While I’ve talked here before about how much I enjoy D&D Tiny Adventures, I’ve been stepping up my Facebook gaming of late generally. Mob Wars has impressed me quite a bit, though I think it’s kind of shameful how little context there is. It’s a bare-bones design where they ask you to pay money for their in-game currency, but I have absolutely no connection to the gameworld. There’s no fiction there, there’s no descriptions of the jobs I’m doing – It’s all design and no context.

I was struck by Tipa’s description of much the same problem in her work on her “Dire Bear” encounter. She’s basically creating an RPG run through the service’s API, giving you the same sort of ‘Tiny’ experience that you get on Facebook. She and her MMO-playing compatriot arrived at the “put the design in a fictive setting” almost immediately as far as I can tell. Why couldn’t the guys doing Mob Wars get that?

Obviously this is something I’ve been thinking about in a different way in the last week or so. I don’t know entirely what it is that I’ll be bringing to the DCUO team; you never know how a gig is going to work out until you get there. Especially with something like the development of a game. It’s an ensemble cast, a greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts creation built on the backs of people who are too dedicated to care that their spines might shatter before it gets good. I’ve learned all this just from my work as a blogger, but that’s about it. When I walk in the door at SOE later this week, I bring what I bring but I don’t know what will get used. I’m just hoping it’s enough.

As an aside, Tipa is a tremendous mind. She’s making a freaking RPG over twitter! Somebody hire that lady to do something tremendously awesome and game-related!