- mining for new articles
- an auction house system to buy, sell and speculate on articles.
There will be 3 types of highscores:
- A highscore based on how much corridors the user has already mined
- A highscore based on the total cash of the user
- A highscore based on the value of the users inventory. Each article has a recycling-value and the total value of the inventory is the combined value of all the articles in the inventory.
To make the dataminer more focussed on the articles, we would add a auction system to the program. This will allow users to buy and sell the articles they mined. They can speculate on how much an article will be worth in the future. This creates an economy within the game, partially dependent on the base values of the articles, and partially created by how much an article is worth to the users.
The mining part of the game will generate the articles to keep the economy alive. The user starts by mining at the surface. He will get articles from all categories. When mined deep enough, he can choose in which direction to mine. Depending on the direction, he will get articles from other categories. The articles are in a tree-structure, and the further the user has mined in a certain direction, the more he can refine his search for articles. If there is a world-cup football, a user will probably want to find articles in the category sport-football, since those will be worth more at that time. This makes users follow the news, to know which articles they have to look for, further increasing the purpose of the game.
I can't help to fail at finding the attention seeker in the game. Don't get me wrong, I like the idea but if I want to read news I go out and read it somewhere without all the hassle. If I want to play a game, well then it won't be about news I think. Somewhere you'll need to get the attention of people to really use this. The sport/football thing is a good start. That's a topic I would rather use for this game than for example financial news.
ReplyDeleteI also have doubts about the exact direction you're going with. Within one week I've seen the complete idea move in different direction, which can either be good or bad. Creating a complete micro-economy is in my opinion one step to much for the first iteration of the project. This could be added at a later time. Brainstorming is a good thing, but make sure that when you start you don't have a lot of ideas and are working on to much things at the same time. For now I would focus on the mining, later on the micro-economy.
To get things more going you could think of adding a mining button to articles online like DIgg does. This could direct the user to the game after which he can start with that article.
I agree with the comment above. The economy part might be a bit to difficult to do now. It will make the game too complex, and in my opinion, it will not keep the users interested. I even think the mining part will be difficult to implement. See how far you get and implement and test the other part if there is time left. I would not give it priority.
ReplyDeleteThe mining game has more promise. Since most people on the internet (or facebook) are there out of boredom, reading news by means of playing a game might not be a bad idea. If you look at farmville, it has no intellectual value whatsoever , but it works. Because people are bored. So I think your app can have the same use for people: Bringing news in a fun way, a great and educational passtime.
It seems the team has an artist with them. The drawings were great! It has a cartoony style which can give the whole experience a funny side. If you can use those kind of drawings in the app, it will be very nice to look at!
Greetings, team chili peppers
I think this idea could really work although I understand the comments made above too. The focus is placed on playing the game instead of discovering news but that does not necessarily need to be a problem. Much depends on which kind of articles you want to offer. Gossip and news with a more 'anecdote' style might be better option to attract people who are more into playing a game.
ReplyDeleteWe don't really see a connection between mining and news (unless you are digging up "old" news).
ReplyDeleteTaking this concept of gathering articles into a reporter setting might make more sense to us.
~Team MusiCHI
What we(=team MusiCHI) are actually trying to say is the following:
ReplyDeleteYou shouldn't make it too hard for the users to discover new (or interesting) news articles. You're saying a user first have to dig into the surface, but how long will it take before the user is able to discover articles he's interested in? When I read the newspaper I read the titles and when an articles seems interesting I start to read it. I don't know if I want to go through a series of articles I'm not interested in before I can read the articles I want to read.
I think the auction system on the other hand could really work. It will make it possible for the users to buy and sell interesting articles.
As said before it is probably better if you first concentrate on the mining part of your game.
This is a very nice idea, and can be attractive for everyone. But we think you should focus on the mining as a primary concept and should take precaution measures, so that it doesn't become too complicated.
ReplyDeleteWe had some remarks too:
- If you start mining, and the mines never reset, you'll be able to mine infintely deep. Ain't this a problem?
- We are concerned the concept of mining for easy mines at first and later for difficult once, will scare people away. If someone comes on the application to check the news and is only possible to read some gossip, he will leave fast.
- Another concern we had, is the economy. The aim of the social news app must remain to give people the news and with the whole economy behind it, it might become too complicated for people to get the news.
To finish with a remark on the other idea: As you said, this doesn't add anything new or innovative in the market. So you might as well go without.
Team SachiniNews
Sounds like a fun game.
ReplyDeleteI do a few questions and remarks though.
Would each article be unique or would you allow for multiple instances of each article in the mines. The rarer articles are the more it will promote trading, but would make it hard to let players read an decent amount news a day.
One idea is to, when you have just minde an article, you can either read it, or save it for trading. So you can't trade articles after you have read them.
Another is to indeed let players mine old news. IIRC the New York times has an archive of news from the past century. This would of course remove the current events character of the game, but might give you a much bigger and rarer database to source articles from. Plus it can never harm for players to learn about history of the past century.
I am a bit lost regarding the connection between the mining part and the auction part... Would it not make more sense to focus on just one of the two for now?
ReplyDeleteThe idea of some kind of simple economy does make sense to me: maybe players can dig up a story and then get points when others read it?
Please do make sure that you consolidate the ideas into a concrete and clear proposal before the next class session on March 8!