« Katamari sale and other reasons to drive in LA... | Main | Gaming on the Cheap... »

September 28, 2005

Notorious ADC: MMO Asshole

Considerations in moving from the real world to digital

1. The potential for increasingly large groups of people to play together
2. The typically more abstracted, less personal space of internet play
3. The highly variable speed and quality of play within the larger internet space

The current game of Asshole looks like this:

Game.
Repeat.

The game iterates upon itself and everything within is very amorphous malleable.

What the computer is good at, however, is: Delivering highly delineated and embellished structures. Computer game players, for their part, do a nice job with the space in-between these highly componentized pieces.

Inspiration

One of the more interesting facets of the game was the thought of it being drawn from some sort of political model, what with its presidents and vice-presidents. In government, there are so many levels of political power: presidents, governors, representatives, mayors, superintendents, sheriffs, etc. Even further, there are positions outside of government that have community impact: football club owner, PTA president, gang leader.

My idea is to have the game of Asshole be multi-tiered, with the potential of movement within and between tiers.

Rules

If you are the asshole, you have the option of creating another game in a tier below the one you just played a game in. You may also join an existing game in an open spot, so long as you do not take the president title (vice president is okay).

At any time outside of gameplay, a player may sidestep into an open spot in another game on the same tier, keeping his own rank while pushing others in the game further down in rank.

If you are the president, you may move up in tier in the hierarchy; you may take a spot in any open game, but you can only have the bumblefuck title.

About the tiers

The tiers can be thought of as paralleling layers of command with an organization, tiers of government in a nation, etc. In the top tier, there can only be one game. Players cannot make any more games in that tier; they may only create new games in tiers below them. Players cannot move up unless there are openings above them.

Posted by diamante at September 28, 2005 05:00 PM

Comments

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?