Contribution

I've been thinking a lot about contribution lately. Specifically, how it can be applied to games in a meaningful way.

A couple years ago I created a small Halloween themed game: Candy Quota. The central focus of the game was to create a passive multiplayer game where every player could contribute to a common goal for one month out of the year. The goal was for all players to collectively gather candy and use it to feed a machine that would raise a ladder to an otherwise unreachable area in the game.

Even though I designed the goal (and loop) to be quite flat, I hoped that the exploration and interactions inside of the game would be enough to add value to the player experience. I designed a little platforming world with various machines and mini-games that could be used to earn more candy. But, ultimately - the gameplay loop was very simple and none of the machines really had a rewarding challenge or risk to them. My hope was that experience would be greater than the sum of its parts.

Around the same time, another Halloween themed game released with a similar focus: Adam Gryu's Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival. This game had a smaller variety of activities, but the killer feature was that players could carve pumpkins and place them around the environment. This creativity allowed for a greater bond between the player and the game. Each player derived much more value because of their contribution. Their actions changed the world around them. It's really quite perfectly designed in that way.

It's been a great touch point for me as I learn, and I hope to implement some more personal and engaging elements into Candy Quota as I continue work on the project.

Written on September 15, 2023