Assignment 2: Spy vs Spy?
I'm not really into spy movies, but I did enjoy watching the first two seasons of Alias, and always thought it'd be cool to have some sort of mmo game based on spies stealing stuff to aid their team, the deception, and the double-agents.
When assignment 2 came out, it didn't take me long to think of using the spy theme for a social game, where some players get to be spies and some get to be moles. There were problems, unfortunately. How does one figure out who's a mole? And more importantly, how does the mole converse with his actual team without letting the others know? This idea was initially abandoned in favour of Cheryl's Ragnarok! Cheryl blogged about her Ragnarok! concept, and Ahmed posted a revised version of it in his blog.
While reading the revised version, it struck me that the game doesn't sound social enough on paper. It's hard to predict how social it'll be during playtesting. Ahmed himself felt that the game mechanics were clunky, and that we needed to rethink them from ground up. I lamented about how we couldn't use the spy concept because we couldn't figure out how to overcome those challenges, and then Ahmed suddenly had an idea.
First Idea
Both teams are in separate areas and each team sends a spy over to steal information. When at the opposing side, the spy can ask the team questions for either a certain period of time or a set number of questions, to which the team members must answer according to a certain set of rules. Each team has a codeword that the other team must figure out in order to win.
Problem: Can a mole choose to betray the team he's supposed to be helping in order to win? Wouldn't it cause the game to end prematurely? If you don't get my drift, here's an example to illustrate this problem: "I'm a mole. I'm suppose to betray your team, but I want to win, and I know what my team's codeword is, so I tell you." Would that just make the game not fun?
Ahmed's idea did give me an idea, so I proposed this:
Second Idea
Each team has three random items that the other team wants. (eg. Pencil, eraser and pen. That way, the game is portable for any location). For each round, the team sends a spy over to meet the other team's spy to try and win the item through a simple challenge. It can be as simple as "rock, paper, scissors". If team A's spy wins team B's spy, then B has to surrender his item over to A, or vis versa. Now, if the opponent happens to be a mole, he can deliberately lose just to help his team, but there will still be two more items to go before his team can win. If the team suspects that that team member is a mole, they can kick him out of the team. The mole loses if he gets kicked out. The team that manages to get all three of the opposing team's items wins.
Moles are preselected at the start through the use of cards. Both teams don't know at the start who the moles are (not even who their own mole is), and the moles themselves don't know who the other team's mole is.
How would a challenge be handled? Ahmed and I discussed two possibilities - in the open and in private. I'm in favour of the latter, but I'll blog about both to show the pros and cons.
In the open
This makes it harder but more challenging for the mole to betray his supposed team, since they can observe what he does. The way in which he lets the true team know that he's a mole can be done through winking, but this doesn't stop anyone else from pretending to be a mole just to trick them. A referee might be needed to monitor the game, and only he knows who the moles are.
In private
The spy from Team A and the spy from Team B meet in another place, away from the two teams. Nobody knows if a real challenge did in fact take place, or if the two secretly passed the item and pretended to have challenged each other for it, so there'll definitely be some deception taking place. Also, if team B's mole figures out who team A's mole is, team B's mole can choose to warn the other team A members during one of those private challenge meetings. Team A can then decide whether to trust him or not. Of course, what could also happen is that a person can lie about someone else being the mole just so that the team can kick out the wrong person.
It looks as though there's a lot of deception in this game, and there's some level of socialness, but is it fun? What do you think?
[edit]
More thoughts...
A non-mole can also attempt to trick the opposing team into thinking that he's a mole, and then further the bluff by claiming that he'll need to win an item for his "so-called" team so that nobody suspects him of being a mole. It's up to the other guy to decide whether to trust his words or not.
Should we allow everyone to keep their cards during the game, or should they get returned immediately before the game begins? More importantly, if they get to keep their cards, can the mole show it at any point during the game to the opposing team as proof that he's really on their side? I think that spoils part of the fun.
Should we allow moles to switch sides at any point during the game? I also think this is a bad idea, as that would create negative feedback. A three versus three can suddenly become a four versus two.
Are three items enough, or do we need to scale according to the number of players? Currently I'm thinking of this game being for six players. Would the game end too soon if there were eight players, or ten?
