Hi, I haven't seen a thread that covered this, so ...

Most of the Universalis-Wiki games I've monitored/played in seem to have petered out. I'm wondering whether participants and observers have any thoughts about why that is.

I'd like to run this like a brainstorming thread, if that's cool. We all do an idea dump first and after that seems finished, we start analysing the feedback.

OK, I'll go first :)

1) Shorter games: I noticed that all the games I've seen so far on Wiki have been open-ended and seemed to require long-term commitment. I've been wondering, say you started a game with either had a limited number of scenes or a specific duration in time (1-2 months). Maybe that'd encourage recruiting and sustaining a larger player base.

2) Simple sign-ups: Need to make it as easy as possible for new players to join in. A step-by-step walkthrough of how to join and how to contribute to the game. An on-going synopsis of events - in fact, maybe 'hire' someone to be the Synopsiser. Pay them Coins to keep things updated.

Good thread idea. I think we've discussed a lot of issues before, but usually as post mortems, and not overall.

First to cover what you've proposed:

• I think that shorter games might be a really effective idea in terms of getting better participation (see the "turn problem" below), but I think that you might end up with something very, very small. That is, even with very active participants, I think that you're limited to what you can get out of any such play in 2 months or less. I mean, if a player posts every other day, that's 30 posts. Eight players, that's 240 posts. I'm seeing maybe ten scenes of 24 total posts each. Not sure how satisfying that outcome would be. And that's at a pretty optimistic rate of posting.

• I agree about the sign-ups (but have a more general take, see "elegance" below). And, yes, I think a synopsis can be quite a good tool to ensure that people might feel more like jumping in. That all said, I think that there are some nigh insurmountable barriers to entry in a UniWiki. I've said this before, but the problem is that looking at the investment of other players it can seem to a new person like they're barging into something. And more important is another phenomenon: the story told in Universalis is always more compelling to the people telling it than to outsiders reading it. The point being that once stuff is up, it's likely to actually be less attractive to people to join in on. A "synopsizer" can "spin" the game to make it look more attractive, I suppose, but that might have ethical problems attached.


• Turn Problem - I've said it before, but I think that a key issue with UniWiki is that we usually do them without turns. This seems at first to be a feature, and it is. The problem is that actually making something in Universalis is an act of creativity that requires some effort. In FTF play, yeah you can pass, but one feels a social pressure not to pass all the time. And this is a strong part of what compels play. Coins are only a reward that allows you to do more. So if it's actually somewhat "work" to create stuff, then Coins themselves are not an incentive to post more. So sans that social pressure to perform, I think most people's natural tendency to lay back and let the other people do the work kicks in. I know that I quite often take the attitude that I'll just wait and jump in on something that inspires me.

The problem is that if everyone takes this attitude nothing gets done. This is a real "downward spiral" effect once it begins. Usually there's some enthusiasm at the start of a game that keeps people posting, but afterwards less, and the lack of turns starts to become a problem. Without a sense that you're holding the game up, there's no imperative to post, and "more important" things will take precedence.

• Elegance - this really shouldn't have to be said, but the overall principle comes down to this: the Wiki should be set up itself so that its easy to use. There should be as little work as possible in making a post. Now, this includes tracking. One of the problems we've had is that tracking almost always requires at least one extra post. In the last game we tried to make this automated, but in doing so made it so that you still had to make more than one post to make it work. So nothing was really gained, and the method wasn't all that intuitive which made things actually possibly harder in some ways (though it was fun having the automatic tallying, I thought).

• Rewards - This actually follows up on 3 a bit. Coins are not a reward, so much as a mechanic that meters the story. Universalis works on the idea that you are face to face with others who will appreciate your additions to the story to get you to add on. When playing Wiki, one imagines that the others appreciate what's going on, but you don't really have a lot of contact with them. When there is contact, when people are talking out of game, I think you see a lot more participation.

What happens, however, is that when people don't post creatively, they also stop posting socially (perhaps because they feel that they want to keep low because of their lack of contribution), which means that they aren't getting reinforcement which means less incentive to participate more. There need to be real social rewards for play to keep people interested, I think.

Actually there is another sort of reward, which is the story itself. But the problem here is that in a Wiki the story takes forever to get told. So it's a mimimal reward given the time involved. Put another way, the reward is highly dilluted over time. Actually I think that another potential reward is seeing the world expand, but I can't seem to get other people on the same wavelength with me in terms of that.

