Comments on: Why Smokescreen is the Best Game Ever*

By: Fakebook — Flow

Fakebook — Flow — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 08:05:28 +0000

[...] Gioca a Smokescreen Six to Start parla di Smokescreen Six to Start parla ancora di [...]

By: Week 107: More Smokescreen and 87 Cool Things

Week 107: More Smokescreen and 87 Cool Things — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 17:15:41 +0000

[...] Why Smokescreen is the Best Game Ever* (*for what it’s trying to achieve) talks about how we tweaked the ARG formula from what we learned through Perplex City, as well as some of the design decisions we made. [...]

By: Padraic

Padraic — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:14:22 +0000

It’s definitely better to leave the episode as is than offer a false choice, though. Giving the user the alternative to tell Max no, only to have them do the job anyway just highlights the problem rather than smoothing it over. It really is a small, personal quibble with the episode in any case.

By: Adrian

Adrian — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:51:29 +0000

Yeah, it’s definitely a tricky problem in game design, and we are in effect forcing people to go along with Max here. Perhaps we should have come up with a way where you could say ‘No’ but then be convinced (for some other reason) to do the job… Hmm.

By: Padraic

Padraic — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 14:30:37 +0000

Episode 5 was interesting, and definitely one I would have liked to see an alternate path for… To me, it was very clear from the get-go that what Max was doing in that episode was illegal, immoral, and quite stupid. From a gameplay standpoint, it was a fun episode to play through, but from an immersion standpoint, the option to say “get someone else to do your whitewashing for you” would have been delightful. Granted, it would have really truncated the episode unless you could come up with an alternate path (say, trying to get together with Cal about what was going on?).

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 15:08:51 +0000

It was called Operation: Sleeper Cell, made for Cancer Research UK. I helped get things running with some funds and my organisation Let’s Change the Game, but the O:SC guys should get the credit for actually designing and producing the game.

http://www.operationsleepercell.com
http://www.letschangethegame.org

By: Paul Morriss

Paul Morriss — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 14:46:25 +0000

Adrian, which game? Which charity (if you dare say)?

By: Adrian

Adrian — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:16:58 +0000

Nick: Yep, we liked making people feel a bit uncomfortable in that mission. This week’s Mission 5 is a little similar in that way, if you pause to think about what you’re doing…

Paul: It’s still too early to evaluate the effectiveness of Smokescreen since we only launched it under two weeks ago, but our preliminary stats show that people are spending a really tremendous amount of time on the game; they’re not just coming to the site and spending a minute, they’re actually completing missions.

As for time, it took several months of planning, and then about 6-12 months of actual development. I think that if you had a clear idea of what you wanted to achieve and weren’t being too ambitious, you might be able to get something out in 12-18 months, realistically. Having run a volunteer-based game to aid charity, I would say there are obviously a lot of other considerations including communication issues between team members.

By: Paul Morriss

Paul Morriss — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 08:23:08 +0000

I’d be interested in hearing your thoughts as regards how much time it took to develop the game versus the number of people engaged and the depth of engagement and how much it changed their lives.

I work for a charity and some of our staff are volunteers so we tend to think in terms of time rather than money, which is why I didn’t ask how much it cost Channel 4 to use you, but for the time it took.

By: nick s

nick s — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:15:47 +0000

I’m actually comfortable with that kind of opacity.

What I noticed and enjoyed about Ep 3 is that I immediately wanted to run through it again: having “done the right thing” (in terms of classic puzzle-solving), I wanted to try a deliberately subversive replay, not simple to unlock achievements, but because of how the first set of interactions had worked themselves out.

(On that note, I loved the description when I unlocked that elusive ninth achievement. And I’ll admit that a certain character sends me straight to the mute button… which is a backhanded compliment for the acting.)