Since January, our alpha players have been racking up the points like nobody’s business. Seriously, loads of points. In the earliest iteration of our visualisation (which is still on the homepage, but will soon be replaced) the dominance of teams is represented by giant coloured blobs over segments of the London Underground. These blobs have become so massive now as to dwarf the other details contained within the visualisation, and also make it look like an artist’s impression of how London would look if more buildings were like The Gherkin.

While not wanting to go into the development of the visualisations too much in this post (it is, afterall, only the first stab), I am going to mention that the blobs on the map have got so big that they’ve ceased to mean anything to me. It’s like Google Reader. I don’t use it anymore, but when I did, of a morning there would be somewhere between ten and a hundred new things to read through. Easy. The problem came when I went on holiday – I came back and Reader said “1000+”. The number had grown to a point where the actual number of new articles was inconceivable to me as a user, and I lost interest in the backlog (and, slowly, Reader altogether).

It makes me think of Scrooge McDuck. Scrooge McDuck had tons of money. In the opening credits of Duck Tales he’d dive into a mountain of gold and green inside his corn barn cum bank vault. Yet, no matter how much wealth he had, he was still well up for little rip-offs. Every dollar he could scrounge was worth it. And a lot of episodes involved preventing him from ripping people off, or even getting him to pay up.

I think that a hi-score ceases to be amazing when it becomes too huge. There’s no challenge. No excitement. Being a champion can be boring.

You Are Not Scrooge McDuck.

So, we’re building a RESET BUTTON, and when we press reset (every three months), a new season will start.

Chromaroma will be a game of seasonal play.

So at the end of each three month period, your scores will be counted up. You’ll get an award if you’re in the top ten. Maybe even a real-world prize. We don’t know yet. Your Achievements will be counted, your completed Missions acknowledged. Incomplete Missions will be flushed down the toilet, but Collections (as the more ambient way of playing Chromaroma) will carry on. Over the course of one-week, we’ll build a fresh set of missions, achievements, gamepacks (more on them later), career modes (them too), so that as a player you have a new game to play. You’ll have the chance to change allegiances, to play the game differently, to explore new ways of travelling and playing simultaneously.

Russell Davies wrote about Endings in the latest issue of Wired UK. About the need for “digital experiences that land as well as launch”. I think seasonal play is just that. Every three months, we launch anew. Every three months we land, look around, then take-off again. Experienced players get to try something new, new players get a chance to take the lead. Seasons give a player the chance to try things. If they don’t work out, you don’t need to start over. Keep experimenting and in a couple of months, everyone starts from scratch.

P.S. Thanks to Digital Polyphony for some nice nostalgia while browsing for an image and video for this post.