Designing P3 Clout Chasers was such a unique experience. It started off with Ivan’s idea about modelling creator interaction on social media, and people playing diverse content creator roles. It was going to be a systems game where each player chose actions to achieve a certain objective, but it started off as vague as that.
Actually, we agreed on some of the core mechanics, including creating a beef between different influencers. It was a side mechanic that came to us as an interesting thought at first, but it became such an important part of the game as we kept developing the game.
What I quickly realised was that it was difficult to come up with the win condition. What are we trying to achieve? Should it be creating the best content? Is it about the money? Is it about the follower? We all had different ideas, and coming up with the decision (most internet influence represented by the number of tiles conquered) was a difficult one. I think we made the right decision by choosing the grid system as visualisation always helps.
The moment that I liked the most was when people were laughing so hard during our final playtest. They wanted to play it during the break as well. People LOVED the beef mechanics from the start, but then we did not get such a strong reaction from the very start. Even back then, we had those mechanics. I was wondering what was actually enabling that to happen.
In retrospect, I think it’s the overall quality of the experience the game provides you with. The fact that we improved the game so much, had the visual grid, had more theme coherence and clear win conditions and diverse mechanics to lead to them all added to the fun, enabling the players to immerse themselves into the game and play as if they were actual creators aiming for 1M followers. Contemplating about this was really inspiring and I hope to take these lessons with me as someone hoping to actually develop a career within the gaming industry.
