The Wikigamers have reached a crossroads. Bolstered by the completion of Chapter One (yes, you can play it from start to finish now! Please do help though by reporting any bugs you may find here), but daunted by the mountains of Chapters 2-5 looming ahead, they have become self-reflective, considering whether to press on or call it a day. This experiment started as an exercise in collective creativity - if other forms of media could develop entertainment output through Web 2.0, why not games? In the end, a few enthusiastic and dedicated gamesbloggers pushed the process forward and have learned something along the way. For DennisChow's excellent reflection of independent game development through the wiki medium, look here and learn.
In sum:
The free-thinking, Wisdom of Crowds, collective action ideal has metamorphosed into a kind of hierarchy with project managers creating the skeletons and scaffolding for the story and - certainly by the end - the masses (gamesbloggers) contributing significantly, but in dribs and drabs:
I suggest that before we start work on actually designing ChapterTwo, we need to collectively come up with a synopsis for it that takes us (roughly) from start to finish. If the onemillionpenguins guys can come up with a full novel, I think we can come up with a brief chapter synopsis. Then we sketch a rough map, making gradual alterations to it as we come up with more puzzles and ideas.
I think that writing up a decent chapter synopsis would probably alleviate a lot of the confusion that arose at around the week 6 stage, which was extremely damaging to not only the coherency and quality of the plot, but also the enthusiasm for the project. Another advantage of this is that the synopsis page would become a big focal point of the project, no longer would we have to ask willing contributors to wade through the organized chaos of the Wiki in order to help.
We are hugely grateful for the contributions which the gamesbloggers have made based upon the requests of the designers, and the outpouring of creativity - in bite-sized chunks rather than big dreams - has produced some of the funniest (and most useful) content to date.
I am eager to see how our protagonist gets on over the next few chapters and would like to press on, but recognise the manpower required to get through. I vote the Wikigamers continue towards text adventure nirvana according to the new approach outlined by Dennis and seconded by PhilWal on this page, where the developers create the outline amongst themselves and ask for simple content contributions every week via these blog posts. We've come so far; it'd be a real shame to leave our clueless main character stuck on the train to the unnamed Village2!
In the meantime, three cheers for WikiGame team for creating a playable product in record time.
