Invite: Purvasive Games?

[cdave]

Anyone fancy joining me at an up-coming sandpit?

The evenings I've been to have consisted of a couple of newly designed games they are trialing (sometimes involving running around outside), and a few perenial favourites like Wearwolf, and Dadist Trivial Pursuit to pass time while waiting for you slot on a big game.

Monday 22 February on the Spirit Level at Royal Festival Hall. All Free! I know a couple of people who are going to this, so anyone else fancy turning up?

Friday 26 March 2010 at the Victoria & Albert Museum for their monthly late-night opening. Almost certainly a free games, bigger ones may have a small charge. Don't know anyone who's turning up yet, but Echo Bazzar (Victoriana text adventure RPG, twitter login) are running something there!

Comments

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Purvasive games?


That just sounds like "life".

[cdave]

But with the added disapointment of being told all the best bits are fully booked. Does a bit actually.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Is Echo Bazaar the game which gives you an incentive for tweeting about it? I really wish it didn't, because it looks like a potentially interesting game but I am actively avoiding anything they are involved with because the tweets are so irritating (not from any one individual, but there are a lot of players on my follow list).

[cdave]

You get 70 actions a day. With a maxiumum of 10 at once.

It takes 8 minutes for an action to recharge, so minimax 7 sets of actions.

Once a day you can send a message and get another batch of 10 without waiting.

I don't think one message when I'm having a slow day is too much really. If it is, please say!

If people tweet more than that, then it's voluntary. They don't get any advantage from it.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

One tweet from one person is fine; one tweet from ten people is probably still more or less fine, but any more than that then I think it would start to get irritating. Thankfully only a handful of people on my follow-list are playing it.

I'm certainly avoiding Echo Bazaar because it seems to involve tweeting about it and it doesn't seem to be possible to find out any more about it without starting on the game. I want more information before I start.

[cdave]

It's a fairly weak RPG.

You have 4 stats, and a series of random encounter cards you can chose from (or choose to discard).

These cards usually relate to one stat, and have a probability of success given your stat. If you succeed you gain tat, and 2 points to that stat. If you fail you gain 1 point to that stat, and occasionally a wound or nightmare.

Too many wounds or nightmares, and you are temporarilly out of the normal game, and have to play to get back in. Stats tend to drop.

If you run out of cards then there a series of fixed storyletts that can be played at various levels, that unveil a little of what life in this buried Victorian city is like.

TBH The story is not what I was hopping for when I started playing. It's just compelling enough to keep playing, but not really that intriguing.

There's only one decision point in the game (fairly early on), other than that it's fairly linear, and you gain access to everything. I think it would be more immersive if you could be "connected to the police" (or church) and the same time as "connected to criminals" (or hell).

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Like the comment below, one tweet a day per person is fine, but as more and more of my twit-list start playing it gets a bit annoying. Really I should sort out some kind of hashtag-based filtering but it hasn't quite hit the level where it makes me get off my arse and do it.

I don't mind people carrying on with the tweets, I just think it's something the game shouldn't encourage you to do, even once a day.

[cdave]

*shrugs*

It's a recruitment tactic. I wouldn't be playing unless someone tweeted it.

My guess is that the reasoning behind it in the owners minds is that the sort of people who will be put off by their lists tweeting, would never have found it anyway, so they've not lost anything.

[sigisgrim.livejournal.com]

Hmm, from your description I think I'll give it a miss. Thanks for the info.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

It's like my aversion to Farmville and similar - the spam it generates. It's noise. It might be just a tiny bit of noise, but it's still an irritant, and it has a tendency to increase rapidly. Facebook make it very easy to block content from being visible at the game level if you don't want to see it, but what it's powerless against is the people who then choose to update their status to request random things. I don't want to know if you want more pink fences or windmills or whatever the hell the game is suggesting you need, but without blocking you out altogether, I don't get to choose. Similarly with Twitter, there's no simple way to block a particular subject, and a daily tweet really is enough of an irritant that I'd like to. I don't care that the game designers haven't lost anything, I do care that they're inconveniencing me, and doing it in a way that can make people turn around and ask me what the big deal is when it's "just one tweet/status update". Each spam email is JUST one email, and I can "just press delete" but in both cases, I have to sift through the increasing noise to get to the actual content I do want to see. Games that make you broadcast,, especially if they do it regularly, are just creating noise and that's NOT a good thing.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

I didn't know that hashtag filtering was possible - is it with a particular client, am I behind the times, or have you not actually confirmed it's possible?

[cdave]

I guess that's true enough.

Personally I think that there's enough un-shared interests in other people's Web2.0 streams, that one more (arguably) commercial thing doesn't matter.

That said I did just stop follwing someone who was about a 20:1 ratio on RT competitions, to content, so do see your point.

I'll try not to do it at all, but will keep it to one a week maximum if in a rare compelling bit.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't checked, I am assuming that someone got more annoyed with it than me and made a client which can do this, but I haven't actually looked for one yet.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Why not set up a separate Twitter account especially for spam type content? Then you fulfill the requirements and get the rewards, and I can totally ignore it by not following that account.

[cdave]

The same reason don't people don't set up different facebook accounts for farmville. There's a non-essential element of the gameplay that shows when members of your social network are also playing, and lets you interact. If I had to create another account, it wouldn't have the same network.

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Ah, right, I hadn't realised that. I thought it was just a "spam twitter, get shinies!" sort of deal.