I have some other minor problems, but I think these are the main ones. And I have some solutions to each of these. I just wanted to wait for the "problem brainstorming" section to get done before proposing them.

I think that it's interesting that we keep coming back to this. Four tries now at UniWiki, and they've all failed, more or less. What's interesting is that it's so compelling. That is, it's not just me, but there are others out there who have had the same vision that I have of how it might work out successfully. There's this feeling that if we just reached a certain critical mass of players, that the energy of the game would just support itself indefinitely like a chain fission reaction.

And I still have that hope myself. But at this point I'm starting to be willing to look at the possibility that the whole idea is somehow fatally flawed, too. Just to try to be objective about it. I really hope that's not the case, because I really love the idea. And I hope that proposing looking at this issue doesn't cause a huge damper on everyone involved, either. It's just a possibility to consider.

Mike

I had a follow-up on your Elegance idea, Mike ...

6) Encourage unpaid-for Colour: Remember that Uni-Wiki game set on the archipelago of islands (in Maine, was it?). I believe people were allowed to make short entries of descriptive writing. They didn't have to set up a player page, didn't have to pay for anything. What they contributed could be Challenged or edited - but it was a way of getting them involved easily.

7) New stories: It seems way more tempting to create introductory scenes to new storylines than to continue existing ones. I really noticed this in our globe spanning TUA1 game.

8) Focus?: Say the aim is to make it less over-whelming for people to contribute. There are a few ways I can think of achieving this. Focus on a core group of characters or geographically bounded setting. Restrict the number of parallel stories that can be started.

Several notes.

First, commenting on your remarks, Steve, I think that 7 is a result of the same effect that I commented on before with the lack of social cohesion. That is, without turns and a group committment to each other to participate, and with the potential of more than one thread going at once, there's this tendency to sorta play by oneself. Think of it this way - if Uni is about the clash of resources between players to get the vision you want to see, then if you allow everyone to play in their own scene, why wouldn't you do that? I mean, you basically seclude yourself somewhat from the effects of others. That is, if they start a scene, you coming in and participating will feel somewhat...competitive. Or at least like you might be interfering. The normal game says that this is what you have to do, so get over it. With UniWiki, you can simply avoid the other players and start your own scene.

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer not to have turns, and I'd prefer to have people starting up more than one scene. But these social structures that force people to interact have to be replaced by something, or you'll get nothing but disjointed play to some extent. Note that my personal vision is that this isn't all that bad a thing in terms of the worldbuilding portion (which is still what most interests me, personally). But for scenes, I do think it's problematic.

The solution that we've been coming up with is that you have to pay more and more Coins to start scenes after the first one. I think this is a good start, but not nearly enough. There's incentive to attract other players, but I've never actually been approached to help out in a scene, and simply making a "good scene" I don't think is enough.

Perhaps what could be required is a quorum of players who endorse the scene. I'm thinking three players. That is, one player has to garner the support of two other players who say that they'll participate in his scene, to even start one up. Endorsement would mean something like a committment to spend some minimum (5?) amount of Coins in the scene. This means you can't frivolously endorse scenes that you don't intend to participate in. You could also say that the opening player has the authority to end the scene at any time, so he could threaten to close a scene on committed players who were not participating. The risk being that they'd lose any Coins up to the minimum that they'd not yet spent.

This might have a chilling effect on starting scenes, I don't know. But, basically, it would be like each scene being a mini-game of Uni itself, with the group of committed players being the players. Anyone could also committ after that point, or add things to the scene without committing - so it's not exclusionary (indeed all players have to still be able to at least interfere by challenging). But perhaps only the comitted players would get the scene rewards?

Just one idea of how to solve this particular problem.

As for point 8, I think this is somewhat problematic. Again, I think that new players will want to be able to carve out their own niche to some extent. If they're forced to play with only the characters and places that have been created before, then I think that you'll have less people interested in joining after the start. Sounds fine for a game with limited players, but if you really want more people to start, I think it's a bad idea. I mean especially if one of these things ever actually explodes like has been theorized - then you'll really need new space.

