Maintaining Event Momentum With IBGAs

Everyone gets that addiction after a good event. They send a lot of IG emails. They post on IG forums. They go through tags. They figure out what skills they'll get next.

They're totally hooked from the event momentum.

But the problem is that they can only do so much in between events before they lose interest. That's when we see the lulls in forum activity or lacking responses to IG emails.

But what if you could cultivate that momentum year round?

You see, we've always had a strange relationship with IBGAs. The problem is that there's only so much that can be done between events. Maybe this is due to lack of time for the plot team to get back with people. Maybe it's just that the players run out of activities that can realistically be done off-board.

But what if your IBGAs were semi-automated? What if you gave the players a field in which they could trade, politic, and interact with others without involving plot. And what if you could link that activity back into events?

Well, I bet you'd have a perfect storm of enthusiasm for your game.

Let's take a look at games like Darkon*. In that game, there is a whole world involving grids that people fight over. And they can do interactions with those grids outside of the game. I love the idea.

The real difficulty is balance. You need to make sure that the system has some effect on the event, but you don't want it to have more impact than actions performed at the event.

So what's the solution? Universal benefits.

Create a goal that the players need to work together to obtain. In my mind, it would look something like this web-browser game Pardus** that I played back in the day. As long as the players can pool together enough resources, an effect happens that is beneficial to everyone at the event. Maybe all craftsman can make twice as many items as normal. Maybe everyone trains for free. Maybe a certain module area is unlocked, where players can get the phat lootz. Any of those would work.

And to keep them involved, make it so that interactions can happen monthly, and benefits can stock up if, say, you don't have another event for 3 months.

The big downside is that you need to find a way to involve everyone, and to do that probably requires some considerable work - not just in design, but also in programming.

But it would be awesome, wouldn't it?

Edit: I realize I probably should have used links for Darkon and Pardus.

*Darkon - http://www.darkon.org/ or YouTube Thursday: Darkon
**Pardus - http://www.pardus.at