But on to the topic at hand: every year at GDC, indie games house GameLab partially disguises some kind of social experiment as a game on the show's premises and invites attendees to participate. This year, the game was ConfQuest. In a nutshell, the game turned San Francisco's Moscone Center into a living simulacrum of an MMORPG, with attendees and convention staff in the roles of player characters, wandering monsters, and game masters. Basically, you'd go to the ConfQuest booth, tell one of the kids working there that you want to participate, and then proceed to "roll" up a character. Conversely, if you wanted to be a monster, they'd arbitrarily assign you a monster role, arm you with stack of cards, and send you off to terrorize the masses.
Players would be able to choose from six character classes, including Tough Guy (depicted on the "character sheet" by David Hasslehoff), Space Trooper, Rabbi, Magical Senior Citizen, Puzzle Pirate, and Telepathic Ninja Hacker, and Accountant. Behind the cheeky nomenclature were rudimentary MMO archetypes adapted to ConfQuest's simple game system. Players were allowed to form into parties of three, and then go off hunt for monsters. Combat exchanges boiled down to exchanging cards with monsters, most of which were fairly polite and complicit. Kill a monster, and you were able to "loot" it, which involved taking one of the cards from its deck, demarked with a variable amount of treasure. Treasure was spent at the ConfQuest booth, where you could purchase all manner of phat lewt, including pointy sticks, grenades, and laser guns.
Let the games commence.
People seemed to be having fun, and this made me want to participate. I went up, rolled up a Space Trooper, figuring they had the best solo ability, and proceeded to seek adventure.
I was immediately snubbed by the first group I approached. "We don't need a Space Trooper, we need a Rabbi," said the skinny Digipen student in the trenchcoat. "Aight, that's cool, forget these guys," I thought. "I'll just go find a weak monster and kill it myself." I kept my eyes open as I walked to my next meeting. On my way, I encountered a War Elephant, a 32-bit Boss, and a Hooligan, all of which were beyond my means. I didn't want my first encounter to end in abject failure, so I let them pass. Luckily, the mobs don't aggro in ConfQuest. I got to the isolated kiosk where my meeting was held without encountering another monster, so I forgot about it until well after the session was over. This is when I encountered a Rat tending the tail end of the IDGA lunch line. Quite hyped with the prospect of pwning the creep, I approached him, and asked, "Hey, can I fight you?"
"Oh, sorry, I can't battle while I'm on duty. But come back later and I'll take you on."
Damn, another near miss. Oh well, it was lunchtime, so I decided to just /logoff from CQ, and get some food in me.
