Yearly Design ~ The Bribe System

[Judge Sam]

$$$ ON BRIBERY $$$

I wanted to write up a design post summarizing the main draw / event of Spies 8: The Bribe. In short, I think the bribery idea had potential, but I think my execution was only moderately well done. I think I underestimated how much people would be attached to the game. Plus my limited funds made it hard to offer take-able bribes, as $10 just isn't all that much anymore! In retrospect, I should have realized this, as people on reality shows are famous for declining multiple thousand dollar bribes, even if their elimination might be imminent.


Where to start? How about August 2009, when Spies 7 + Spies 8 were made simultaneously. Spies 8 was done first, as the "earn your vote" twist + bribery action was decided on right away. It had to wait though, as Spies 6 had a voting-shift theme which would have been too similar to this. So for the first month I started developing the bribe twist, wrote down some initial cool ideas, and thought "I need some time to mull this over, I'll refine these later." Spies 7 was coming up and had to be produced first.


So when I got back to Spies 8 even all that time hadn't helped advance the bribe twist. It was probably one of the most intense development-wise twists I have ever done. It's really like 7-twists in one, as each bribe needs to be interesting, balanced, and possible to go both ways.* Times that by seven. Then, as a whole, the bribes have to be given to a wide range of different players, have to be spread out evenly throughout the game (some bribes are only exciting at certain points in the game), and also as a whole, fit in my budget. Times that by seven again.


To the bribe system! Looking at my development notebook, it should be "6-10 bribes of different types. Incorporated into a role?" I thought maybe a role could make bribes (with my money), but that turned out to be not as cool as me setting them up.

Here's my list!

Who Bribes Who
Money range - time period done
Description.
Comments:

Spies bribe Citizen
$10-$20 mid-game
Citizen gets money if they give the Spies a weak or moderate power, such as watcher, roleblocker, dead role, switcher. Made public.
Comments: This would have to be a very very weak power to be accepted in retrospect lol. I think I forgot to add in the shame factor in my mental calculations haha.

Host bribes Players
$1-$25 mid-game
Bribe everyone to leave.
Comments: Best. twist. ever. hahaha. Loved every second of it. Super sad that my webcam didn't work and it's lost forever!! ;_;


Citizen bribes Spies
$1-$5
A Citizen bribes a Spy to vote for another Spy.
Comment: The idea was that I would make a post in the Spy HQ with a "bounty." The bounty would be if you vote for another Spy, I'll give you the money. I think this is one I should have done!


Spies bribe Citizen
$5-$10 mid-game
Spies bribe citizen to give up their vote to the Spies.
Comments: I did this except w/out the Spies getting the vote, which Dane still did not accept. Should he have? I *think* some people post game said they would have taken it. (It was $7.50)


Host bribes Role-Holder
$2-$10 early
Host offers role-holder $$ to reveal their role to a random person.
Comments: I kinda like this one. It could be beneficial... or really bad, depending lol. A lot of variety. Maybe I should have used it!


Targeted Cit bribes Spy
$1-$5
A cit about to be Imprisoned bribes Spies to pick someone else.
Comments: I thought about this one a lot. It's kind of juicy. I love the concept. But which Spy would get the cash?? That's what stopped me from doing it, as I couldn't pay out every Spy I don't have that kinda money. -_-


Spies bribe Cit
$1-$5
Spies bribe a Citizen to create a fake case on someone of their choice... or they bribe a Citizen not to post a case.
Comments: This has cool flavor, in that government Spies are bribing someone to stay quiet, or to fool their friends. But in reality, all this does is 'confirm' to a cit that they are right about their suspect, or 'clear' someone else. Maybe it would have worked, but probably not.


Those were the specific bribes. As a whole, I was kind of iffy on the whole thing altogether. I was thinking about throwing it out last minute. First, money could = host drama. There could be some unforeseen situation where someone thinks they are owed $$$ and I'm a bitch because I didn't give it to them. Second, it was expensive lol. Third, I was worried about attracting only people to the game who cared about money and not the game.

Thankfully none of those things came out to be true, but none of the positive things really came out to be true either lol. It was supposed to be a huge advertising draw + start in-game drama... neither of which I think it really did that much. I'm glad I did it because I love trying new things, go big or go home, but in the end it really didn't have that much of an effect on the game.


Finally, I had an idea which I was going to do for the game but it got lost in the hustle + bustle. I was busy at the time and the game was busy at the time and I couldn't find a way to make it work right. It was the "mini-bribe week. Basically I would offer people a buck or two to do funny, silly things. Fictional examples:

• Two bucks to flirt with Person X
  
• I'll give you a hamburger if you tell people you peed your pants at the last Exile.

Basically silly little things. I wasn't smart enough to think up funny enough in-joke things under the time pressure. Plus turns out it's hard to deliver small amounts of money through the internet, and it's what like 45 cents a stamp now? Also I seriously looked into delivering a hamburger to someone, as I think that's fucking hilarious, but turns out it couldn't work.


So that's the bribe system. A little underwhelming, but unique I think. I'd much rather have twists be underwhelming than overwhelming, as plain ole Spies on it's own is good enough. =) Not sure if I would do it again in an online mafia setting. I could definitely see me doing it as a one-off in another game though.


I enjoyed writing up this design post, looking through my design notebook, looking through Spies 8 and 7, and looking back at those games. I wrote a lot of stuff I forgot I did which summarized a lot of things which was fun to re-read. I know maybe one or two people will read this but I'm writing it for myself years down the road when I look back at this thing and want to remember how it went!

ADDENDUM

Actual Bribe Summary:

Tue Jun 22nd ~ Day 07 : Spies offer $7.50 each to two citizens with roles, if either accepts, they will not be revealed as citizens to each other.
Wed Jun 30th ~ Day 13 : Spies offer $5.00 to Dane to not cast a vote. Dane declines.
Sat Jul 17th ~ Day 27 : Cinnamyn offered $10.00 to give the Spies a roleblocker role. Cinnamyn declined.
Wed Jul 21st ~ Day 31 : Massive bribe offered for someone to quit the game. Allan Bribed for $33.88.



Sidenote: Did I tell people this? At one point in Spies 8 design, everybody was going to play as a real life person from a State Senate. I assign you an actual picture + profile of a person from say, the Tennessee State Senate. I found like 6 states who had the # of senators equal to about the # of people I wanted in the game. If I recall correctly, the Tennessee Senate at the time had some REALLY interesting character bios hahaha. But overall it was still 75% boring old white men w/ no personality, so unfortunately I had to ditch that idea.


Footnote: Unused idea: Triple Imprisonment, but a citizen chooses one to save! (thus identifying them as a citizen publicly). The Spies get to Imprison an extra person, but at their expense, someone is identified as a cit.

Endnote: I forgot how amazing this game was!! Definitely gone up in my mind since I last looked at it. Some really cool moments + characters.

"It's really like 7-twists in one, as each bribe needs to be interesting and possible to go both ways.*"
*Remember the "Earn Your Vote Back" twist, which had 17 differently designed games to make? Or Challenge 9: Power Puzzle Race which had seven completely different puzzles for one challenge? Clearly I have a problem when it comes to this lol.