As I mentioned in my last post, next month’s Escapist game is a board game called “omg hire me.” It’s about the mundanity of job searching, and specifically about the “loop” practiced during this process.

Unlike some of my other titles, the game design is not straightforward. As is typical for me, I know what I want the game to feel like, but I don’t know how to get there. So far, the gameplay is divided into several stages, which comprise the loop:

1. Update Resume
2. Search for Jobs
3. Compose Cover Letter/Application
4. Rinse and Repeat

Every time a player completes this loop, they increase the likelihood of being called in for an interview. The interview itself is a separate minigame, the successful completion of which increases the odds of actually receiving a job offer (and thus winning the game — I’m not even dealing with salary negotiations as a mechanic).

At the moment, job interviews and job offers are handled by two separate dice. If a player completes the search loop, they receive a number from 1 to 20. Every round, the interview die (a d20) is rolled. If your number is rolled, you enter the interview event. Successfully completing the interview earns you a number for the job offer die (a d10 or d12), which is also rolled each round. If one of your job offer numbers is rolled, you win.

So basically, it’s all about luck. Just like a real job search!

As always, Dr. Ian Bogost rocked the house at the Social Gaming Summit last week. Speaking on the first panel of the day, Ian discussed the potency of playing a character who is “us, but also slightly not us.”

The comment was made in reference to area/code’s Parking Wars, where players take on the roles of meter maids — a profession not known to be particularly glamorous or exciting. According to Ian, this is one of many reasons why Parking Wars is “the best game on Facebook right now.” It’s the same idea that first drove Diner Dash to mass-market success in 2004: the role of mundanity in game design.

As Ian puts it, “people like having experiences different from their own, no matter how mundane.” The key here is “experiences.” If a game can make a player feel like they’ve discovered the fun in waitressing, or editing Wikipedia entries, then it’s already one step ahead.

The trick to finding the fun in the mundane (or as I’m resisting calling it, “the fundane”), is finding the aspects of the experience that create “flow,” that euphoric mental state of efficiency (I’ve theorized for years that Flo in Diner Dash was actually named for Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi’s theory of optimal experience). Think about a job you’ve worked in your lifetime. Think about the repetitive aspects of that job in which you were able to enter a zen-like trance, the parts you actually enjoyed once you got good at them. This is game fodder.

Here are a few examples (and hey! Free game ideas!):

• Working at Quiznos: Next time you order the Chicken Carbonara, pay attention to the process by which your sandwich is made. It’s the Henry Ford model of food prep, and it’s oddly enjoyable. Think Cooking Mama + Root Beer Tapper.
• Repackaging RAM: I spent two summers working for a major memory reseller. My job? Removing RAM chips from old computers, repackaging and sorting for redistribution. I see a collection game on Facebook based on the rising and falling market value of memory. Players buy junky virtual PCs using the in-game economy, and strip them for their chips in a mini-game. Amassing a collection, players then buy and sell RAM between themselves in order to earn a profit and become the best in the world.
• Looking for a job: Okay, so the fun in this one is kinda hard to see (especially since I’m still in the midst of it), but the repetition is certainly there. Every aspect of the process — checking job sites, optimizing resumes, sending cover letters, interviewing, pitching salary requirements — all of these could be tied into a game experience. Format? I don’t entirely know yet. I’m currently working on a non-digital version. Let’s see if someone can beat me to the social game.

And I mean that in two entirely different ways. Last week I attended the Social Gaming Summit, the latest event to focus on a growing sector of the game industry. The term “social games” is actually a slight misnomer — referring to games built on social networks (eg: Scrabulous, Parking Wars), rather than those played in person amongst groups of peers (eg: Mafia, Red Light Green Light). But for the 400 publishers, developers, and investors gathered in San Francisco last Friday, social gaming meant very large user bases, and the potential for big, big returns.

So yes, social games are big, in the sense that it’s a brand new market a lot of people are excited about right now. But they’re also big in another way. I’ve mentioned before that Facebook is a unique platform for game design, but neglected to mention its biggest feature: size.

