e.sport – tournament & show – page 4
Seen from France and my comedy English, it’s a nice title, which doesn’t mean much, except that it mixes the two titles, that of the video game and that of the show.
I’m in the process of preparing the structures – and so I’ve made some double-entry tables.
I love my double-entry boards – I’m not sharing them with you, I think only I love them and only I can be as excited as a flea, to say: look, look, it’s soooo great. The reaction has always been: yes yes, move on , move on. So I move.
The first table allows me to connect the different characters (my 12 characters) to each other: identify for each one their target character 1, then secondary target 2; and who they are prey 1 and secondary prey 2. This allows me to identify the necessary interactions that will take place between the teams.
The second table is about the characters’ skills and abilities – each ability goes from level 1 to level 12, and this will allow me to quickly identify which character will have which abilities, and at which level.
To make it more fun, of course, each character will have a skill that at first glance has nothing to do with his general character. We’re not in real life, I don’t care about the psychological consistency of these characters.
To make the game more dynamic, I have avoided pure interaction between one team and another. That means ? That means that team A will target team B, which targets team F, wich targets team J and so on.
So team B will have to both take care of its target F and counter the attacks of team A, and so on…
The secondary targets will allow players – and this will be individual players, to improve their skills – you know, but yes you know, improving your skills is one of the biggest motivations for players in video games – you can spend hours and hours improving your skills.
So our future competitors will have ways to improve their skills.
Since I’m not reinventing Skyrim, I’m going to save us from spending three hours hitting a Grey Beard from behind, or casting healing spells on your horse, or running crouched against a wall, or making daggers – all very important actions to perform in order to finally have a badass character with high abilities in every skill area.
However, since I’ve planned a Stage 2 that will allow players to create and train their teams, this stage will be just the right time to improve skills.
This is where I place what I’ve called “secondary quests” / side quests – they’re not too important, they’ll allow to understand the mechanics of the game without revealing the main targets – and they’ll have the big advantage of allowing everyone to develop their character.
This phase of the game will be important, both to really choose your favorite character and then to improve it.
So this phase 2 – the one that the unselected players will be able to play in white – and – I want it – will be able to play with the selected players – will be a training phase that will have to last a long time.
This phase will be presented – I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again and again, as a beta phase also on our part – since the “game” consists in creating a new tournament show every year, rather than doing something like: we’re too strong, we’ll make 4 versions of the game with a snap of our fingers – which could only fall on our noses badly – we’ll take advantage of all the experiences and feedback from all the players to improve the gameplay and adjust the characters.
For players who have chosen to keep their favorite Borderlands character, this will be the opportunity to adapt that character to the quests offered by the game. For players who will have chosen to play the character of the play, this will be the opportunity to test it as much as possible.
As this is the character that is not allowed to die during the tournament, it will have to be played by the best of the team – so it will be tried I think by several members of the team. You have to give time to determine that as well.
To put a little bit of vitamins and pep into this story, to keep the hand and to have time in front of us – I think it will be wise to offer, in phase 2, sketches of our characters – you know, like the ones used in Super Hot – these characters will be visually unveiled in phase 3 and all the players will be able to play them after phase 3, the selected ones and the others.
Warning here: this will not be done by Altair – since these game phases – and thus this influx of players – will be done in the video game that will be the one of e.sport.
What we, Altair, will have to do is to give the characters – their appearances – their abilities; and especially the narrative frames – in order to give the complete mechanics of the tournament and its link with the show.
What I’m looking for here are the mechanics for this tournament-show, and reusable general mechanics.
So, by proposing to put our characters in draft form in phase 2, we’re proposing a kind of visual mark that will be specific to these weird shows – if it creates expectations among players, if the big “trick” is to try to guess the real appearances, to hack the servers to find out before the others, etc., then it will have worked.
Okay, that’s a very, very, very secondary point.
So here’s where I am: a Phase 1 that works like a trailer, and will be designed to select 60 official players – the 60 that will participate in Phases 2 and 3.
Phase 1 presents the game show, it presents in a totally random way all the different possible quests and must be designed really like a trailer, i.e. to give a taste of: again. Yes, yes, I’m not leaving that out – this is for the end.
Phase 2 allows the selected players to choose their team, their character in the team and to improve this character in order to achieve the next tournament phase in the best possible way. In this phase 2, players will realize what I’m designing as side quests.
Phase 3 is the first big tournament phase, the main quests to eliminate 8 of the 12 teams.
Phase 4 is the final phase, with the major quest common to the 4 teams that have been selected.
Are you in? Well…
..so, on our side, it looks like this:
Build 3 levels of quests
* The major quest, the one that is done on the day of the show, which concerns only the 4 best teams.
* The main quest, one for each of the 12 selected teams, which allows them to achieve their goals and eliminate their competitors.
* The secondary quests: for the 60 selected players – who have time to structure their team, improve their characters and train.
& a totally dumb mix of the various secondary and main quests, dumb yes but made to impress and make you want to be in, to determine the 60 selected players. – dumb, you see, because the theme, here, is The Fool.
Are you all right, do you see the trick?
If you ever think that it’s really very appealing, but not really feasible, because I’m not talking about the artists and…. they’ll be there,
I will answer you this: in Perpignan, in this theatre of a city that nobody knows except maybe rugby fans – we have every year (well…. in normal times) troupes of artists “in residence of creation”: this means that they are in our theatre – all of them, even the sound/light/machinery technicians – and that they invent their next show, over a period of one to four weeks.
These are shows that our theatre co-produces and that are presented on our stage at the end of the season – or the following season … of course.
However, if you look at the principle, these shows planned for e.sport do not exist at all and will have to be created. There will normally be an existing base – like Gorky’s play here – but this base will necessarily be adapted to the game.
And so the artists and technicians will come in creation residency for 3 to 4 weeks – which will allow to have all the desired motion capture shots – and if it takes more than 4 weeks, which is here the “classical” time for a “big” live show production (we are not in the cinema in live show, there is much less money for the production), there will be more than 4 weeks, so that we can produce this virtual part and set the different possible ends according to the results of the players.
As I said: Altair is also – above all – a production company for entertainment content that doesn’t exist.
Here is a simple example of content that could be produced.
I have noted the articles by page numbers, this will simplify the whole, which I have just grouped under a specific tab.
Featured Image : Skyrim – Perk trees – Bethesda. – each light point/star corresponds to an improvement of your character’s level… obviously, there are several “skill trees”.
In the news : I’ve given myself a two-month horizon – because in about two months, I’ll have time to rethink everything.
So I’ll take advantage of this time to put all those little things I’ve been talking about for months and months in order to make the structures of Altair clear and visible.
And then? what do the English say? wait & see – then I’ll try again the Altair – currently “Mission failed”.
ALTAIR - Concepts 