Suddenly this game looks rather complicated even though the rules are relatively straightforward. I wonder if this is a good thing.
When assignment 2 came out, it didn't take me long to think of using the spy theme for a social game, where some players get to be spies and some get to be moles. There were problems, unfortunately. How does one figure out who's a mole? And more importantly, how does the mole converse with his actual team without letting the others know? This idea was initially abandoned in favour of Cheryl's Ragnarok! Cheryl blogged about her Ragnarok! concept, and Ahmed posted a revised version of it in his blog.
While reading the revised version, it struck me that the game doesn't sound social enough on paper. It's hard to predict how social it'll be during playtesting. Ahmed himself felt that the game mechanics were clunky, and that we needed to rethink them from ground up. I lamented about how we couldn't use the spy concept because we couldn't figure out how to overcome those challenges, and then Ahmed suddenly had an idea.
First Idea
Both teams are in separate areas and each team sends a spy over to steal information. When at the opposing side, the spy can ask the team questions for either a certain period of time or a set number of questions, to which the team members must answer according to a certain set of rules. Each team has a codeword that the other team must figure out in order to win.
Problem: Can a mole choose to betray the team he's supposed to be helping in order to win? Wouldn't it cause the game to end prematurely? If you don't get my drift, here's an example to illustrate this problem: "I'm a mole. I'm suppose to betray your team, but I want to win, and I know what my team's codeword is, so I tell you." Would that just make the game not fun?
Ahmed's idea did give me an idea, so I proposed this:
Second Idea
Each team has three random items that the other team wants. (eg. Pencil, eraser and pen. That way, the game is portable for any location). For each round, the team sends a spy over to meet the other team's spy to try and win the item through a simple challenge. It can be as simple as "rock, paper, scissors". If team A's spy wins team B's spy, then B has to surrender his item over to A, or vis versa. Now, if the opponent happens to be a mole, he can deliberately lose just to help his team, but there will still be two more items to go before his team can win. If the team suspects that that team member is a mole, they can kick him out of the team. The mole loses if he gets kicked out. The team that manages to get all three of the opposing team's items wins.
Moles are preselected at the start through the use of cards. Both teams don't know at the start who the moles are (not even who their own mole is), and the moles themselves don't know who the other team's mole is.
How would a challenge be handled? Ahmed and I discussed two possibilities - in the open and in private. I'm in favour of the latter, but I'll blog about both to show the pros and cons.
In the open
This makes it harder but more challenging for the mole to betray his supposed team, since they can observe what he does. The way in which he lets the true team know that he's a mole can be done through winking, but this doesn't stop anyone else from pretending to be a mole just to trick them. A referee might be needed to monitor the game, and only he knows who the moles are.
In private
The spy from Team A and the spy from Team B meet in another place, away from the two teams. Nobody knows if a real challenge did in fact take place, or if the two secretly passed the item and pretended to have challenged each other for it, so there'll definitely be some deception taking place. Also, if team B's mole figures out who team A's mole is, team B's mole can choose to warn the other team A members during one of those private challenge meetings. Team A can then decide whether to trust him or not. Of course, what could also happen is that a person can lie about someone else being the mole just so that the team can kick out the wrong person.
It looks as though there's a lot of deception in this game, and there's some level of socialness, but is it fun? What do you think?
[edit]
More thoughts...
A non-mole can also attempt to trick the opposing team into thinking that he's a mole, and then further the bluff by claiming that he'll need to win an item for his "so-called" team so that nobody suspects him of being a mole. It's up to the other guy to decide whether to trust his words or not.
Should we allow everyone to keep their cards during the game, or should they get returned immediately before the game begins? More importantly, if they get to keep their cards, can the mole show it at any point during the game to the opposing team as proof that he's really on their side? I think that spoils part of the fun.
Should we allow moles to switch sides at any point during the game? I also think this is a bad idea, as that would create negative feedback. A three versus three can suddenly become a four versus two.
Are three items enough, or do we need to scale according to the number of players? Currently I'm thinking of this game being for six players. Would the game end too soon if there were eight players, or ten?
Suddenly this game looks rather complicated even though the rules are relatively straightforward. I wonder if this is a good thing.
posted by Swift at
12:31 am
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home