Digital Era: SLEUTH

I shall cite an online game which my sister stumbled upon a few months ago, the Detective Game - SLEUTH as a working example for the blog exercise on digital games...

Here's a description of the game taken from its website:

Sleuth is an open-ended, detective role playing game (RPG) where you solve mysteries by searching for clues, questioning suspects and interviewing witnesses. Every mystery is unique with different victims, suspects and clues. All mysteries are solvable, in fact there are always two ways to solve any single mystery, but player skill and a small amount of luck are necessary to nab the guilty suspect.

In addition to solving different cases, the game also features an allocation system of skills points in which a total of 20 points are given at the start followed by others that could be earned after having successfully solved some cases. In the game, a detective could have three traits, namely Toughness, Smarts and Charm and for each trait, there is a corresponding set of skills that could be learnt by trading in skill points :) For instance under the trait of Charm, the skill of Rule Bending could be learnt. Different combinations of skills would subsequently affect how effective a player/detective go about solving various cases. On top of that, when a detective has earned enough funds from solving cases (and perhaps formed some sort of reputation as well), he or she could then choose to form a detective agency in the virtual world and subsequently recruit other players/detectives to join his or her agency.

According to the reading by Crawford, I could identify a few mechanics used in the game that I think are unique to the computer as a medium. They are namely interactivity, the ability of the computer to serve as a moderator of sorts, its ability to limit information presented to players in a purposeful way and to allow for network communication.

First and formost, although the game is mostly text-based, players are given the choice to decide when and what type of detective skills to learn and in the course of trying to solve cases, they could also choose to do a number of things such as visiting the crime scene and other places on the map, interrogating or sweet-talking when suspects refuse to cooperate and accusing someone of being the culprit, etc to which the game responds immediately. It is primarily these decision-making processes that generate a sense of interactivity for players. Moreover as mentioned before, the allocation system of skills points affect the development of a player's persona in terms of the type of detective skills he or she possesses togther with the choice of setting up their own agency and recruiting other players/detectives, such manner of gameplay could somewhat lead up to procedural and emergent content. Meanwhile in the background, the computer is acting as a moderator by recording down various information like which suspect has an alibi or who has not, clues provided by non-suspects and witnesses, etc where such information could be easily retrieved at all times by a simple click on the section titled as CASE (which otherwise would be a cumbersome process if I have to write down every single detail manually on paper :p).

On the other hand, the ability of the computer to limit the amount and the kind of information given to players is much suited for and is also an essential feature of the game for it is very important to provide clues or hints enough for players to make a logical deduction and yet not revealing too much such that it takes the fun out of solving cases (a problem which I could relate to quite well, I think, after the playtesting sessions for Assignment 2 :p).

Last but not least, there is the convenience of networked communication provided by the use of the Internet that allows players from all parts of the world to come together and discuss various issues regarding the game as well as to recruit players/detectives from other countries (most likely to be someone you have never met before), a feature that could not be found in traditional board games nor card games.

'k, I think I shall work on my second case now :p I'd managed to solve one while trying the game earlier on :) Probably a lucky break, I reckon... OUT ON A CASE.