How StoryNexus will work

Before I assault you with questions first I would like to say that I find this endeavor most amazing. Greatly looking forward to it. Now then,

  1. Will many of the things that we no doubt take for granted be available? Specifically, a travel map, inventory, profile pages, an inventory upgrading system, a market place, cliques, and very large words.

  2. Will we be able to use these forums to collaborate on projects and share our ideas? And how will multiple people be able to run one project?

  3. I know Failbetter is an ethical gaming company, but regarding copyright will Failbetter own the rights to what we create?

  4. Will the games we make be browser games? And in this case should we start looking around now for websites to host our games?

  5. Can we make challenges based on multiple attributes? Can we assign different text for different failures (say passing the shadowy and failing the dangerous)? Will our games use the [color=#009900]straightforward[/color], [color=#FFCC00]modest[/color], [color=#FF0000]high-risk [/color]system, and will we be able to change the probabilities?

Of course none of these are demands or requests, merely curiosities. I love the Fallen London system and think that this is extremely generous. Looking forward to it. :)

[color=#009900]Jonathan: is the name of the tech that Fallen London, Night Circus, Machine Cares and StoryNexus all run on.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Very large numbers of players: We might limit new signups if it really goes berserk. We do have that facility - we haven’t used it in a long time. But if a community-authored game gets that popular, basically we’ll be delighted - it’d be a big deal for the whole site.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Famous authors: There are reasons I can’t answer that right now…[/color]
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[color=#009900]Additional features, like a travel map: SN doesn’t have all the features FL has (although we’ll add some later). This is by design: not all games need them, and they’re a burden to maintain.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Collaboration: World creators can give other users limited or complete access to their worlds. [/color][color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]Yes, we’ll be encouraging people to use the forums.[/color]
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[color=rgb(0, 153, 0)]Copyright: Creators keep the copyright. We want to be a platform, not a publisher.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Hosting: StoryNexus will host the games - you won’t need separate hosting.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Challenges: This is complicated, and I won’t get into it now. :-)[/color]
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Will it be possible to create percentage based rewards?

ie. A storylet that increases the reward given, based upon the person’s stat level.

I was thinking this would be a good system for any repeatable events without them losing their luster as a player increases in stats.

Will we be forced into a certain ethical code when writing? Like for example no naughty words or intense gore?
P.S. Can we implement features like killing off characters? I think that would be a fun way to end a beta.
P.S.S. I’m already writing story-lets in anticipation.

Now I used to have a little coding experience so I know the issues that can pop up trying to create something like this and the great room for failure if it is made to easy to modify any little bit of the game. What limitations will be existing in the early release of the code? Additionally would it be possible to get a more raw version of the code for added flexibility as time flies by? Excited about the prospect of thousands of worlds popping up like mushrooms in the marsh.

Thinking of copyright, I’m assuming we cannot use any copyright material (So, no “My Little Bazaar: Secrets are Magic”)

“Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people in the whole world. I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they’ve all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.”

And soon we’ll all have an amazing way to bring them to life. I’m already plotting two different StoryNexus games.

To which end I’d like to ask: how able will we be to deviate from the Fallen London/Night Circus formula? Will we be able to create custom pages (eg, the Mysteries, Help, Myself, My Friends… pages) or custom UI elements?
edited by Jack Vaux-Harrowden on 6/3/2012

[color=#009900]What’s allowed. Nothing illegal (which includes breach of other people’s copyright, yes). But we don’t want to moderate where we can possibly avoid it. We will promote and link to the worlds we like most - so intelligent, well-executed work is most likely to end up on the front page. If you’ve played our games, you probably have a good idea of what we like.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Killing characters: Storylets have an ‘end game’ flag which means the player will need to start over with a new character. This will usually be a conclusion to the story rather than character death, so that’s up to you.[/color]
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[color=#009900]Simplicity, complexity, customisation, mistakes: You don’t write code in SN - you write stories, create qualities and cards/storylets, and decide how they’ll connect up. There’s a bit more to it than that, but that’s the core of it. SN games will have a strong family resemblance. A platform that made everything possible would make nothing easy… and we want to make certain kinds of games easy. If you want completely custom functionality, your best bet is to learn to code and build your own. :-) (and, just possibly, integrate via an SN API - but that’s a ways off.)[/color]

Please do that. That would be amazing and we would all love you forever.

Will we be able to fool around with the action refresh rate or refresh cap? For example: could we start people with 100/day and a refresh rate of 0, meaning everyone gets exactly 100/day?

Will we be able to update our products on a rolling basis, eg. releasing them as chapters instead of trying to swallow the whole elephant on release?

Will we be able to hyperlink from inside storylets? Will we be able to embed images/other content (an audio or movie file?) in storylets?

Thanks for the answer on the art question!

[color=#009900]Actions: There’ll be some flexibility here. We don’t want people to allow entirely unlimited actions because there are server constraints, but that won’t be a big problem unless it’s a game with lots of content and lots of users - which we’d like to see! So some flexibility, some constraints, details TBD.[/color]
[color=#009900]Updates: Absolutely not just the whole elephant. There are specific challenges around managing changes (for us and for you) but you’ll able to be release and iterate.[/color]
[color=#009900]Storylet contents: Hyperlinks almost certainly will be possible, audio and video probably won’t (there certainly won’t be support for hosting them at our end).[/color]

Great, thanks!

A little follow-up question on the issue of [color=rgb(0, 0, 0)]what’s allowed. Will there be any content restrictions beyond “nothing illegal”? For instance - knowing the Internet, there may be an outcropping of… shall we say… crudely adult-oriented gameplay at some point in StoryNexus’ lifetime. (Not that I think this is overly likely, but I find it helps to establish a clear policy ahead of time.)
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edited by Cedric Appleby on 6/9/2012

[quote=Cedric Appleby]A little follow-up question on the issue of [color=rgb(0, 0, 0)]what’s allowed. Will there be any content restrictions beyond “nothing illegal”? For instance - knowing the Internet, there may be an outcropping of… shall we say… crudely adult-oriented gameplay at some point in StoryNexus’ lifetime. (Not that I think this is overly likely, but I find it helps to establish a clear policy ahead of time.)
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edited by Cedric Appleby on 6/9/2012[/quote]
I think a pornographic game built on this engine could be quite lovely, especially if you can pick up additional, ahem, “verbs” as you progress. But only if allowed, of course.

[color=#009900]ah, the sex question. This is my current thinking based on discussions with the team, and not a final answer.[/color]

[color=#009900]1. Storygames that happen to include scenes of sex between consenting adults. This happens. We’ll probably enforce a ‘mature content’ warning, no more. (For the absolute exclusion of doubt, we don’t mind what gender(s) the adults might happen to be, and that is a final answer.)[/color]

[color=#009900]2. Outright consenting-adults spank material. I don’t see us excluding this stuff, especially because the line with 1 isn’t always clear. I also don’t see us promoting or publicising it: it’s just not what we want to be known for.[/color]
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[color=#009900]3. Problematic material in either 1 or 2. For example: sexualised violence, minors, incest, non-consensual scenes. There is a complicated continuum from specialised tastes to ugliness to outright illegality, and this is down to cases, but our default position would be to take problematic material down, not go to the barricades for free speech. I imagine the examples I picked of ‘problematic’ material give you a good idea of where we’d draw the line.[/color]


[color=#009900]EDIT: fixed a spelling mistake that might have caused low comedy.[/color]
edited by Alexis Kennedy on 6/9/2012

It was inevitable, wasn’t it? :P It wasn’t meant to be a wholly sex-related question, as there may be other kinds of questionable material (graphic violence, for instance), but… yeah.

Indeed they did. Thank you very much.

[color=rgb(0, 0, 0)]Outright consenting-adults spank material.[/color] Has got to be the best way to put that ever. Also the idea of a choose your own adventure erotica would be very interesting. I would prefer one set in a Harlequin romance setting. That could be amazing.

So is StoryNexus just a branch of FailBetter or its own entity? Would games made using StoryNexus be considered FailBetter games.
If a person were looking for these games on the Net would they find them alongside Fallen London and Night Circus?

Eyes glimmering

And that is all I shall say on this subject.

Will there be some sort of rating scheme- a way for the cream to rise to the top?