing/positioning) but: Glitch is a game about creating culture.

    This makes me really happy to read. This is what I expected Glitch to be, at its foundation. And if it takes a month, 6 months, a year or two to get there, I'm happy to be along for the ride. The game you are creating, or are trying to create, is the one I've been longing to play. And you're right, if you guys weren't doing it (from that perspective), who would?
    Posted 18 months ago by Eureka Subscriber! | Permalink
  • Only now I read this post, as the presentation above came to my attention from a gamers blog (Tobold). Here is a link to the presentation on the homepage of the author, rather then to slideshare. ( I bet he has other interesting presentations too.)
    Permalink (to the blog + slideshow)
    Homepage

    Sidestep: I really loved the saying of Peter-Paul Verbeek, slide 153:
    "...Every object we design shapes the behaviors and experiences of people by making some easier and some harder..." This was my ideological idea when I started my studies of Industrial Design Engineering: Creating products (which last at least a lifetime, are eco-friendly) which make everyday life a bit easier, taking away small annoyances people don't even notice they have or take for granted. (Everyone knows it's sometimes hard to open a jar of vegetables. So there are tools to make it easier. But what if, by some simple thing, opening the jar itself became easier without tools? Like the  "beschuit"  in the netherlands which was hard to get out of their package (stacked atop eachother in a cyllindrical carton package). As simple invention solved that: an notch out of the biscuit made it easier to get out of the package. (beschuit met inkeping). This saying of this guy made me think about that again, and the rest of what was quoted sparkled my enthousiasm about designing again...
    Hmm I am trailing off... back to the subject!

    It was very interesting and inspiring to view the entire presentation and to read all the posts here. I very much agree with the OP, but understand other's viewpoints as well.

    I played the Lego MMORPG during beta and bought it after launch. I really liked it that you have a personal space where you could build your house and add actions to items, you could program a lot! You could make your house private or public.
    (Due to it being a game for kids as well, your house would only become public after being reviewed for appropriateness.)
    The rest of the game became boring, and really focussed on kids (who didn't chat to eachother as they didnt know how to yet (not every kid speaks english) and because of the restrictions there were in chat (only able to say words from a pre-made list.)
    But the building! That's where I spent most my time on. Sure, I might have used the lego creator instead of this game, but I wanted to build things for others:
    A museum with hats of diferent periods and races.
    A campsite with a music room (You could have more personal spaces, just had to pay the rent)
    A pirate ford with a ninja place across the river, so people could sort of battle.

    I don't know if TS is familiar with that game. Although it wasn't perfect yet (ofcourse sometimes there were bugs with moving and placing stuff) it was great. Maybe look at that for inspiration for user created stuff?

    I appreaciate the effort the devs put into Glitch, and it's easy to talk about how things should be. Doing/making it is a whole other thing, but one can dream, right? :)
    Without the dream it would take a whole lot longer to get there!
    Posted 18 months ago by Miriamele Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "...remember back before lego got involved in all the crazy content licensing they do now?  they'd have a generic "castle" theme and a generic "space" theme with more trope-y stuff than you could make with just the blocks alone .. far, far better than just the blocks for creating lego-ey things that you could then use in play narratives, and still having a very defined "legoland" branded and easily identifiable aesthetic tho. still very much marketable. that would be my personal ideal."

    I have to disagree with this, mostly because it used to be a concern of mine, every time I bought my son a wallet-hemorraging "Star Wars" or "Pirates of the Caribbean" themed "set" for Lego...but what I learned was that after he built the prescribed set and got the prescribed fun out of it, he invariably took it apart and made up his own stuff with it.  So that 's how you get stuff like this and this. Zach also started using his mini-figs to make World World I and II minifigs (don't ask, it's a whole intense subculture).....seems like once a single lego is pulled from the context of its licensed theme, it's just a cool Lego block again.

    the ability to explore and then re-make the environment is what makes Lego and a game like minecraft so cool, but those games don't have stories to tell you like Glitch does.  I am with zeeberk on the crafting thing--it's not really for me, I am not talented in the least visually, and those kinds of content creation would be lost on me except in the most rudimentary way.  For me, the culture will come out of the stories told in the world of Glitch.

    The notes about eviction are a perfect example of that (even though they pissed a lot of people off), imo.  Naked end-of-test parties.  Barnacle harvesting, pork fountains...
    Posted 18 months ago by Nanookie Subscriber! | Permalink
  • No time to write out a full response, but mega props to Sebastien for the amazing prezo, Zeeberk and the whole Glitch community for the thoughtful responses, and Stoot for the wonderful replies.  Keep on truckin' :)
    Posted 18 months ago by Homsar Subscriber! | Permalink
  • "For me, the culture will come out of the stories told in the world of Glitch."

    I agree with that in principle, but I'm not seeing how we'll be able to build our culture or the story of our glitchy selves (yet).  As it turns, the best way to gain notoriety or fame or a story in Glitch so far is to be a jerk - to have a rep for clear-cutting trees or for watching the new streets channel to know how when to jack up your auction prices for certain items. There are a handful of others who are not jerks who are able to have a story - such as those who create in-game games (scavenger hunts, dev jumping, etc).  And unless you follow global chat or the forums incessantly, you don't even know about those stories.  When global chat goes away, we'll lose a huge piece of global culture in favor of our own niches and groups (hmm, although... maybe the groups will make it easier to build a culture or stories?). 

    The backstory is being fed to us piecemeal via the rocks/trees/chickens.. and while I think that's clever, I also sort of don't get it - it feels so disconnected from playing the game right now.  It also sort of counters player-made stories about the Giants... which could be an interesting creative outlet.  I'm also tripping a bit on the backstory being so immersed in conflict between Giants.  Ouch - is this where the game is headed?  Am I soon to be aligned with one Giant over another, doomed to be paranoid and fight against the followers of another shrine?  That might be cool if it's about Giant imagination... say there are more followers of Tii than Alph, the world starts to take on a more Tii-like appearence through our collective actions toward Tii.  Or meanwhile, perhaps out in the bogs, there dwell more Cosma adherents, so the world takes a decidedly Cosma look as you venture further into the bogs.  But it'd just be a combat game if the followers of Alph were to denounce or attack the followers of Tii, which is what the backstory feels like to me right now.

    Well, more will be revealed.  Stoot says, "A series of meaningful decisions can make a great game. And what could be more meaningful than deciding "who I am"? The creation of an identity in the game world tied to decisions about skills & specialization and more broadly the "role" one "plays" in the game — both the economic/ecological sense, but also in the social sense, can make a long and interesting game with near-infinite potential for creative exploration and mastery, especially if the world evolves along with you.

    I like the sound of it!  I just wish I had more insight into how we'll be able to make these meaningful decisions and how my Glitch goes from just feeding projects or completing quests that all have easy-to-follow walk-throughs to being a Glitch that can truly self-determine. ;-)
    Posted 18 months ago by zeeberk Subscriber! | Permalink
  • The entire slide presentation is fascinating. But I'm especially taken by slide 119

    We gotta get working on that Generalized Mischief Metric :-)
    Posted 18 months ago by Snazzlefrazz Subscriber! | Permalink