(Trying out Branch - let's see how this goes for discussion)

As with so many aspects of games, it's all about the motivation. Why does the city exist? Is the main selling point of citizenship the roleplaying and collaborative fiction, or other types of fun (collecting, combat, levelling up). Obviously, the first kind has the motivation for staying in-character built in. But even then, teaching new citizens what "in character" actually means can be a long process. There's more value in working out how to keep the atmosphere without relying entirely on the players, or at least allowing it to survive a percentage of misfits.

Ok, so, I need to give you more info really. Sent you a mail already but to recap:

The game Neopolis (Cyberpunk Multiplayer Strategy Thing) is separate to a large degree, insofar as its virtual space goes.
Quick summary: people play in a futuristic virtual city grid, as customisable crews. They can take over buildings and align themselves with unaligned crews, and finally can win a maytch by conquering the enemy player HQ. All very cyberpunky hip. Think the opening of "the warriors" set in JapanoBladeRunner.
People play the game in a traditional manner, BUT, they should be able to go first person, wander the map, and use it as a portal to go into the webbased virtual community/digital city. This is the digital city I need to create.

(Continued:)

The idea is that players get a space (house/HQ) in the virtual city, when they sign up for the game proper, and will be able to add media content that adds to the fiction of the game. Now, the in-character aspect does not neccessarily have to apply to the inhabitants talking amongst themselves, but the content they add does. (I still need to decide what content that is btw, but in some way that doesn't matter YET)

So maybe it needs to be fairly laissez faire, but have a curated content submission process with built in rewards?

Hi! Sorry for the delay in joining. I'm just having a read-through of your idea, Rudolf. Sounds like fun! I guess the reason Yoz waved me over is because of the time I spent role-playing on Improbable Island (II). If you've not seen it, may I suggest that you stroll over and have a look at improbableisland.com (be warned, the content is very silly indeed!). It's a text-based multi-player RPG, where players build character by levelling up in skills/experience, by experiencing the canon narrative, and/or by developing their own narratives (achieved by interacting with other characters in a chat-like format). II uses a grid-map, players can build & develop houses to roleplay in, & the wiki contains stories written in-game by the players.

I played on II for about 2 years, with 2 main characters & a host of minor characters created at will for story purposes. I wasn't much interested in levelling up, but developing interactive stories was fantastic fun. I wasn't the only person there with that agenda (although we weren't the majority, we were very visible I think). Some people just love grinding, some love developing their dwellings, some want to socialise, some want to write stories, and a startling number just want to god mod, or write (terrible) porn in public spaces, or act out their favourite fan-fic of the moment. As you can imagine, harmonising all that is a big ask. I think II does it ok, with some problems. No two players agree on what the main problems are :)

For me, some strong points were: flexible overarching canon that allows some leeway for player response; being able to develop your own environment within the game; role-playing in chat-like format (255-char limit per post); being able to expand/edit the role-play logs prior to publishing them on the wiki; a friendly community of like-minded writers. Weak points included: inadequate/arbitrary moderation; gradual degradation of the "village" feeling as the community grew in size and attracted increasing numbers of teenage god-mod fanporn stars; 255-char limit per post (yes, a good and a bad point!); no acknowledgement of (any) role-play generated content by Admin; bugs; interface inadequacies that made role-play hard sometimes.

When I tired of dealing with the bad points (and with the repetitive nature of game canon), I quit playing II. But I developed a spin-off environment in Wikidot so I could continue a narrative I'd started in II, without the constraints that were starting to bug me. That project is still online here gullnarrow.wikidot.com. It's not a game, and I'm not doing much with it just now, but it represents an attempt to combine "canon" and "player-generated" content more closely than II does.

I'll stop rambling on now. I hope I've not just gone off on one here, but have maybe said one or two things that turn out useful!

I always thought one of the best ways to encourage buy-in in a city in a game is to have the players own a shop, home, and participate in a guild in the city. I've seen several games with political systems built-in as well which encouraged active participation between players and factions. I think one innovative unexplored method is by having the players build the city or civilization from the ground up. I would like to see an innovative MMRPG where this occurs completely. The players build up an entire civilization from the ground-up, and take a certain "tree" similar to the Civilization games. They compete with nearby civilizations for land and resources. Within the civilization political factions can compete, etc.

Thanks Callia/Darrel! Apologies about the late reply, I was intensely busy thur/fri and away from my office.

Intriguing stuff, and certainly much to pondder for there for me. I may look for something that is impossible, but I am hoping my particular requirements are lighter than traditional MMO building, so this may help.

To explain:
My main focus is NOT creating an MMO, or a massively interactive simulation/3d environment. In many ways the strategy game that I am doing is the part where people interact in a "gamey sense". SO I don't feel I need to have a lot of expected functionalituy like interactive avatars.

I am more interested in a user created and maintained collaborative world, with emphasis on media. (Music, Stories, Art...)

So in practical terms, I am thinking about something like an interactive encyclopeadia, with nice visual polish, but also browsable through a geographic interface, like a city map. A map that would grow with each new user, IF they submit content that is canon, and has been approved.

