The latest game updates: Player types, marketplace and our first external stress test
We made significant further progress on the design of our game over the past week and a half. Let us fill you in on the latest news.
Game concept
As is reasonably typical for the game design process, our initial assumptions and setting have changed pretty drastically since we set out. Our initial game concept was for the player to control and develop a society from the ground up. However, early in the process we started to hit the limitations of this scenario — it’s been done before, and the possibilities from a narrative perspective felt limiting and too obvious.
We therefore decided to go in a different direction story-wise, while keeping the basic mechanics of a “real-time browser game” intact. We don’t want to reveal too much here, but let’s just say we’ve moved to a much more modern setting dealing with today’s technology and its moral implications.
Player archetypes
Our goal as stated in our proposal was to attract various types of players to the game and thus to using Dash to make transactions. We listed different player archetypes that we felt it important to cater to, and were able to refer back to them as we added and refined the games features. While “Dash enthusiasts” was certainly one of the player types we identified, we didn’t make that the focus of our process. The five types we identified are as follows:
- High score hunters
- Explorers
- Achievers
- Casual players
- Dash enthusiasts
Players will compete on different leaderboards and/or critera that suit their play style. High score hunters will go for an efficient strategy to climb the ranks in the fastest way possible, while achievers will make sure to collect every the achievement and badge there is on offer. Explorers might be more interested in revealing all of the story elements, while casual players might enjoy the mini-games as a way to kill a few minutes during the day.
The in-game marketplace
We set some important criteria for how the in-game market should work. Most importantly: no pay to win, no premium diamonds, crystals or stars whatsoever. Players can list their in-game assets on the market to directly earn Dash. Market purchases need to be peer to peer, no Dash should have to come through our servers as this would no longer qualify as being decentralised.
The only requirement for a seller to participate in the market is to pay a small listing fee to the game. To create a need for the player to engage in the market, we have introduced the concept of in-game events, which will boost or hinder certain abilities over a short period of time, thus effecting their market value. To prevent the market being flooded by more developed players, technologies that stay in the market for longer than a few days will be burned.
Meeting with Joy
Joy is an expert in the field of design thinking and has worked for various big companies across Germany and Europe. She’s used to telling high powered executives what they’re doing wrong, and most importantly, what they can do to fix it. She was the first person outside our design team to test our mini-games and the overall game system. It was invaluable to have her onboard; being forced to explain the concept to an outsider and self-confessed non-gamer was an incredibly effective way for us to evaluate our ideas and assumptions and clarify what we had already built. She was able to provide a lot of insight, suggestions and feedback which we were able to implement right away, further improving and honing an already solid idea into a fully fledged concept we can now begin to build. We’ll be getting her back again soon once we’ve reached our next set of milestones, to continue to ensure we’re heading in the right direction.
Until next week…
Our initial phase of group work is (sadly) coming to an end—at least for now. Now begins the work of documenting the entire game concept, rules, elements and system, so that the development team knows what to build and the art team know what to design. Work will also continue on the digital prototype which is almost complete, which will then allow the real and arduous work of balancing to begin. Parallel to that, the story arc will continue to take shape and influence the gameplay and vice-versa. And finally development is starting to ramp up as we put together our technical specifications for the back- and front-end. More details on all that next week.
