Post by Mia Winters on Aug 26, 2023 3:57:59 GMT
How Survivor: Village was born.
I'm sure you all are wondering the really, truly, deeply question "how in the hell did you come up with this game?". To which the simple answer is, this game is the manifestation of my entire journey from start to finish on MafiaScum.
What does that mean exactly?
Well, let's break it down.
To date I have played 7 anonymous survivor games on MafiaScum. Survivor: Abridged, Survivor: Nexus, Ned's Declassified School Survivor, Survivor: Reverse The Curse, Survivor: Equestria, Survivor: Wes Anderson and Survivor: Three Houses. In Survivor: Abriged, I played Android 18, the vengeful android dubbed Cersei Lannister after spending the whole game plotting revenge for someone I knew for one round. In Survivor: Nexus, I was the party girl Valla who got too social for her own damn good. In School Survivor, I played the somewhat bitchy, cliquey, whiney teenage high school girl Aria Montgomery. In Survivor: Reverse The Curse I played strategic mastermind & revamped version of Tracer. In Survivor: Equestria, I played...the very very special but misunderstood poniboi Flim. In Survivor: Wes Anderson, I played devious villain yet still cute and cuddly doggo Oracle. And finally in Three Houses, I played the, can't quite get the English Language foreign exchange student, Petra.
Why am I recapping all of this?
Because this has been the last 7 years of my life. I have put hundreds of thousands of hours into crafting the characters I play and investing in the games I play in. They have consumed my life for years and although that may seem bad, this has been my home. MafiaScum gave me the survivor wings to fly and it's meant so much to me. So what better way to commemorate my time here on MafiaScum than by crafting a game born of my journey here?
This isn't to say other influences didn't come into play, I definitely have taken concepts from offsite ORGs and applied them here. In addition, my time hosting Hybrid: Hunger Games, Survivor: Power vs Courage vs Wisdom, Survivor: Flash Mob and a variety of other games including The Weakest Link series have all helped form who I am as not only a player, but the host of this game.
However, when I came into this game and began to design it, I started intricately thinking about how my prior games shaped me into the player and host I am today.
The most obvious underlying structure of this game centers around the Gun twist. This was heavily influenced by Survivor: Reverse The Curse, which was the first game I won on MafiaScum. It solidified that I had what it took to play with the big dogs on this site and leave an impression and name for myself. I also loved the concept of "everyone gets an idol...but there are unique rules that go into how these idols work and interact with each other." I definitely took the skeletal structure of that and played around with it in crafting the guns for this game.
I didn't want to just put out a carbon copy of Reverse The Curse, I wanted to try new stuff with it. I also didn't want the Guns to ever be so powerful that they outweighed other items in the game, so I began to toy around with the idea of "what if the Guns were different every phase, and what does that mean for the balance of strategy?" I sort of took inspiration from Survivor: Abridged when doing this design, because a major component was the VPL or Vote Power Level system where people could opt to increase the strength of their vote, or pick some sort of itemy advantage each time. In that sense I wanted an item or mechanic that changed over time depending on how long it was held onto, not always for the better. This was because I hated the idea that something could be so powerful that it would outweigh all other items in play. So instead I opted to be like "well rather than negating two votes, what if we made a vote blocker that WOULD last through a revote if it comes up?" In that sense I wanted to create something that would force people to re-evaluate how they were treating the very advantage they were holding from phase to phase and change their strategy to match the newness of the item they held. I would say for the most part it played out pretty well! I do think people didn't use them defensively enough, but perhaps there was a way I could have incentivized that better somehow.
So now that I had an idea for a unique mechanic for this game, I had to think, what design supports this?
That's when the meat of this game began to lay itself out. I felt particularly inspired with the starting number of 28 players because I wanted 4 tribes of 7 (you notice 7 representing 7 years on MS). I believe a similar number was done for School Survivor, although I think there were fewer starting tribes. I took some minor inspiration from that game for this.
