Communify Me! 80 Ways to Add Community Features to Games
Video games continue their trajectory towards increased complexity. We’ve watched the jump from 2D sprites, to rendered 3D objects, to next-gen shaders and high polygon models. We’ve seen games go from multiplayer on the same machine, to multiplayer over a modem, to entire server farms hosting persistent games millions of users strong. In the rush to improve the most surface aspect of games — the graphics — other important aspects like building community have been ignored.
Mario sits pretty in the third dimension — the community dimension — in this community created fan art piece
Community is the latest trend and buzzword to be sure, but an ironic one in that the community features we’re seeing now could have been present in games long ago (and many were, but were ahead of their time). In the same way that 3D graphics don’t merely escalate 2D graphics but add a dimension to them, adding community to games doesn’t merely escalate a multiplayer game but adds a new dimension to them. This blog post is not a theoretical one however, and will help give you ways to “communify” your game, offering you both practical tips and high-concept ideas. Though we ourselves have built a game community via The Great Games Experiment, and are now building a game portal with community features via InstantAction, these tips can be used by any developer for any platform. Use these tips to add the extra dimension of community to your game!
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