So What Makes This Game Fun?

You’re probably scratching your head wondering, “So what makes this game fun?”

Games are fun because they challenge us in some ways. Different games challenge us in different ways. A sports game challenges your muscles and coordination. A fast videogame challenges your hand-eye coordination. Other games challenge your ability to navigate complex spaces, or your cleverness in solving tricky puzzles, or your skill managing limited resources. Most games challenge us in multiple dimensions, with each game presenting a different mix of challenges.

This game is so revolutionary that you can’t evaluate using this traditional gauges.

Siboot challenges something completely new: your social intelligence. This is the talent for anticipating what other people might be feeling. Social intelligence is one of our most valuable skills, and we are always working on it. All stories (movies, plays, novels, etc) are about social intelligence. They show us how people behave in unusual situations. In so doing, they reveal nuances of human behavior.

Siboot allows you to interact with the other characters in dramatically meaningful ways. Lots of games include some kind of social interaction, but such interactions are narrow in scope, not especially dramatic, and/or peripheral to the gameplay. Siboot is the first game in which dramatic interaction is the core of the gameplay. It permits much richer interaction with the characters.

It is genuine interactive storytelling.