Ideally I always wanted to break this game out into 4 phases, 3 pre merge phases and then the merge phase. In that sense this structure follows many of the games I had previously played such as Nexus, Three houses, and Equestria. I liked the idea of having the gun evolve over time to something different, not necessarily "better".
So then how would we get from 28 to the merge number of 13? I stewed over this for awhile until a non MS ORG I played introduced the concept of an Outcast Twist where people voted out weren't necessarily out of the game itself. This reminded me, in spirit, of the twist in Nexus where people voted out were voted onto another tribe. I used this other non MS ORG twist and adapted it using the mechanic from the Nexus twist to form the Outcast Twist this game.
I have been a strong proponent of letting people, specifically newbies, have time to learn and grow from their experiences and adapt. With how infrequent MafiaScum games run these days, I wanted to provide a game that fostered learning and adaptability. The Outcast twist was therefore the ideal solution to foster that environment whilst also helping me start to plan out how to get from 28 to 13.
I wanted to try to make the phases as balanced as possible. Meaning I wanted roughly 3-4 rounds per phase in order to give people time to adapt to their surroundings. This then meant I needed to shake up the status quo of starting tribes immediately to throw people into the world I was trying to create.
So instead of 4 tribes of 7, how could I get to instead 5 tribes? The thought of uneven tribe splits had been in my head for awhile, and I thought, why not test it out now with the Outcast twist? I can't think of a specific game on MafiaScum that inspired this, but the idea of having uneven tribes excited me.
This lead to starting tribes of 7, 6, 5, 5, 5 which kickstarted the rest of the design as we know it. Double Tribals were very key in these early stages as I knew if we didn't do something to pick up that pace, the Outcast Twist was gonna make the game stretch on longer than need be. I knew even with doubles that it would still last longer than the normal game.
Some of the advantages this game were semi inspired by past games:
Immune at rocks was directly taken from RTC.
Nullifier was taken from a number of past games that had run but modified due to the gun twist.
Steal an Item was taken from Power vs Courage vs Wisdom. I thought it added the perfect touch of drama in both games I've used it in so far.
A number of challenges this game were definitely taken/inspired by past games I've played in.
Input/Output was from School Survivor.
Scavenger Hunt has been in a number of games but specifically "Flag of Nepal" was from School Survivor.
"A Stuffed Turtle" in the scavenger hunt was a reference to Nonary Games: Ambidex Panic that I played which was hosted by our own Maroo, Tanis.
There were similarities between Pictionary and the Drawing Challenge from Hybrid Hunger Games.
Codenames has been a staple in games, but specifically I was inspired by Three Houses to run it the way we did this time.
Colors was ripped off from Equestria, though I have my own thoughts on this challenge now that I've seen how it can be broken.
Logic Puzzles have been prevalent in MS, but specifically I ran this similarly to how it was run in Hybrid Hunger Games.
Geoguessr was another challenge run in Hybrid Hunger games.
The backup Rebus challenge was inspired by Reverse The Curse although the integration was much different.
Although not a challenge, the link in my MS profile was a leftover "Golden Link" hunt from a Weakest Link game and was reincorporated into the idol hunt that Billie solved.
And finally I haven't touched much on it, but how did Wes Anderson factor into this game? Well a couple things really and truly inspired parts of this game. Primarily the FTC format. But not in the way you think. In that game, finalists were separated, jurors were separated, and it was very compartmentalized. And although I had strong feelings about it, there was such a love of how experimental it was, that I decided to apply the exact reverse here and did a "what if everyone can talk to each other" spin on it? I didn't have any idea how it would play out, and I had no specific goal other than to say "let's try this exact opposite thing and see how it plays out." What I loved about Wes Anderson is just how unique things were and I was very inspired to try my own unique things here as a result.
So much of this game represents the stumbles of being voted out, of using twists to your advantage, adapting in an ever changing environment, and really tapping into your strategic brain. This game feels like my evolution as a player from being messy and making something of that mess and channeling it into my strategic side which has bled into my social game. There's so much I feel about this game in my core and who I am as a player, a host and a person that I was thrilled it didn't die.