I was wondering therefore if the solution is to give people a set of tools and webforms that would auto-create a website for them for the digital city (their Home/HQ), but they would have to publish public content through that tool as well.

Three components then. Something like this:

1: The Game "Neopolis"
This is the Competition/Game element. I sell this like my other games, and with it players get access to 2, 3

2: Community Pages
this is the Social Element, not heavily moderated. Probably free, except the "premium" ability to submit content. This can be "earned" or comes from buying the game or other related products like the comic or the OST.

3: Submission process
Publishing to a high quality collaborative digital city, that can be explored through a web-based interface, which can also be reached from within the game. Some of this content can actually make it back into the game world

Does any of this make sense? :-)

apologies for silence - i've been ill, rather than ignoring. my brain is rather slowed-down still, but a restart is in progress. i'm hoping i'll manage a coherent response soon.

Ok, feeling a bit better, coming back to have a think about this. First, whether the idea makes sense ... I think it does. In fact, I really like the sound of it! Also, it might sound a bit silly me saying this, but have you ever gone and played around with Meerkovo, from Compare The Meerkat? It's not at all what you're describing (!), but for some reason it popped into my head while I was reading. Also also (re-iterating Yoz), motivation strikes me as important. If gameplay is the roleplay bit, and contribution to canon is done separately, by players in an "out of character" mindset, then I wonder if you'd risk losing the sense of immersion, and have to stimulate contributions another way. (Eep, sorry if that's garbled!)

Ah, Meerkovo seems closed :-(

Glad the idea comes across somewhat coherently, and that you like the sound of it.

Motivation is an interesting aspect. I have given it some thought of course but am sitting on multiple fences. Kinda easy options suggest themselves, but I am not sure how appropriate they are.

Also, immersion is actually deepened during their visit to the city, as there are no standard gamey mechanics to distract the visitor. :-) So it is more like research or being a tourist/traveller. There should still be interactivity of course.

So, quick but boring ideas for motivational mechanics for adding content:

1: Some content ends up ingame
2: Successful submissions heightens community status with associated perks
3: Citizen's houses/HQs become portfolios of sorts
4: Inherent reward of having submissions published

It could work...

Aw, shame about Meerkovo, I loved that place. I'm a bit of a sucker for playing the tourist in made-up places. And I love maps. Interactive maps are just maps with Added Magic, I think. (What I really want, now I think about it, is an interactive Continental Bradshaw - where you can travel by virtual train all over Europe, limited only by funds and timetabling, and visiting all the places along the way - staying in Grand Hotels, Pensions and Gasthauses, meeting mysterious strangers, etc.) But I digress...

Back to the topic in hand!

When you said "like research or being a tourist/traveller", I got a lovely (if shivery) reminder of how it felt exploring the town in the text-adventure game "Anchorhead" (ever played that one? It's *good'n'scary*!) In fact, the whole world-exploration idea that you describe puts me in mind of the atmosphere in the better sort of text adventure. It's something to do with the single-player experience, maybe? (I encountered something similar playing Portal.) If you're not interacting with other players, then the environment can feel odd (in a good way). You mentioned sterility of atmosphere on Twitter a while back - but it can equally be otherworldly or dreamlike or chilling, depending on how it's presented.

Regarding your ideas for motivational mechanics - the logic of these seems sound to me (although I'm not any kind of expert). I especially like the idea of citizen's houses/HQs becoming portfolios. Will players have the option to make these portfolios visible to the internet at large, or just to other players? The latter is probably better for motivating people to sign up, and may provide a feeling of intimacy in the community that will suit some players. But others may be put off from unleashing their creativity if what they'll make is highly context-dependent and for a limited audience.

Thanks for the feedback! Am super busy, but will reply quickly now, and in more detail when I have more time. :-)

Will check out the other media/projects you mention. Am always happy to go exploring.

Atmosphere is key, and yeah, sterile can be avoiddable if the content evokes enough sense of wonder etc. (Which is the whole point!)

Good point about public/private portfolios... Not sure how to handle that, although I can imagine a hybrid where the public pages show the non-curated work, while the Digital City shows the approved (and therefore more prestigious) content?

I can see myself pitching the city to film/tv/comics execs right now, so I can imagine contributors being attracted too. :-)

I am also toying with the idea to let people trade off the IP, so they can use the curated Digital City and the Neopolis License to create their own commercial output.

That could be attractive in its own right.

Ok, so, been very busy including work on Neopolis, and was hit with a massive DOH moment recently.

Since Neopolis is a Transmedia project, and I am working on/including/finished a tv show, a comic, a sountrack, a game, plus some other bits and bobs, it seems that I can can answer some of my own content queries already.

I should just start mapping these out as neigbourhoods in an online portal that maniffests as a digital city. It can then offer discounts, and I can slowly introduce user generated content.

Still need to think of tech though. :-)

Also, if anybody wants to see some of this, I can share the pilot episode script and the design doc. Just mail me at rudolfkremers@gmail.com Maybe people want to tie in some of their ideas/stuff into this projectc?