The size of games

[Guest]

I'm sure you've seen it all before, people dreaming of modding the biggest game ever. Going for the big 35/40 player games expecting it to be the best ever. But it never works out that way. For me anyway, the bigger the game, the less fun it is to play.

The reason is simple, with so many people it's harder to follow, you only interact with a small proportion of the players, and you can get away with lurking much easier. So what happens is the game comes to a complete stop. And nobody is willing to restart it because it would take a mammoth effort to analyse the playing patterns of all the people in the game, and all 50 pages of the game so far. It's almost impossible to organise a proper lynching. It can usually take a week from the cop identifying the scum until the town decides they are to be lynched, and another week till the final vote is put on.

Compare that with the small games. First we have the newbie games. 7 players seems very small but they are a lot of fun to play, all be it a bit too short. Then we have the mini-games, with 12 people. This imo, is the optimal number for a mafia game. Each game will take on average 5/6 game days, and maybe 5/6 real weeks. Also, you can be fairly sure by the time the 12th person signs up, the 1st few people to sign up are still willing to play. I've seen a few games where it took so long to sign up, by the time it did start, some of the people weren't active in the site and needed replacing, before the game even starts.

We don't lose much of the fun as we go a bit bigger. A std 15 player game, such as Texas mafia, was fun to play as well. Few problems with activity and lurking, and the game progressed at a nice speed. But there aren't much of these games. Most people either go for the mini or the 25+ player normal/theme.

As the games get bigger, it is harder to keep players interested. This is the field of the themed games. The interesting roles/game mechanics are designed to compensate for the natural effects of larger games. Games like Mixed Theme keep people interested because people are anxious to see what roles could possibly come up. But make no mistake, only talented mods can make such a large themed game both interesting to the very end and completely playable.

In conclusion, I believe 12-15 is the optimal size for a game, and any larger and you will run into problems with activity. Compensating with themes/game mechanics can take away from the mafianess of the game. I suggest only very talented mods can make large games work.

Finally, I'd like to say that I feel the current system of 2 themes but unlimited large games in biased towards these games. Maybe the restriction could be lifted but any such decision must be looked into more thoroughly than I have here. Either that or mods make more 'large' games in the 15-17 size range.

As I start modding, that will be the kind of games I'll be making.