Everything from start to finish has felt like an extension of me and I couldn't have asked for a game design to be more intricately aligned with who I am and what I believe in as a person. It is the most passionate I've ever been about a project I have put on MS and I was so scared it wasn't going to see the light of day for so long that it's almost shocking to be near the end and seeing just how well it all played out.
This game design is me. There are people who don't like how I play, there are people who won't like the design of this game. And I've come to terms with that over the years and accepted it as a part of who I am. I'm an unorthodox player and I love hosting unorthodox games that challenge people to be strategic and better versions of themselves. Those who do get me, my play style, and my design style I thank so much because it means you understand me. This game in particular.
Much like Rose is the child of Mia, this game feels like my child. I spent so long crafting it and designing it in just a way that represents me. This sounds weird to phrase it like this, but given the nights of sleep I lost over this game, the tears I cried, the laughter it brought me, and the amount of times it surprised me, I am so so thankful that this game got to play out. I'm so glad everything was done just the way it was because it's the vision I had for it when I began.
No host is going to host like me, and choices made by others will be different than the choices that I make. This was most apparent to me in the spec lounge and has been apparent to me since I started hosting. People love to criticize and say how they'd do something better or different or don't like the choices I make, to that I say "Then do it better." I am highly experimental as a host and not every choice I make is going to be perfect. But the games I put out there make people talk, they make people think, and that to me is the beauty in design. It's an art form that goes unappreciated. And people may tell you that who you are and what you do isn't valid, but block out those who critique and trust your gut, because what you do and what you design are valid.
If you are someone who says "I would make different choices than Malkon did" then design games! I triple doggy dare you, because MS needs more creativity and your ideas I'm sure are great! I want to see them and I'm sure we all do.
But I'm proud of my design. I'm proud it wasn't perfect, and it was beautiful in all of it's imperfect ways. And in that sense, this is my child and I couldn't be fucking prouder of it's design and how it represents me as a person.
Thank you for choosing to experience this game I designed. I can't think of a better game to bookend my LSG hosting with. This game was better than I hoped for and was the best and worst parts of myself and I'm so fucking happy with how it all played out <3
I'm sure you all are wondering the really, truly, deeply question "how in the hell did you come up with this game?". To which the simple answer is, this game is the manifestation of my entire journey from start to finish on MafiaScum.
What does that mean exactly?
Well, let's break it down.
To date I have played 7 anonymous survivor games on MafiaScum. Survivor: Abridged, Survivor: Nexus, Ned's Declassified School Survivor, Survivor: Reverse The Curse, Survivor: Equestria, Survivor: Wes Anderson and Survivor: Three Houses. In Survivor: Abriged, I played Android 18, the vengeful android dubbed Cersei Lannister after spending the whole game plotting revenge for someone I knew for one round. In Survivor: Nexus, I was the party girl Valla who got too social for her own damn good. In School Survivor, I played the somewhat bitchy, cliquey, whiney teenage high school girl Aria Montgomery. In Survivor: Reverse The Curse I played strategic mastermind & revamped version of Tracer. In Survivor: Equestria, I played...the very very special but misunderstood poniboi Flim. In Survivor: Wes Anderson, I played devious villain yet still cute and cuddly doggo Oracle. And finally in Three Houses, I played the, can't quite get the English Language foreign exchange student, Petra.
Why am I recapping all of this?
Because this has been the last 7 years of my life. I have put hundreds of thousands of hours into crafting the characters I play and investing in the games I play in. They have consumed my life for years and although that may seem bad, this has been my home. MafiaScum gave me the survivor wings to fly and it's meant so much to me. So what better way to commemorate my time here on MafiaScum than by crafting a game born of my journey here?
This isn't to say other influences didn't come into play, I definitely have taken concepts from offsite ORGs and applied them here. In addition, my time hosting Hybrid: Hunger Games, Survivor: Power vs Courage vs Wisdom, Survivor: Flash Mob and a variety of other games including The Weakest Link series have all helped form who I am as not only a player, but the host of this game.
However, when I came into this game and began to design it, I started intricately thinking about how my prior games shaped me into the player and host I am today.