I think a rule like the one for 7 above is the sort of thing you want to do to keep focus. If there's no endorsement for a new scene, then it doesn't happen. If you join the game with a couple of other players, however, you have enough with just your pals to start a new scene on your own. Basically the idea has to be to have the number of available scenes be proportional to the number of players somehow, so that effort doesn't get too diluted.

There's a deeper discussion here, however, which is that there are basically two different viewpoints on what's attractive in such a game. My position is that an open freer game is more attractive, because I think that it's hard to barge in on the stories being told by people who are there before you. Not even so much because of the idea that you're "interfering" but because, not being part of that local social contract, you don't feel invested in the scene. Again, why play with the others if I can go off alone, and get done more of what I want with my Coins.

The opposing viewpoint says that if you have too many threads out there all going on their own, that it's hard to know where to jump in. And I have to agree that this might scare some people off. But, again, I think that it's not so much that there's too many scenes going on, but that you don't feel invested in any of them.

If one really wanted to tighten up the game with focus, then I'd actually advocate playing a much more "normal" game of Universalis with the Wiki. Meaning that I'd have just one scene, with a bid for who gets to frame it, and then maybe even turns for all of the players. I think that would recreate the focus of the original game.

Unfortunately, that's not what I'm looking for in UniWiki. I can (and do) play that way FTF, and in other online media. The vision for UniWiki that I have, at least, is for something larger, something intentionally unfocused. That's not to say that this idea doesn't have problems, but that I don't want to solve the problem by throwing the baby out with the bathwater.


As for item 6 - I'm not sure what you're remembering. If we did allow this, I can't remember anyone doing it. That's not to say it's a bad idea, however. The rule I do remember was that if you jumped in to a scene and added even a little bit of color, you also got the scene reward. But I take it you're talking about something else.

As far as registering - I think that's become neccessary. If only to prevent spammers. And it's really not too annoying, I don't think. After that, the normal rules allow you to add color to anything you want to anyhow. So I'm not sure an extra rule is needed.


In any case, Trevis has been monitoring this, and has actually come up with a modified version of the Wiki that I think has much more elegance to it than what we had last. It looks really cool, in fact. You simply add to scenes like we did before, and sign each entry with a signature that includes your Coin gains or losses. The system then picks this up and automatically does the accounting. Components are added with a very short form that sorts them into their own pages. Adding them to a scene is just using the WikiWord per previous UniWiki games. It's pretty straightforward, and pretty automated at the same time.

Trevis wrote up a page for new players that should help a lot, and will give everyone an idea of how it's set up. You can read it here: http://wiki.trmfineart.com/bin/view/Unigame2/IAmANewPlayer

Trevis has also suggested that any discussion about this actual Wiki might be better to be moved to his forum off of the Wiki. So anyone interested should check out: http://wiki.trmfineart.com/forum (specifically the Unigame forum)

I think that this may be about as good as it gets for elegance, though I'm willing to hear arguments otherwise. That's just one problem, however, there's still much to discuss.

Mike

Don't get me wrong, I'd prefer not to have turns, and I'd prefer to have people starting up more than one scene. But these social structures that force people to interact have to be replaced by something, or you'll get nothing but disjointed play to some extent.

hix wrote: Most of the Universalis-Wiki games I've monitored/played in seem to have petered out. I'm wondering whether participants and observers have any thoughts about why that is.

The problem isn't getting people to open scenes, Ralph, it's getting them to participate in other's scenes. So with the model you propose, people would mostly just wait for scenes to close, and then start their own. Exaggerating, but you get the point. The advantage of turns here would be that you can "force" players to participate in scenes, in theory.

That said, you could have people who are in scenes, do turns, and have the outside play be turnless. Would require some investment rule again, however, to determine who's in and who's out.

Actually making all of twelve players take a turn in one scene would be a bad idea, because that would entail too much waiting for your turn to come around. You want players to split up.


Scott, I've commented on that previously. Again, it's the investment thing. Yeah, the game moves on, and it's no longer your thing. Not sure what to do about that.

Mike

Thanks Scott,

For everyone, I really need people to look over the instruction page to tell me if they understand it all. So far its been just me and Mike.

Do you think it would be too negative to have tenet that fines players for not contributing to a scene within the span of a week? Fines are suggested in Universalis for enforcing social contract issues which is why I ask.

best,

Trevis

The problem isn't getting people to open scenes, Ralph, it's getting them to participate in other's scenes.

So with the model you propose, people would mostly just wait for scenes to close, and then start their own.

