Everybody Edits is a must-see for everyone interested in gamedesign. In many ways this casual game is kind of radical in its design choices. After the game started, you can choose between “play levels” or “join level edit session”. If you choose to “join level” you will be thrown into a huge level with many other people, who play the same level. (In that sense, this game is also a “massive multiplayer” experience.) The levels do not necessarily have a fixed “goal”, but maybe you will find yourself struggling through mazes, trying to reach the “end” of the level (sometimes there are crowns to collect). Now what is radical about this? Some levels has dependencies included, like blue-keys, toggling blue walls, green-keys toggling green keys etc.. But not always this keys are in reach. Sometimes you have to wait, until some random player in this huge level will toggle the key, in some place of this level: this is a random dependency of a random player.
There is more radical random in this game. Let’s go to the level editor! You will be just thrown into a level-edit session. Along with other players from the internet, there is a lot of activity going on in each level-edit session: everybody can edit the level at the same time. You navigate, by playing with your player sprite and can add or remove blocks with the mouse. So editing and playing is also at the same time. Just while many other players from around the world are doing the same: playing, building and modifying the same level… This adds up to a really random experience, but people “swarm behaviour” is still “wise enough” to really build “intelligent parts” in each level (besides really useless and insignificant parts). Because the levels are huge I even doubt, if anyone would have the guts to simply edit one single level from beginning till end. Maybe only the social-aspects allows the levels to complete.
Everybody Edits is a little bit of everything: a multiplayer experience, a online-social experiment, collaborative game-design and a great piece of interactive art. There is also a cool development-blog online. (via)
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