Our game Clout Chasers is a system game that sets out to model the internet landscape from the perspective of a content creator. Players will strive to acquire the most followers by the end of set number of rounds. Some key objects in our system are social media platforms, advertising sponsors, followers, media content, and content creators themselves. Our game will include an economy, likely in the form of a simple market, with followers as the item of exchange. In the future, we want to expand the game to include mental health as a resource for content creator’s to manage as well.
The core values of our game pertain to the nature of the internet landscape. For example, a few values would include:
- Internet trends are influenced by content creators, but they also have an aspect of unpredictability.
- Content creators are motivated to amass a large following while maintaining advertising sponsorships.
- Engaging with the internet landscape can come with a strenuous mental tax.
The game as a whole follows a loop in which players take actions (create content, playing into internet trends, collaborate with other creators) that affect the global game state. Players will receive feedback on their choices through the magnitude of their final follower count. They can then adjust their mental model and play more effectively in the next iteration.
A higher frequency interaction loop would be a single player’s turn. A player can create content with a specific thematic domain of their choosing: gaming, beauty, fitness, and potentially more. This action will give the immediate feedback of gaining followers and building on a trend or causing its collapse if the trend gets oversaturated. From this, the player can learn about how to better manage their contributions to trends such that they maximize follower gain and minimize potential for trend collapse.
Lastly, an arch in the game would be the sectioning of the game by unique global event cards. At the end of each round, all players will be affected by a random global event (ex. Elon Musk buys Twitter). During the round, players take actions to stabilize existing internet trends, follower counts, and mental health. They receive feedback based on how much their follower counts are affected by the global event. With this feedback, the arch of a specific global event ends and a new arch of a different global event can begin.
