לפני כמה שנים נתקלתי במקרה בסרטון וידאו שעוקב אחרי יום שלם (!) של מגה-גיים בשם Watch The Skies. עשרות משתתפים מחולקים למדינות עם אינטרסים שונים, כשלפתע איום משותף מאלץ אותם גם לפעול יחד. הקונספט הזה ריתק אותי בעיקר כי לא היו בו "מנצחים" ו"מפסידים". המטרה שלו היא לייצר נרטיב משותף וחוויה ייחודית שיכולה להתפתל כמעט לכל כיוון אפשרי, בעיקר כתלות ביצירתיות המשתתפים.
לפני הקורונה ניסינו לי באלאן ואני להריץ משחק כזה, שהיה כאוס מטורף, אבל מעניין מאוד. אם לא היינו שוקעים בעבודה ובמגפה עולמית, אולי היינו ממשיכים לשייף ולשפר אותו – מקווה שבהמשך הדרך. בינתיים, ראיינתי את John Mizon, אחד מעמודי התווך של קהילת המגה-גיימינג העולמית שחזקה בעיקר באנגליה. אם זה נשמע לכם משהו מלהיב, ממליץ לקרוא קצת על נקודת המבט שלו, ולעקוב אחרי אירועים עתידיים. הקורונה אילצה את התחביב לעשות אדפטציה לעולם הדיגיטלי ואתם לגמרי יכולים לקחת בו חלק, אם תעקבו אחר לוח האירועים.
In a nutshell: you are…
I'm John Mizon, I'm 29 and I live in the South West of England. I run South West Megagames – my one-man business designing, organising and managing megagames in the South West (and, nowadays, sometimes online).
How would you define your work in the megagame world?
Oh, and what the hell is a megagame?
Megagames vary a lot from game to game, so it's often hard to nail down a consistent definition. They're somewhere between a LARP (Live Action Role Playing), a giant board game, and a model United Nations. But generally speaking, they have to be big games – at least 20 people or so, because at their heart they're all about big, complex scenarios. Imagine a game of Risk, but every region on the board has its own player – and maybe also throw in a bunch of politics, trade, and other ways to work with or against other players. It'll get pretty complicated fast – but it'll also produce a unique story, and a very different result compared to 4 people moving blocks around and rolling dice until one person wins.
The reason I do my work the way I do is because I am fascinated by these kinds of games. The way they model very complex situations, and create entirely organic and unpredictable stories. Whenever I make a new game it's normally because I've read about or thought up a scenario that really works well with this style of game.
How long have you been doing it, and Is it your day job, or just a part time thing?
I ran my first megagame in late 2015 – and it was also the first megagame I ever went to! No-one was running them very close to where I lived so I guess maybe it seemed easier than travelling! I had a lot of friends nearby who asked me to run the game again over there, and after that it just seemed natural to keep running games around my area – which didn't really have much of a megagame scene before I got started. Running megagames is now the majority of my time, although I also have a couple of other part-time gaming-adjacent jobs, but I've already spent so long talking about just megagames that I'll spare you those.
What is the best thing about what you do?
I just love running these games! One little joy about it is that at times it feels like being some kind of celebrity GM, with dozens of players constantly coming up to you with their decisions and secret plans that are going to affect the game world. But the main thing I love is that it's such a unique experience – building a world, and then seeing it fleshed out and growing organically around you, dozens and dozens of players creating a story that you could never have completely predicted.
And the most frustrating thing is?
Unfortunately the size and unpredictability of megagames are a bit of a double-edged sword. Sometimes everything just goes wrong for one player or group of players and they have a bad day. Sometimes it seems like it was just bad luck, sometimes it's a part of your own design that maybe could have been tighter or that you just didn't notice until it was too late. It happens to everyone running a megagame sometimes, and it's never easy.
How's creativity comes into place in this line of work? Where do you find inspiration?
Creativity is key when designing megagames – often times you have to design both the mechanics and the whole background of the world! I create a lot of my own original games, but even when I'm running designs other people have made, I tend to do some changes – or look at it and think what could be added, or what might develop in game so I can prepare for it.
As I mentioned earlier, what inspires me is the kind of scenarios that deserve this complex simulation treatment. Sometimes they're from history or from fiction. So much of the real world – or the richest fictional worlds – is really complex. There's so much stuff out there that you can look at and say "Why does everything come together to make it work that way? How could it be different if people made different – but still understandable – choices?". Those are the kind of things that make me want to design a megagame.
What is the most insane/awesome thing you got to do or witness?
It's hard to pick just one! Every game there'll be some amazing situation that I get to see first hand. There's a popular megagame called 'Watch The Skies!', about aliens arriving on Earth, and in at least a few games I've GM-ed a situation where some head of state has taken the gamble of accepting an offer of a UFO taxi ride to the aliens' base of operations. It's always exciting to see these players with different goals, and completely different knowledge about what's going on in the huge game around them, get to properly interact for the first time. And with one of them in extremely unfamiliar surroundings – often the rest of the alien team is interacting with game mechanics and chatting about situations they've never heard about yet in the background.
Can you share with us one tip for maintaining an "everyday creativity mind-set"?
It's a constant struggle, especially if you have other factors like work, mental health issues or social concerns making things harder to juggle. I try to do something every day, even if it's small, that makes me feel like I've done something creative, or made progress on a project, or learned something. (Although maybe not every day – be sure to give yourself days to rest!).
Any last words or shout-outs?
I think I want to combine these last two questions! There are people running megagames out there in many cities and in many countries, and they all deserve a bit more attention. Despite a few bits of media exposure here and there, megagames are still completely unheard of for most people. If you're reading this and you think megagames sound interesting, please have a look and see if there are any megagames running near you (or online) – and tell your friends about megagames too! A lot of megagames just can't get enough players – and as a community we always love seeing new people.
