Game Design, PMOG/The Nethernet (2006-2009)

The simplest and fastest way for GameLayers to make a massively multiplayer online game out of web surfing was to deliver the game through a downloadable toolbar. We chose to make a toolbar for Mozilla’s Firefox browser, with plans to expand to other internet browsers once we established a core rule set.

I made flow charts, wrote Google documents, and created spreadsheets to communicate the design of the game and user experience to the programmers. I also made animations, filed tickets with the bug-reporting system the company used, annotated thousands of screenshots, and designed or led the design for each game’s website.

The game design of PMOG/The Nethernet was centered around the basic actions of surfing the web. “The player goes to a website, and …” “They like the site and…” “They don’t like the site, and …” “They connect with the site, and…” For example, a player visits NewYorkTimes.com and reads an article that they disagree with. They leave a Mine on the URL. Later, another player reads the same article and by loading the same URL, triggers the Mine. The second player loses a few currency points and has an opportunity to attack or message the first player.

The Mine was the first tool that I designed, illustrated here in the upper left. Mines were damage-causing weapons that players left on websites. When other players subsequently arrived at the site, their browser window would shake and they’d lose points. Mines were the “I don’t like it” of the game and a way to prank other players.

The diagram here is a flow chart for the interaction between a Mine and a St. Nick. A St. Nick is a pre-emptive move against a player who wants to leave a Mine on a website. Players attach St. Nicks to each other; when a player with a St. Nick attached to them tries to leave a Mine on a website, the Mine is destroyed. The St. Nick is the illustration on the right.

By either leaving a mine on a website or attaching a St. Nick to a rival, the player accumulates points. The orange and green boxes represent “player x” earning increases in two character statistics: the Chaos faction and the Vigilante class.

There were two opposing sides in PMOG/The Nethernet, Order and Chaos. Centering PMOG/The Nethernet around the struggle between Order and Chaos fit the space of the internet. The internet is a huge mess of information, with different companies, people, and rule sets interacting and struggling for dominance. Players who choose the faction of Order are generally the type of internet users who correct grammar on Wikipedia; players who choose the faction of Chaos are the type who send their friends distracting links.

PMOG/The Nethernet was one of four games nominated for Massively Multiplayer Online Game of the Year in 2009 by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. We lost to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King from Blizzard Entertainment.