MMObility: Let's make a mobile game, part three
Last week we continued our discussion about how to make a mobile game, and the Massively readers offered up some great input. I wish I had the space to write up every single comment, but instead I will pick some of my favorites and we can discuss it from there. Unfortunately, real life has pushed development on the game back just a bit. Dave Toulouse, my indie developer partner-in-crime in this series, not only has two games of his own to run, Star Corsairs and Golemizer, but is now dealing with my silly emails. So while last week's column got some great ideas in the comments section, we were really only able to switch out the artwork, name the game, and add a tad bit of lore.
Fear not, fair readers! I will break down the development that is still planned on being pushed into the game over the last week, and it's important to note that Dave and I plan on coming back to the experiment over time. I'd like to update the game and continue discussion since it has been so interesting so far! In the meanwhile, click here to go to the official game page!
If we look at the new artwork I made up, I really just sketched out some neat-looking races, named them, and came up with a slightly fancier way to describe their abilities. I had to keep a squirrel in the game, though, so The Squirreliens were a no-brainer. The fun part about this project is just throwing ideas down, any ideas, and seeing how they stick. I drew the map to essentially lay over the old one, but I designed it so that "woods" would fill a certain number of squares and "water" would fill others, along with "desert" and "flatlands." Later on we can add modifiers to correspond with the different areas of the map; the different races could react to those areas as well.
The environments in MMOs are not often utilized. They are simply backdrops or stages for our characters to exist in, nothing more. I like the idea of a flat map shining from a portable device having more impact on gameplay than a three-dimensional world in a standard MMO. Reader Deliverator brought up GPS or real-life location interaction, something that is done in MMOs like Parallel Kingdom and Fleck. The discussion following Deliverator's comment is fascinating. Zoning laws could even affect a game based on real-life locations. Residential areas could give bonuses to experience, or industrial areas could help with crafting!
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DanVanBeek had a really interesting idea: "An interesting lore angle is to have an early foresty area where Something Important Happened. If it's reset weekly, its basically Groundhog Day, though it discounts playing as animals. People arrive from the future to try to influence the Thing That Happened. More time-travelers passing through an area destabilize the 'spacetime whatever,' increasing the danger from cosmic rips, etc."
The setting of the game can always be changed, especially to accommodate such a neat idea! Basically, players would be time-travelers who attempted to change a grand event. Their meddling in time would have adverse effects on the game itself, causing random happenings or even weather patterns. These random items could be dealt by the game and could have any number of different effects. Something like a time-travel scenario is also an original idea that adds a lot of flavor to the title. If we break down many of our favorite games, we'll see that they often share very similar designs but have different flavors and textures that set them apart from each other. Unique flavor is paramount.
What we want to add next is actual movement. As it is right now, we can pick any zone to start in, and the next day can visit any other zone, regardless of where it is on the map. Initially this was done just to illustrate moving across a map, but now we need to make it more realistic. The different races will probably start out in a certain area, and each player will have a movement allowance depending on his race. If someone is playing a Squirrelien, for example, he can move two squares per day. The squares have to be connected, and along the way the player might come across random events, other players, or different bonuses. The more I think about it, the more I enjoy the idea of an MMO based almost entirely on exploration and the sharing of information. If you want your race to succeed, you must get out in the world, survive to discover new areas and useful items, and share that information with your team faster than the other races can.
This is not to say that there would be no combat in the game. There would, but it would not be the main focus. Perhaps settling battles through diplomatic choices would be fun? If you come across an enemy in the same square, you might be presented with the choice to fight him or to discuss the issue. Bonuses could be applied for each race, and the "winner" of the argument could decide to battle or to leave the situation.
We also need a way to show how populated each square is. Dave thought to show the population of each race in individual squares so that players could make decisions based on those numbers. Perhaps a player could receive a buff if she visits a square that is filled with others of her kind? It's a simple mechanic that could have wide-ranging effects on gameplay.
One way I am describing the design of this mobile game is to call it a MMOBG: a massively multiplayer online board game. There are a few examples of online board games out there already, and I like how the term describes not only how the game might play but what players might expect to see. There is a persistent board in the form of the map, players are represented by virtual tokens, and gameplay is generally turn-based. Yes, it would qualify as an MMO as long as it met some basic criteria. For the sake of this article series, we are keeping the numbers quite small, but it's easy to see how those numbers could be scaled up to a truly massive size. Instead of 30 or 100 players, there could be 1,000 on the server, all of them wandering over the map while gathering materials, participating in combat, and discovering new items and areas.
I decided to call the game "Worgolt" because it sounded cool. I tried out a few terms and luckily searched them on Google before finalizing. I went through several made-up words, including one that turned out to be Yiddish slang for "prostitute." Oops!
By next week we hope to have a game that is timed for a week of play and finally has a set of rules that represent MMO design. This has been an interesting experiment with some wonderful results. As we have seen, patches and development schedules can be pushed around even in the world of tiny browser-game development. I cannot say thank you enough to Dave for making time for this series.
See you next week. Be sure to leave any more ideas in the comments section!
Each week in MMObility, Beau Hindman dives into the murky waters of the most accessible and travel-friendly games around, including browser-based and smartphone MMOs. Join him as he investigates the best, worst, and most daring games to hit the smallest devices! Email him suggestions, or follow him on Twitter and Facebook.