If you’re designing a deep social game, you need to think about scalability on an entirely new scale. This isn’t “five to ten players”; this is “five to ten thousand” (or if you’re lucky, many more than that). Infrastructure aside, the design itself can’t buckle under the weight of unexpected growth, or wilt when too few are playing.

I’ll talk more about scaling for design in a later post. Needless to say, I’ve taken a keen interest in the social gaming space. Interacting with the APIs of social networking applications can yield tremendously potent results, and the relaxed, asynchronous nature of such sites lends itself to tabletop adaptations and casual games — which just happen to be my strong suits. I think I’m going to like it here.

Busy month. It feels like I just returned from France, and in two days I’m moving to San Francisco (that’s right, potential employers, moving to San Francisco). In between those major transitions, I completed two non-digital games and a pretty nifty Off the Grid. It’s probably why I haven’t started packing yet.

First up is Gygaxian, developed in response to Brenda Brathwaite’s challenge to design a game in memory of the late Gary Gygax. It’s an inverted game of Dungeons & Dragons, with multiple Dungeon Masters (here called GGs) battling for narratorial control.

May’s Escapist game (which actually went up a week early) is myNo, a fun, fast-paced dice game I promised myself I’d work on as a break from headier designs like Gygaxian and Petrol Panic. I’ve been using a lot of dice in my designs lately. Maybe next month I’ll do something a bit different.

Over at Joystiq, my latest Off the Grid column deals with Hasbro’s limited-edition Risk: Black Ops, which is ten times hotter than the commercial re-release of the title coming this Fall. As I write this, only five copies of the game are up for auction on eBay, and each is going for over $400. That has to send a pretty strong message to Hasbro re: the demand for the game.

I figured it out! All by myself!

If you’re confused, then you need to go play You Have to Burn the Rope. And read about it here and here. And watch a teaser trailer here. It’s a simple, super-short platforming game with one boss, and the secret to beating him is not-so-subtly embedded in the game’s title.

The indie gaming community has lovingly embraced this quirky flash game, and it’s even caught the attention of the mainstream gaming press, who liken the experience to 2007’s Portal (another game which I thoroughly approve of).

The developer created the game as a reaction to titles that are too long and too difficult, hence its simple premise and abbreviated play-time. But despite its tongue-in-cheek simplicity, You Have to Burn the Rope wins over gamers in the end, due largely to the stunningly uneven ratio of reward to challenge.

After burning the titular rope and defeating the Grinning Colossus, the game plays out its credits, coupled with a catchy tune clearly inspired by Portal’s “Still Alive.” The song is obviously derivative, and a bit repetitive, but the community ate it up, declaring it as the perfect end to the perfect game, with varying levels of sarcasm and seriousness.

Of course, the reason the ending is deemed so satisfying is that it’s rather significantly awesome, relative to the length of the game. In fact, the ending song is as long (if not longer) than a standard gameplay session of You Have to Burn the Rope, meaning that players spend just as much time accomplishing the entertainingly simple task as they do reveling in it.

Regardless of this unbalance (and its affect on the critical reception of the game), I still love Rope. It says everything I believe in about the direction games should go in. Shorter, sweeter, funnier. More rewarding, less difficult, more rope.

I’ve been publishing non-digital games over at The Escapist since July of last year, and I thought it might be time to address the republication rights of those games.

My contract with The Escapist is not tailored to games, but rather is the same general contract offered to other freelance writers on the site. Because of this, The Escapist publishes my work under a 90-day, exclusive first-publication agreement, after which point the republication rights revert to me, the author/designer.

In other words, my Escapist games can be formally re-published as proper games, provided the actual publication occurs outside of the 90-day exclusivity period. Game publishers interested in working with any of my titles should feel free to contact me at my whole name with no spaces ÄT gmail DØT com.

Not all the features are conducive to proper publication, but games like Petrol Panic and 9am class definitely have that “star” potential.