17th
Man-Of-War Description
Man-of-War
A web space for exploring enacting labor relations in a realtime gaming environment.
Man-of-War will use PHP and a 2-d Ruby XML-RPC system to allow self-identified laborers and consumers to interact in role-playing scenarios while also potentially paying one another.
Here we see the game from the perspective of the consumer, who can hire peasants and ask them to perform tasks. Any user can select any other to find out about them - users are prompted but not required to enter their names, locations, and other personal information.
Audience
Users will be able to chat in realtime with speech bubbles, as well as to leave signs to present their opinions more permanently. The game will allow for basic actions such as mining gold, harvesting wood, and building farms.
While consumers will not have an avatar, laborers/producers will be represented by a generic “peasant” sprite. Scenes will have limited boundaries, so much of the map can be seen in a single screen. This will make it difficult for users to avoid interacting with one another.
Interface
Scenarios, or vignettes, will be presented as tiles on a larger map, as well as in a list format. Those creating new vignettes will be prompted to describe the rules of their town or community, and to set an hourly wage for peasants to be hired at. They will also be able to rearrange the map with a simple map editor.
Consumers will be prompted to add money to their account - this will be paid for via PayPal or Google Checkout (not all countries have e-payment systems, however) and pay will be distributed to laborers who sign up via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk system.
Roles
Players can choose to be peasants or lords, consumers or producers, based on their reading of the rules of each vignette and the posted hourly wage. Since each vignette can have only one consumer/lord, each time someone signs up to be a lord, a new vignette is created, ready to be populated with peasants.
Discussion will be an important part of this game, so each time a game is played, comments will be tracked and identified with that specific performance.