Just to be clear, people do jump in on each other's scenes, but they jump out just as quickly. Again, I was using an extreme example (and said so). The problem becomes that people wait for others to add stuff in. For example, you jump in and add a new character, who I have a character respond to. But then you never come back, and the scene stalls indefinitely. This happens a lot.

I think the phenomenon is like this: know when it's your turn in normal play and it comes around to you, and you pass because you've got nothing? Well, since there are no turns, there's no passing, and people don't realize that the other players have stalled out. So they end up waiting for each other forever. Basically, without the social pressure to perform ever, players end up dodging scenes potentially permenantly. It's as though there's a player in the game, but he does nothing but pass. Basically waiting for the game he wants to start to start. Which practically means waiting to start his own scene so he can do something that he's very specifically interested in doing (but which nobody else might be interested in).

The big hammer gimmick is about what we're looking for here. With my proposal, agreeing to play in a scene is a committment to play it out to some extent (you can make the committment level higher - or perhaps variable), similar in essence to what you have. But, yeah, it's all trying to use the mechanics to ensure that people have to play with each other.

Trevis, I prefer to reward for participation than penalize for non-participation. "Social Contract" stuff is like breaking the rules, or anti-social behavior. So you'd want to have a rule being broken first. In any case, the question becomes who to fine? I mean does everyone have to contribute to all scenes? If not everyone, then what subset?

Mike

My thought was players were penalized for not making a coin spending post within a designated play period, like a week to any active scene. If there is a scene limit that could corral things more. But maybe that is too much restriction

See I was thinking of my game, Revisionist History, where your income is contingent on posting. Not the case in Uni.

Perhaps you earn an extra coin, or a few extra for every certain number of scene posts. Would have to be self monitored, but it's a reward.

best

Trevis

What if Coin refreshment was tied to contribution?

That might work. I suppose that lame entries aimed at just getting Coins would be subject to challenge. So, one Coin per contribution, recieved when the scene ends?

Seems a little incestuous, however. You basically get one Coin for making one statement, which probably costs one Coin. Meaning you're just sorta treading water. If your entry has a cost of more than one, then you're losing Coins over time. Which is compensated by what you purchase, of course - it's just that I think that the comparison of rates might lead to strange behaviors like shorter posts. I mean, why add only one post if you can break it into three, and get three times as much compensation? Perhaps it would be by the number of days that you contributed? But, again, doesn't that make a person just want to spread out their three ideas over three days?

You could make it related to how much the player spends, but that's even more incestuous. Like if you spend 10 Coins you get 10 Coins back as refreshment at the end of the scene. That's almost like not playing with Coins at all (you're only limited by the Coins you start with, and not even that if you're playing in more than one scene at a time). You could go half refresh, which would force Complications to happen to keep up.

Hmmm.

Mike

a Wiki the story takes forever to get told. So it's a mimimal reward given the time involved.

I think that it's interesting that we keep coming back to this. Four tries now at UniWiki, and they've all failed, more or less. What's interesting is that it's so compelling.




I'm new to Universalis but I've run play by mail, later play by email, now play by live journal/wiki Matrix Games for 17 years. It is a neat feature to have people all over the planet joining into a story telling game.

Universalis story telling may take a long time because role players are used to focusing on the character/character interaction rather than a slightly bigger picture interaction. For instance, if I spend 15 pages describing all the dialog in a scene between the dashing space pilot and the beautiful alien babe that ends in the camera panning up to the ceiling (because we don't show those kinds of scenes on broadcast television) That might take weeks to complete. In a Matrix Game an "Argument" might describe it that way or is might give a newpapers story version of it that can be done in a single argument "The dashing pilot Dirk Hearthrob smiles at Princess Yabadabadoo, who swoos. Later they share a cigarette, knowing the future heir of the Empire was on his way."

Have you ever tried to apply Universalis rules to role playing an entire country?

PBEM games dod have short shelf lives. I've noticed that they seldom last more than ten "turns", what ever that means. Can you make a compelling story that can be told in that few exchanges?

In Matrix Games we've learned that having a good scenario/hook, and preset cast of characters is vital. The openning material acts as a road map for player action. They know what the story is about right up front and just get on with it.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press
http://www.io.com/~hamster
http://www.livejournal.com/users/matrixgamer/452.html