I wanted to design a game about Open Source and proprietary software for a long time. It was always difficult to get the theme to fit visually with the equipment. I think I finally hit on the right way to do it.
There is a new subgenre of game, which I'm calling "non-collectible collectible card games" or NC3s. Everyone starts with the same rudimentary deck. The game consists of building your deck during the game, by using cards from your hand to add a new card from the supply to your deck. Unlike Collectable Card Games, there are no booster packs-- once you buy the box, you own every card, and you're done spending real-world money.
Here's the idea I had for an NC3 game. You have a screen behind which to play cards that are in your proprietary control, to be resolved when the screen is lifted. Also, there is a central place to play cards collaboratively, with tokens to indicate who contributed them, so they can get credit.
You build projects on the table as chains of face-up cards that accumulate work points, reputation points, and money points.
If there are enough work points in a project, it gets a new software card.
If there are enough reputation points in a project, it can recruit a developer or a user from a variety of characters: Entrepreneur, Propeller Beanie, Community Manager, Benevolent Dictator For Life, Aunt Tillie, Iconoclast, Curmudgeon, Bastard Operator From Hell, etc. They have personality incompatibilities.
With enough money points you are tempted to buy a layer of Middle Management, Script Kiddie, Market Droid, Lawyer, Judge, or Legislatosaurus in your proprietary area. Each has various anti-competitive powers that are useful for things other than quality software. But if you do too much of that, then all the other players would combine their efforts against you.
There are also Lawsuit cards and Flame cards which you receive as penalties or attacks. They waste space in your hand and your projects, and react badly with various Person cards. :)
The game is over when the Person card deck is empty. If the common area has more Person cards than anyone's proprietary area, the player who made the largest contributions to earn reputation points is the winner. However, if one player has more Person cards behind his screen than any other screen or in the common area, he wins the Evil Empire victory.
I got permission from Eric Raymond to name it Cathedral and Bazaar, after his paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
I would like to open this process to collaborative development, but a game needs a single vision of what kind of experience the design is intended to achieve. It is notoriously difficult to balance the available strategic choices in games of this type, so it's already hard enough to make it fun without the added challenge of making it educational as well. It must be fun, through gameplay and humor. That may come at the expense of realism, but I'll do what I can. If anyone makes a suggestion, and it doesn't break the gameplay, and it's true enough to engender laughter, it will probably get in.
There is a new subgenre of game, which I'm calling "non-collectible collectible card games" or NC3s. Everyone starts with the same rudimentary deck. The game consists of building your deck during the game, by using cards from your hand to add a new card from the supply to your deck. Unlike Collectable Card Games, there are no booster packs-- once you buy the box, you own every card, and you're done spending real-world money.
Here's the idea I had for an NC3 game. You have a screen behind which to play cards that are in your proprietary control, to be resolved when the screen is lifted. Also, there is a central place to play cards collaboratively, with tokens to indicate who contributed them, so they can get credit.
You build projects on the table as chains of face-up cards that accumulate work points, reputation points, and money points.
If there are enough work points in a project, it gets a new software card.
If there are enough reputation points in a project, it can recruit a developer or a user from a variety of characters: Entrepreneur, Propeller Beanie, Community Manager, Benevolent Dictator For Life, Aunt Tillie, Iconoclast, Curmudgeon, Bastard Operator From Hell, etc. They have personality incompatibilities.
With enough money points you are tempted to buy a layer of Middle Management, Script Kiddie, Market Droid, Lawyer, Judge, or Legislatosaurus in your proprietary area. Each has various anti-competitive powers that are useful for things other than quality software. But if you do too much of that, then all the other players would combine their efforts against you.
There are also Lawsuit cards and Flame cards which you receive as penalties or attacks. They waste space in your hand and your projects, and react badly with various Person cards. :)
The game is over when the Person card deck is empty. If the common area has more Person cards than anyone's proprietary area, the player who made the largest contributions to earn reputation points is the winner. However, if one player has more Person cards behind his screen than any other screen or in the common area, he wins the Evil Empire victory.
I got permission from Eric Raymond to name it Cathedral and Bazaar, after his paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
I would like to open this process to collaborative development, but a game needs a single vision of what kind of experience the design is intended to achieve. It is notoriously difficult to balance the available strategic choices in games of this type, so it's already hard enough to make it fun without the added challenge of making it educational as well. It must be fun, through gameplay and humor. That may come at the expense of realism, but I'll do what I can. If anyone makes a suggestion, and it doesn't break the gameplay, and it's true enough to engender laughter, it will probably get in.