The most obvious underlying structure of this game centers around the Gun twist. This was heavily influenced by Survivor: Reverse The Curse, which was the first game I won on MafiaScum. It solidified that I had what it took to play with the big dogs on this site and leave an impression and name for myself. I also loved the concept of "everyone gets an idol...but there are unique rules that go into how these idols work and interact with each other." I definitely took the skeletal structure of that and played around with it in crafting the guns for this game.
I didn't want to just put out a carbon copy of Reverse The Curse, I wanted to try new stuff with it. I also didn't want the Guns to ever be so powerful that they outweighed other items in the game, so I began to toy around with the idea of "what if the Guns were different every phase, and what does that mean for the balance of strategy?" I sort of took inspiration from Survivor: Abridged when doing this design, because a major component was the VPL or Vote Power Level system where people could opt to increase the strength of their vote, or pick some sort of itemy advantage each time. In that sense I wanted an item or mechanic that changed over time depending on how long it was held onto, not always for the better. This was because I hated the idea that something could be so powerful that it would outweigh all other items in play. So instead I opted to be like "well rather than negating two votes, what if we made a vote blocker that WOULD last through a revote if it comes up?" In that sense I wanted to create something that would force people to re-evaluate how they were treating the very advantage they were holding from phase to phase and change their strategy to match the newness of the item they held. I would say for the most part it played out pretty well! I do think people didn't use them defensively enough, but perhaps there was a way I could have incentivized that better somehow.
So now that I had an idea for a unique mechanic for this game, I had to think, what design supports this?
That's when the meat of this game began to lay itself out. I felt particularly inspired with the starting number of 28 players because I wanted 4 tribes of 7 (you notice 7 representing 7 years on MS). I believe a similar number was done for School Survivor, although I think there were fewer starting tribes. I took some minor inspiration from that game for this.
Ideally I always wanted to break this game out into 4 phases, 3 pre merge phases and then the merge phase. In that sense this structure follows many of the games I had previously played such as Nexus, Three houses, and Equestria. I liked the idea of having the gun evolve over time to something different, not necessarily "better".
So then how would we get from 28 to the merge number of 13? I stewed over this for awhile until a non MS ORG I played introduced the concept of an Outcast Twist where people voted out weren't necessarily out of the game itself. This reminded me, in spirit, of the twist in Nexus where people voted out were voted onto another tribe. I used this other non MS ORG twist and adapted it using the mechanic from the Nexus twist to form the Outcast Twist this game.
I have been a strong proponent of letting people, specifically newbies, have time to learn and grow from their experiences and adapt. With how infrequent MafiaScum games run these days, I wanted to provide a game that fostered learning and adaptability. The Outcast twist was therefore the ideal solution to foster that environment whilst also helping me start to plan out how to get from 28 to 13.
I wanted to try to make the phases as balanced as possible. Meaning I wanted roughly 3-4 rounds per phase in order to give people time to adapt to their surroundings. This then meant I needed to shake up the status quo of starting tribes immediately to throw people into the world I was trying to create.
So instead of 4 tribes of 7, how could I get to instead 5 tribes? The thought of uneven tribe splits had been in my head for awhile, and I thought, why not test it out now with the Outcast twist? I can't think of a specific game on MafiaScum that inspired this, but the idea of having uneven tribes excited me.
This lead to starting tribes of 7, 6, 5, 5, 5 which kickstarted the rest of the design as we know it. Double Tribals were very key in these early stages as I knew if we didn't do something to pick up that pace, the Outcast Twist was gonna make the game stretch on longer than need be. I knew even with doubles that it would still last longer than the normal game.
Some of the advantages this game were semi inspired by past games:
Immune at rocks was directly taken from RTC.
Nullifier was taken from a number of past games that had run but modified due to the gun twist.
Steal an Item was taken from Power vs Courage vs Wisdom. I thought it added the perfect touch of drama in both games I've used it in so far.
A number of challenges this game were definitely taken/inspired by past games I've played in.
Input/Output was from School Survivor.
