unforum

[Geppetto]

ENDGAMEs

[natas]

$1000 for each active player sounds good to me.

[notgordian]

You don't need a budget to end with style -- a lot of grassroots games have put together rather impressive endgames without relying on a budget. Realize, however, that the ending will serve as a capstone to your project. People tend to remember beginnings and endings.

So while you don't need to have a live event or send gifts to players, the ending is one of those areas you'll want to invest a significant portion of your time planning.

[BubbleBoy]

Good games don't need prizes.

Besides the obvious answer of "you want to make sure all of your elements have been wrapped up nicely with all possible questions answered" I will add the following:

Most games fizzle at the end. I don't like fizzle.

Think of this like you would if you were running a race. You start out pretty slow, then you work yourself up to a nice steady pace - nothing too fast that you can't handle it, but not too slow that you are falling so far behind that there is no way you'll be able to win.

About halfway through the race you have passed a few people (the ones who started out too fast and have thus run out of gas) and are sitting pretty in the middle of the pack.

3/4 of the way in you are beginning to pick up your pace. If you are in good enough shape you should be able to pass a few more people and move up a few more spots.

With a half mile left your legs are sore, you are screaming at your legs to hurry up and you can see the finish line. This is when you really start running your butt off.

If you were paying any attention in gym class then you would know that you don't slow down as you reach the finish line. Instead you view the finish line too be much farther than it is and run through the ticker tape at the end.

You end on a peak, a high note. Now you can sleep.

[jamesi]

Ah, endgames. Some have been great, and some... not so much. Here's one example of a game that did offer a prize, but ended up (a) imploding, and (b) not delivering on the prize delivery (until much, much later, if I remember correctly):

Another Contest… Ends Prematurely -- ARGNet article I wrote three years ago

I echo notgordian's comments, and add this: much like the gifts bestowed upon parents on their respective days (Father's Day and Mother's Day), it's not the value of the gift, but the thought, that counts. You may not want to offer a prize, per se, but you may consider a small token of appreciation. If that means a personalized email to your players, or a Easter-egg-filled blog post, or even a small gift sent in the mail, there are ways to 'give back' to your players without breaking the bank.

[imbri]

I gotta agree with jamesi & others here... a big prize may be cool for some, but what players really want is to see and know how they impacted the game and were a part of the project. They want to feel appreciated and not used. They want to have had a great time playing the game and some fun memories to share. They want to feel as if they were a part of something cool & exciting. You can give them all of those things without having a huge prize at the end. After all, if they were only after the prize, they'd just play the lottery.

I've designed games that have had prizes and other material rewards both throughout the game play and at the end. Players enjoyed them, sure. Who doesn't like swag? But, in my experience, games that end with a big dump of swag become known for their big dump of swag and what's the fun in that? Wouldn't you rather your players wind down their game play coming together and reminiscing over all the fun that they had instead of talking about who got what in the mail or posting message after message of them waiting by their mailbox for that really cool thing that they were promised?

Considering that, I'd have to say that the very best endgame for any of my games was one where we didn't give away anything other than a big streaming data dump filled with things that we (the PMs) found meaningful from what the players and characters had done over the course of the game. The forum and chat channel lit up as players relived all of those memories together. It was a great way to wrap up the game and give them all a sense of closure. And, I'm not sure what was more fun for us... gathering all the bits & pieces that we wanted to include or finally getting to enjoy those very memories with the players that we had become so close to over the course of the game.

[Geppetto]

Wow, thank you! You've all given us a lot to consider as we try to develop the final stages of game-play.

Would an endgame in which most of the characters are killed or incarcerated after foiling the villain's major plot, and the players warned to go into hiding by the one remaining major character, be considered disappointing, or closure?

We'd want to follow with the sort of "stepping out from behind the curtain" to tell the players how they've contributed, what we've learned from them, how they surprised us, etc. If we granted that initial closure, followed by the sort of post-game interaction mentioned in some of the posts above, how would you feel if you were the player?

Again, thank you for all the constructive comments!

-Geppetto