Our game concept revolves around players taking turns telling a story one sentence at a time. All players except two (the “ghostwriters”) are given the different themes that they must incorporate into a story. The two ghostwriters must try to figure out who each other are; everyone else is trying to figure out who the ghostwriters are.
What should the main goal of the players be?
- The two core concepts of our game are collective storytelling and social deduction—however, it is still unclear how much of a focus should be placed on each. Should players be more focused on telling a coherent story that adheres well to their theme or more so on trying to deduce the two ghostwriters as fast as possible? This is important as it decides the direction of the game and would influence all three components of MDA. Possible prototypes to test this would like involve having two or three “versions” of the game that reward points or otherwise incentivize either good storytelling or social deduction more and seeing which one results in the most fun playing experience. I think the two goals need to be evenly balanced, or at the very least, the idea of collective storytelling can’t be completely lost, otherwise the entire premise of the game unravels.
What and to what extent should external “pressure” should be imposed on the players?
- Our game likely would have to be timed, so the question of figuring out how long players should have to tell the story would be important to the player experience. Too long and players may get bored; too short and players may not be able to make much progress at all. Additionally, we were considering other limitations for players, such as having “forbidden” words or themes to add more challenge. Similar to the first question, we’d likely have different versions of the game, trying out different combinations of time constraints and additional limitations to try to figure out where the “sweet spot” is. I’d guess that 5-10 minutes (similar to other social deduction games) would likely be a good point, and potentially adding in forbidden words as a optional “challenge mode”.
How much freedom should the players have within the game?
- While we discussed our game concept, a major question that came up was how much creative “freedom” should players have in their responses. Are they just saying anything they can come up with, or should there be cards with preset sentences on it they can “play” to add onto the story? Should those sentences have blanks in them that they can fill in on the spot? I think this is important to answer as it would change the type of “challenge” that players would experience in-game, whether that be imagining the best sentence vs. playing the best sentence card. This prototype would also likely be two or three-fold—I envision having versions where everything else is kept constant and we either let players say anything, or create a set of cards and have them play it. I personally think not having preset cards would likely be more fun because of the additional creative freedom it grants players.
