Telling the story: Developing your own Rhetoric

In my initial research into just what has to go into the structure of game design, I was pointed in the direction of Ian Bogost, Author of Persuasive Games and Unit Operations. In Persuasive Games, Bogost really pushes the idea that you have the obligation as a game developer to tell a story. What the story is, however, is up to you to decide; Be it be a political, advertising, or educational. Games, being interactive and of immediate gratification in nature, present a unique opportunity to both support and create change in social and cultural thinking.


So, just what was going to be MY rhetoric that I want to present to the end user?


After taking a critical look at the "turn based genre", with games such as Civ IV being my main area of focus, I found three key areas I wanted to explore a new and unique rhetoric:


"TIME"
Even in the CIV series, time plays a critical role. You grow over time, yet there has never been a representation that has carried "weight" in the game world. I hope to change this by actually showing the importance of time and relationships presented by time, such as logistics and information. One early example of this theory is the removal of a traditional fog of war. Instead of the standard "blacked out" areas beyond of your area of view, you may have a general knowledge of what is there, only since information takes time to travel, this leads to delayed map representation for your nation.


"MANAGEMENT" 
I feel like this is a key departure from the so called "norm" of the turn based genre, and somewhere I can easily turn the standard idea on its head. Most games have developed a concept of a “god” complex. Every game can essentially be boiled down to the same concept of the player having an omni-control over every aspect of your “sphere of influence” allowing you complete and total micromanagement. You can see this in everything from Civilization to Black and White to even RTS games like Starcraft or Command and Conquer. 


The experiment I wish to explore is why cant one just create the illusion of complete control? As a companion concept (and possibly fitting as a subrole to representation of time) I want to present the user to the idea of the removal of complete control, creating a reactionary style of gameplay. No ruler has the time, bandwidth, or desire to manage every aspect of a nation and so the player will be forced to instead implement general over-reaching policy and guidelines to help grow and lead a nation. I will spend amply time explaining this in depth later on when I discuss gameplay mechanics.


"SOCIAL"
As I mentioned in my previous post, the social aspect is important to not only to the platform, but currently to games in general. With games like Farmville on Facebook drawing in millions of players a day, it is easy to see people wish to play something with a sense of community interaction. I have some unique theories (again to be discussed in depth in a subsequent post) which have never been done before, yet create an awareness that even though you may be playing a multiplayer game against only so many people, you feel like your decisions carry weight to the game universe.


Using this newly formed rhetoric for the turn based gameplay, I hope to be able to create something new, innovative, and perhaps just a smidgen educational.


Now I just have to finalize the feature set...