rules
12 aug 2015 12:33pm
accepted by both joe & tall
tbd
proposed rules by joe:
ownership:
from my past work on livvedom
i discovered that changing traditional rules can often simplify the game for everyone
one issue i spent a ton of time thinking about was ownership of i.p. or your creative work
the simplest rule i found was:
"no one owns anything they create"
when a game has no $ incentive
it can do this
strugglethru is not about selling stories
it's only about getting attention
getting others to explore your story
thus a majority of players should have no problem with this unusual ownership rule
thus anyone can copy, edit and reuse anything they come across in strugglethru
meaning others' story content including:
text
images & video
much as creative commons works
in the strugglethru app
i can explore your story
i can either link to your story (giving you credit)
or i can take components from your story and incorporate into my own story - either copying without edit or editing my own instance of what you created
no matter the rules, people are going to employ all possible options
so isn't it just easier & better to encourage creators to link to previously created content - indirectly paying homage (giving credit) to the creator from which they got their inspiration?
creativity limits:
will we limit anything any creator can do within our platform?
what i'm discovering is there will need to be some limits
to help prevent spamming
creating stories
tbd
creating communities
tbd
creating chapters
tbd
creating subchapters
tbd
creating story content
tbd
creating collaboration groups - numbers of creators of a story?
tbd
creating tbd
exploration limits:
so far i have found no reason to limit any persons time in exploring others' stories
story positioning:
players can position their stories almost anywhere they want
as long as spots are open
see the 100 limit rule
but the system is also allowed to move stories
especially inactive stories
the top level sphere is called 'all stories' or 'world' or something like this
the 2nd level includes at least one sphere with the name 'inactive'
here the system will place all stories that in time reach a 'inactivity milestone'
meaning the story has not been explored and it has not been actively developed in a while
we might also have a sphere called 'trending' at the 2nd level
this sphere would be odd limits to players
meaning only the system can position stories within this sphere
100 limit:
to keep explore/nav screens uncluttered
there will be a limit of 100 objects (communities & stories)
on any given screen view
global or scattered
this rule thus impacts the overall structure of the story world
a max of 4 combined object types
parent subcommunities
parent stories
standpoint subcommunities
standpoint stories
also the story view
a max of combined chapters and subchapters
these limits of 100 will sometimes force creators to create and position in unusual ways
e.g.
create multiple different connected stories vs. one big story
create a new subcommunity within a community they prefer to place their story
subcommunity creation:
a player is allowed to create a subcommunity almost any time
a subcommunity must contain at least one story
i changed this from the previous 2 story min - because of added complexity that the 2 story min created
therefore a creator cannot create a deeper level subcommunity until at least one other story - a 2nd story - has been added to the newly created subcommunity
this prevents people from creating lots of subcommunities
example
i create a new story with its minimum requirements to publish it
see story min requirements to publish
i want to place it in its own subcommunity of a particular parent community
as long as the 100 max rule is not already met for that parent standpoint view then i can
but if the 100 max already exists
then the only way i can create a new subcommunity at this spot
is to partner with at least one other story & form a subcommunity around the two stories
this maintains the 100 max rule
so in this case i must contact a target story creator and get permission to create the new subcommunity
this means we need a tool for doing this communication
the 'system' can create subcommunities anytime too
it can also move stories without permission
e.g.
it can move inactive stories to the 'inactive' sphere
it can move spam stories to the 'spam' sphere
it can move stories into spheres when there are too many stories and too few subcommunities
once the system moves a story it becomes locked in position
the creator can no longer freely move it
must submit a request to move
the system can move it again anytime though
but the creator can continue to modify it
this rule means strugglethru has a pre-plan for spam and other undesirable stories, like porn
we don't disallow it
we just have a plan for it
"many people like to explore the other side of life"
this paves the way for adding age appropriate controls later
e.g. spheres where the explorer must be a certain age to access story content
story min requirements to publish:
we need to make story creators do a good job at creating a first draft story
we don't want a lot of blank placeholder stories in our story world
thus we need to establish a minimum amount of work to be done before we allow a new story to to published to our story world
i have not yet spent a lot of time thinking about what this should be
maybe 3 chapters/subchapters min
maybe also x characters per chapter min
keywords done
member min profile done
in time these min's will become self evident
tbd: