itch.io

First, I love the idea of speeding up the clock if all human players press their buttons.  "Waiting out the clock" is a pain point in the game.

It will be interesting to see if others have opinions on the collusion question.  Yours is clearly a comprehensive understanding of the role of collusion, including the positive and negative consequences in the player dynamic. I appreciate greatly your response and kind consideration of my request.

As a developer myself what resonates the most with me in your thinking is making it a game option. That strikes me as the perfect solution. 

I'm not sure where you are but perhaps we can talk sometime and I'll share some of my experiences with Dani. Such an amazing person! If you'd like to DM me we can exchange numbers. danielpdarnell@gmail.com

Dan

Hi. I read your post elsewhere about collusion and the reasons it wasn't included in the game. I would like to put in a vote FOR collusion and hope that you are open to it. I've been playing M.U.L.E. on the Commodore 64 since about 1984 and continue to play with my buddy from back in the day every time we get together. We live in different states now so our M.U.L.E. sessions are less frequent than they were when we were playing in high school. Thanks to you we're able to play again now online! Any time! Amazing! Thank you for bringing our favorite game back to us in a new way. 

So, collusion. Collusion was always a part of our gameplay and we really miss it. I get your free-market argument but I think you have to look at collusion as the wildcard in the mix. It's the unregulated wildcard of the game that "breaks" the otherwise carefully curated market economic aspects of the gameplay. Even when we would play with 3 or 4 human players there was always an element of "Hey, I've got energy if you'll meet my price" side-hussles going on. Even with just two of us playing it is essentially the same thing. "I'll help you with ONE food but you've got to get my back on energy." Not to make too much of it though because we end up colluding once or maybe twice maximum per game but almost every game includes at least one collusion.

Happy to discuss further and I think you are amazing. Lastly, I wanted to share that I live in the Little Rock area and I was a friend of Danielle Bunten Berry in the 1990's. I enjoyed many conversations with her about my favorite game (M.U.L.E.) and all of the other great games she was responsible for creating. I think what you've done with online M.U.L.E. would have delighted Dani and you've really done proud the concept of the game and its creators.

Dan