Victory Boogie Woogie

(Your Dai­ly) Vic­to­ry Boo­gie Woo­gie is a col­lab­o­ra­tive writ­ing game for the web, cre­at­ed in part­ner­ship with De Gids, the old­est still active lit­er­ary mag­a­zine of the Nether­lands. Over the course of ten weeks, a group of well-known and upcom­ing Dutch authors cre­at­ed an inter­wo­ven net­work of fic­tion, poet­ry, essays and illus­tra­tions togeth­er with an online audience.

The sto­ry­line revolved around the dis­cov­ery of a sec­ond Vic­to­ry Boo­gie Woo­gie—Piet Mon­dri­aan’s famous final but unfin­ished work, wide­ly con­sid­ered his mas­ter­piece. A kalei­do­scop­ic cast of char­ac­ters vied over own­er­ship of the piece and debat­ed, inves­ti­gat­ed and made claims about the work’s authenticity.

Play­ers signed up to a cus­tom game web­site to fol­low along with the devel­op­ing sto­ry and influ­ence the course of things by con­tribut­ing their own bits and pieces. These were reviewed by a group of edi­tors before pub­li­ca­tion. A sim­ple but effec­tive mechan­ic con­trolled the dis­tri­b­u­tion of top­ics avail­able for writ­ing about. At the same time, oth­er rules of the game—such as who could say what about the protagonists—were social­ly negotiated.

The idea for the project orig­i­nat­ed with the Gids edi­tors, who were fas­ci­nat­ed by explor­ing the poten­tial of games and play for lit­er­a­ture. We advised on the pro­jec­t’s for­mu­la­tion, includ­ing grant requests. Vic­to­ry Boo­gie Woo­gie received a Game­fonds sub­sidy as well as sup­port from the Dutch Foun­da­tion of Lit­er­a­ture. We sub­se­quent­ly joined the project to design and devel­op the game in col­lab­o­ra­tion with De Gids.

We used the project to inves­ti­gate new direc­tions for com­bin­ing sto­ry­telling with gameplay—a top­ic that con­tin­ues to be hot­ly debat­ed in games cir­cles. We col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Gids edi­tors to cre­ate a writ­ing game that was native to the web, while at the same time pro­vid­ed a new per­spec­tive on lit­er­a­ture’s rel­e­vance in the age of audi­ence par­tic­i­pa­tion and play.

As always, our process was high­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive and dri­ven by numer­ous pro­to­types (both phys­i­cal and dig­i­tal) and playtests. We worked with the Gids edi­tors to care­ful­ly bal­ance open­ness and play­er agency with con­trol and writer authorship.

As with any mass col­lab­o­ra­tion game, it was a chal­lenge to ensure robust mechan­ics that scale before­hand. For this, we mod­eled the game’s rules and the flow of play­er and writer con­tri­bu­tions using Machi­na­tions, which allowed us to sim­u­late a huge vol­ume of games at var­i­ous play­er amounts and spot short­com­ings in our game design.

Dur­ing the game’s run, we mon­i­tored and con­tin­ued to improve the game web­site. We also joined the week­ly writ­ers meet­ing. We advised on how to best respond to play­er actions, par­tic­u­lar­ly where these ven­tured into the blur­ry ter­ri­to­ry beyond hard pre­de­ter­mined rules and into the area of sit­u­at­ed, open-end­ed play.

This project pro­vid­ed us with a fas­ci­nat­ing peek into the world of lit­er­a­ture and pro­vid­ed a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty to invent a new form of play respect­ful of a tra­di­tion­al cul­tur­al domain. We look for­ward to con­tin­u­ing col­lab­o­ra­tions of this kind.

Below is a very short doc­u­men­tary on the project in the form of inter­views with design­er Kars Alfrink, play­er Gera Pronk and writer Dirk Vis.