KODA

Tonight was the first real test of my Story Game with more than 3 players. I invited some friends to come play over the evening, and see how the game worked out in real usage.

Let’s just say there was mixed success. The PHP and AJAX performed beautifully… but as the number of people increased, the story became more and more disjointed. But would you really expect otherwise? Things went great in the vocabulary department, as the diversity of players broadened the range of words used, though this came at the cost of very grammatically and semantically distorted sentences. It seemed after we hit the 3 player mark (topped at 6 during the test!), the problems really began.

I found this test run fascinating. Today’s observations highlight interesting challenges that will have to be addressed to keep the game fun and make it work. Interestingly, people seemed to wait the same duration to post words, so there would be collisions in which two or more would be added at the same time. It was fascinating to note how little control I had over the general mood of the piece — every time I tried to turn things around, the feeling was shaped by the other players words. It seems the feature that is most requested is to have a live chat adjacent to the story… at least that way there would be some sort of organization going on. I have lots of schemes and ideas to make things less chaotic (though hopefully not more orderly!), though the complexity of implementing many of them in the database simply keeps me from getting them off the ground.

It will be most interesting to see my friends tomorrow and hear their experiences.