Scavenger Hunt has been in a number of games but specifically "Flag of Nepal" was from School Survivor.
"A Stuffed Turtle" in the scavenger hunt was a reference to Nonary Games: Ambidex Panic that I played which was hosted by our own Maroo, Tanis.
There were similarities between Pictionary and the Drawing Challenge from Hybrid Hunger Games.
Codenames has been a staple in games, but specifically I was inspired by Three Houses to run it the way we did this time.
Colors was ripped off from Equestria, though I have my own thoughts on this challenge now that I've seen how it can be broken.
Logic Puzzles have been prevalent in MS, but specifically I ran this similarly to how it was run in Hybrid Hunger Games.
Geoguessr was another challenge run in Hybrid Hunger games.
The backup Rebus challenge was inspired by Reverse The Curse although the integration was much different.
Although not a challenge, the link in my MS profile was a leftover "Golden Link" hunt from a Weakest Link game and was reincorporated into the idol hunt that Billie solved.
And finally I haven't touched much on it, but how did Wes Anderson factor into this game? Well a couple things really and truly inspired parts of this game. Primarily the FTC format. But not in the way you think. In that game, finalists were separated, jurors were separated, and it was very compartmentalized. And although I had strong feelings about it, there was such a love of how experimental it was, that I decided to apply the exact reverse here and did a "what if everyone can talk to each other" spin on it? I didn't have any idea how it would play out, and I had no specific goal other than to say "let's try this exact opposite thing and see how it plays out." What I loved about Wes Anderson is just how unique things were and I was very inspired to try my own unique things here as a result.
So much of this game represents the stumbles of being voted out, of using twists to your advantage, adapting in an ever changing environment, and really tapping into your strategic brain. This game feels like my evolution as a player from being messy and making something of that mess and channeling it into my strategic side which has bled into my social game. There's so much I feel about this game in my core and who I am as a player, a host and a person that I was thrilled it didn't die.
Everything from start to finish has felt like an extension of me and I couldn't have asked for a game design to be more intricately aligned with who I am and what I believe in as a person. It is the most passionate I've ever been about a project I have put on MS and I was so scared it wasn't going to see the light of day for so long that it's almost shocking to be near the end and seeing just how well it all played out.
This game design is me. There are people who don't like how I play, there are people who won't like the design of this game. And I've come to terms with that over the years and accepted it as a part of who I am. I'm an unorthodox player and I love hosting unorthodox games that challenge people to be strategic and better versions of themselves. Those who do get me, my play style, and my design style I thank so much because it means you understand me. This game in particular.
Much like Rose is the child of Mia, this game feels like my child. I spent so long crafting it and designing it in just a way that represents me. This sounds weird to phrase it like this, but given the nights of sleep I lost over this game, the tears I cried, the laughter it brought me, and the amount of times it surprised me, I am so so thankful that this game got to play out. I'm so glad everything was done just the way it was because it's the vision I had for it when I began.
No host is going to host like me, and choices made by others will be different than the choices that I make. This was most apparent to me in the spec lounge and has been apparent to me since I started hosting. People love to criticize and say how they'd do something better or different or don't like the choices I make, to that I say "Then do it better." I am highly experimental as a host and not every choice I make is going to be perfect. But the games I put out there make people talk, they make people think, and that to me is the beauty in design. It's an art form that goes unappreciated. And people may tell you that who you are and what you do isn't valid, but block out those who critique and trust your gut, because what you do and what you design are valid.
If you are someone who says "I would make different choices than Malkon did" then design games! I triple doggy dare you, because MS needs more creativity and your ideas I'm sure are great! I want to see them and I'm sure we all do.
But I'm proud of my design. I'm proud it wasn't perfect, and it was beautiful in all of it's imperfect ways. And in that sense, this is my child and I couldn't be fucking prouder of it's design and how it represents me as a person.
Thank you for choosing to experience this game I designed. I can't think of a better game to bookend my LSG hosting with. This game was better than I hoped for and was the best and worst parts of myself and I'm so fucking happy with how it all played out <3