PFF Postmortem

Will Emigh — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 11:04:00 -0700

Now that enough time has passed for us to gain some perspective on the game (and ruminate on your comments in our survey), we’ve looked over Perfect Friends Forever and decided what worked, what didn’t, and what we’ll do differently next time. Overall, we’re quite happy with this episode. It went much more smoothly than OITC and hit most of the goals we set for it.

Without further ado, here are our thoughts on the second Cyphers adventure!

Overview

Perfect Friends Forever started July 1st and ran through July 31st. The first week consisted of a slow introduction to the PFF website, where Madame Z was trying to start a dating service using ghosts as advisors. Players were also pointed to the Bay Horse, MO website and the blog for PFF’s webmaster, KH.

Once the game began in earnest, players discovered that Madame Z had been threatened, presumably by one of her ghostly advisors turned poltergeist. At this point, players were given limited access to the ghosts in the form of puzzles. As each ghost’s puzzles were solved, they revealed more about themselves and the rest of the household, including the events surrounding the death threat.

Madame Z hired a private investigator named Anton Jeffries to help her determine which ghost was the culprit, since she wasn’t willing to fully open the site with a poltergeist on the loose. A mysterious vision led players to open Anton’s case notes, where he tracked his progress throughout the story.

During his investigation, Anton discovered that none of the ghosts were exactly as they seemed but didn’t come any closer to figuring out who had created the threats. He sent a copy of Wylie’s will to Wakeful Agents, but its supposed “treasure map” was never solved.

Soon after the investigation started, Madame Z was attacked by a grave robber, seemingly in an attempt to achieve the earlier threat. Madame Z survived with a small concussion after her screams brought Anton running to her rescue.

With no solid leads, Anton conferred with the players and set up a trap to catch the culprit. Although the trap was basically successful, players had to provide further evidence to finish the case and see the perpetrator punished.

The Wylie Treasure remains unfound… if it even exists.

What Went Right

Casual fun (without making it easy)

One of our major goals going into PFF was to make it easier for people to play the game. Out in the Cold had so many updates that it was hard to enjoy the game casually. PFF only had updates twice a week, which made it easier for people to follow without spending significant time on the site. To keep more involved players interested, we made email much more important and put up new puzzles every day. In addition, players were occasionally able to ask questions of advisors as they answered their puzzles, giving them opportunities to get involved whenever they had free time.

Puzzles

One of our design goals for PFF was to have more puzzles, since Out in the Cold focused almost exclusively on storytelling. In this respect, PFF succeeded admirably, with over 75 puzzles over the course of the game! Having new puzzles available every day helped offset the fact that major story updates only happened twice a week. It also encouraged player involvement.

Community involvement

We restricted the number of puzzles any one person could answer (and served them in a semi-random order) to encourage people to work together as a community. No one person could access all of the comments made by the ghosts, so nobody could completely experience the game without working with others. This environment allowed even casual players to give valuable information to everyone else.

More Characters

In addition to the six ghostly advisors, PFF had a varied cast, some directly accessible and some not. Having multiple characters available made it easier for players to build a unique rapport, one of the major strengths of MultiPlayer Novels. Even characters who weren’t accessible added depth to the game by giving new perspectives on events of which players had already seen one aspect.

What Went Wrong

Plot Input

It can be hard to determine exactly, but our impression is that players didn’t feel like they had a lot of say in where the plot went. This might be because there were few obvious branching points in the plot. Despite this impression, there were actually several areas where players had impact. For example, Stanley’s role was originally much smaller, Jasmine wasn’t going to break with Nickolas, and the treasure was going to be found. In the future, we need to make sure that players notice that they’re affecting the plot as they’re doing it.

Unclear intermediate goals

Although the overall goal was clear (figure out who threatened Madame Z), it wasn’t always clear what the players should be working towards. This was mitigated by the obvious default, puzzle solving. For those who aren’t puzzle solvers, this wasn’t great. It also made it easy to feel disconnected from the overall story.

Slow interactions

Another aspect that disconnected players from the story was the slow and intermittent nature of most character interactions. We had some problems with connections, moving their appearance back from noon to almost midnight over the course of the game. In addition, the questions players could ask the advisors were answered intermittently. This was obviously frustrating and should have been resolved before the game started.

Lessons Learned

In general, PFF went a lot more smoothly than OITC. More people got involved and stayed involved. There are still definitely areas for improvement, though. PFF avoided the major pitfalls from OITC but also lacked some of the real high points. In general, I think this was because the game was a little disjointed with the puzzles and gameplay generally separate from the story.

Mix story and puzzles

One major way to fix this is to integrate the story and puzzles more. There were really only two serious puzzles central to the story. It was enjoyable to have consistent puzzles that weren’t required to move the story along, but additional puzzles would also have given players a real feeling of power in the story.

Clearer small goals

Another way to improve players’ control over the story would be to make the minor goals clearer. For example, instead of Anton asking, “Which ghost did it?” he could ask, “What is each ghost’s alibi for the night of the threat?” Although they’re functionally similar, and the latter leads into the former, the second question asks players to perform a very specific function that they can accomplish within a couple of days. This allows for better feedback for the players, since they can receive rewards every couple of days if they’re on the right track.

Better reward structure

A better reward structure overall would also make the game more enjoyable. The connections worked well for what they were, but the rewards were too unpredictable and, often, uninteresting (as when solving a puzzle just increased the connection). A better system would have some immediately apparent goals as well as random rewards. Knowing that you’d get to ask a question at 18% connection would give players something to work towards. If they also got something at 12%, that’s great, but small goals are important as well.

Conclusion

So far, we’ve mostly been working within existing ARG frameworks. Over the next several weeks, we’re going to be working on some new concepts that aren’t directly related but that will be connected and will certainly be informed by the things we’ve learned with our first two MPNs. We’re also thinking of starting a behind-the-scenes Podcast if there’s enough interest.

Thanks for your interest and support! We look forward to entertaining you again soon.

Studio Cypher: PFF Postmortem