Design Practice QUESTIONS

1. How do you plan to deal with the issue of new players arriving in the middle of a long game? Get rid of the victory condition, or find a way to make sure that players are matched with those of similar ability?

New players can come in at any time.  There is no victory condition, the play is all expressive. Players don't directly compete with each other, but can make changes in the environment that other players can see.  The new players arriving continually change the environment for all players to enjoy.  There is no game mechanic for killing or stealing from other players.

2. What will happen to the game play when a player vanishes? How will it affect the other players’ experience of the game (what they see and hear)? Does it disrupt the balance of the game? Will it make the challenges easier or harder? Is the game even meaningful anymore?

The player avatar would vanish if the player leaves the game. The game continually saves its state so changes the player has made in the environment persist. The game also continually saves the player' character's attributes and possessions, so they will be available the next time the player logs in.

3. What happens to the game’s score when a player vanishes? Is the game still fair?

The player's score would be stored on the players computer and is persistent for that player on that computer.

4. Does your game offer a player an advantage of some kind for intentionally disconnecting himself (whether by preventing himself from losing or by sealing his own victory)? Is there any way to minimize this without penalizing players who are disconnected accidentally?

The advantage to intentionally disconnecting oneself would be to avoid the penalty of death. This would require disconnecting when an enemy was near before the enemy reaches the character. When the player logs back on, the enemy would probably be gone. This advantage is minimized by adding safe spots where a player can leave their character at any time to avoid getting killed, necessitating the need to leave the game.

5. In a turn-based game, what mechanism will you use to prevent a player from stalling play for the other players? Set a time limit? Allow simultaneous turns? Implement a reasonable default if the player does nothing?

Players would not be able to interfere with other players, all the players turns would be simultaneous.

6. If you offer a chat mechanism, what features will you implement to keep it civil? Filters? A complaint system? An ignore system? Or will your game require moderated chat spaces?

Profanity filters and a game admin to monitor the chat room would cut down on the inappropriate chat. Players would also be able to block other players chat.

7. Is your game designed to prevent (or alleviate) collusion? Because you can’t prevent players from talking to each other on the phone as they play, how will you address this? Or can you design your game in such a way that collusion is part of the gameplay, as in "Diplomacy"?

Players would each interact in the game space in their own way and any interaction between players would not hinder the play of other players since there is no direct competition.