Card Game About Open Source and Proprietary Software
I wanted to design a game about Open Source and proprietary software for a long time. It was always difficult to get the theme to fit visually with the equipment. I think I finally hit on the right way to do it.
There is a new subgenre of game, which I'm calling "non-collectible collectible card games" or NC3s. Everyone starts with the same rudimentary deck. The game consists of building your deck during the game, by using cards from your hand to add a new card from the supply to your deck. Unlike Collectable Card Games, there are no booster packs-- once you buy the box, you own every card, and you're done spending real-world money.
Here's the idea I had for an NC3 game. You have a screen behind which to play cards that are in your proprietary control, to be resolved when the screen is lifted. Also, there is a central place to play cards collaboratively, with tokens to indicate who contributed them, so they can get credit.
You build projects on the table as chains of face-up cards that accumulate work points, reputation points, and money points.
If there are enough work points in a project, it gets a new software card.
If there are enough reputation points in a project, it can recruit a developer or a user from a variety of characters: Entrepreneur, Propeller Beanie, Community Manager, Benevolent Dictator For Life, Aunt Tillie, Iconoclast, Curmudgeon, Bastard Operator From Hell, etc. They have personality incompatibilities.
With enough money points you are tempted to buy a layer of Middle Management, Script Kiddie, Market Droid, Lawyer, Judge, or Legislatosaurus in your proprietary area. Each has various anti-competitive powers that are useful for things other than quality software. But if you do too much of that, then all the other players would combine their efforts against you.
There are also Lawsuit cards and Flame cards which you receive as penalties or attacks. They waste space in your hand and your projects, and react badly with various Person cards. :)
The game is over when the Person card deck is empty. If the common area has more Person cards than anyone's proprietary area, the player who made the largest contributions to earn reputation points is the winner. However, if one player has more Person cards behind his screen than any other screen or in the common area, he wins the Evil Empire victory.
I got permission from Eric Raymond to name it Cathedral and Bazaar, after his paper "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
I would like to open this process to collaborative development, but a game needs a single vision of what kind of experience the design is intended to achieve. It is notoriously difficult to balance the available strategic choices in games of this type, so it's already hard enough to make it fun without the added challenge of making it educational as well. It must be fun, through gameplay and humor. That may come at the expense of realism, but I'll do what I can. If anyone makes a suggestion, and it doesn't break the gameplay, and it's true enough to engender laughter, it will probably get in.
Comments
crywolf on Nov. 21, 2009 3:50 AM
I have some ideas. A lot of ideas. So many, in fact, that my first idea is that you need to set at the outset the total number of cards. (But don't worry, any that don't make this cut can go into the expansion.) I'd suggest 128 cards.
I assume this game will draw heavily from real life for inspiration. So there'd be things like code forks, patent trolls, astroturfing, insane advocates (or fanboys), and the like. Also Libraries, which may be either proprietary, open source (with various licenses). Or maybe even cards such as "GPL code inclusion" to be played on a proprietary project, or "Patent violation" to be used on an open source project. And vulnerabilities. And disasters such as loss of project data due to viruses, fires, beer on the servers, etc. I'm sure you get the idea.
For development, I suggest a wiki, where you can list out the rules, card types, individual cards, etc.
Will there be dice also?
matt-arnold on Nov. 21, 2009 3:58 AM
Yes! Here's the thing, though. Collaborative development on a game demands that there be a "benevolent dictator for life". I nominate myself. Motion passed.
I would be happy to send you the link to the document!
No, there are no dice.
matt-arnold on Nov. 21, 2009 5:46 PM
Hey, did I come across to strongly there? I have had collaboration experiences in which the contributors all zoomed ahead in their minds despite not realizing they had inadvertently started from very different places. Nobody knew on what goals to use as criteria to resolve the differences. It turned into a mess. I certainly don't want to be draconian. On the one hand, I don't think this can succeed with only one person, but on the other hand, I don't know how to divide up roles in a project of this nature.
desfontaines on Nov. 21, 2009 3:10 PM
Legislatosaurus
Is it a robot one that shoots beams when it roars?
matt-arnold on Nov. 21, 2009 3:21 PM
Who knows? Great game!
cdrodeffer on Nov. 22, 2009 1:32 PM
David W. said he talked with you about this (or a similar) project, and we worked on a game for it, but what we came up with didn't seem to mesh with what the backers were wanting. Alas. The direction you took is very different from the one we did, which is probably a good thing.
matt-arnold on Nov. 22, 2009 5:14 PM
I did a game for them before David did-- a predecessor of Ingeniators-- but it wasn't what they were looking for either. They kept mentioning Monopoly as their inspiration for wanting a game that demonstrated open source principles. I'm worried that they literally want an extremely dumb game which simply re-themes Monopoly.
cdrodeffer on Nov. 22, 2009 6:29 PM
Agreed. The responses to our submission were completely against what they were trying to show. Monopoly is the opposite of open source.
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