Game 447: Gossip

The POKEY chip squeaks out a surprisingly passable "Hello?"

Between the releases of Eastern Front, an industry-changing hit, and Balance of Power, arguably Chris Crawford's most famous game, his most ambitious was no doubt Excalibur; a multi-modal colossus doomed by a perfect storm of development hell, poor release timing, and Atari's own business misfortunes.

I don't know if I'm going to cover it. Wargaming Scribe suggested it, but his own coverage took him five times longer to complete than an Eastern Front campaign, prompted Crawford himself to declare "I don’t see any reason for anybody to ever carry out another review," and Scribe didn't even like the game that much. So I'm a bit torn between skipping an important game and covering one that I am not likely to enjoy or have much to say about that hasn't been said already. I might even play it but not cover it - we'll see.

But there's a weird little game that came to be as a byproduct of Excalibur's development, which I will cover.

Gossip arose from a diplomacy module and may or may not have been distributed through APX. The intrigue of medieval court politics translates nicely to the battleground of 1980's clique culture; your goal is to make the boys like you more than they like the other girls, and your weapons are shade, calculated flattery, lies, and if all else fails, a little bit of magic. Call Val to compliment her best friend, or talk shit about her rival, and she'll like you more. Tell your friend Dan that Val stinks, and he'll like her less. But what comes around goes around - people will call each other to keep up on the pecking order, and nobody enjoys finding out that you've been dissing them behind their back. Or worse, learning that you are two-faced!

 

I won my first ever game on the easiest difficulty, in which there are four other people - Dan, Val, Jim, and Joe, with a simple strategy. Days one and two - I was minimally kind to everyone while I assessed the social network.

The takeaways - Dan is not popular, but not a total creep either. Jim doesn't like me. All of the boys like Val, but she only returns Joe's affection.

So for the rest of the week, I crushed on Dan and Joe, and was kind but not too kind to Val and Jim, lest it improve their social standing too much. Then on the last day, I used my magic ESP to find out where I stood, and magic arrows to ensure everyone liked me more than Val.

And it worked! Three for three picked me over Val.

So then I thought, why not try the hardest? The maximum difficulty expands the roster from five to eight; you, three other girls, and four boys to compete over.

This mode goes on a long time and has a ton of information to keep track of - you now have 49 relations to keep track of instead of just 16 and phone conversations can go on forever as you listen to Val fill you in on who likes Jim and who hates him now.

The expert mode took me 45 minutes to get through, but once again I brought all the boys to the yard.

The strategy - after day one, and with a bit of ESP magic, I got the impression that Val is the popular one, and Sue is a bit of a nerd.

It is decided. Sue's reputation is expendable! That doesn't mean I need to slam her at every possible opportunity - I don't want to alienate Joe - but consistency counts and nothing positive will be said about her, and the more I think someone dislikes her, the more negative I will be.

From here on, I call the local queen bee Val often to tell her how much I like all the boys. I don't care if she thinks I'm a tramp; as long as she tolerates me enough to listen, she'll spread it around and earn me that scarlet letter. And in turn I'll find out from her what they think of everyone else!

I also determine that Tom doesn't like me very much. Occasionally I call him to try to change this by agreeing with him on everything within reason - the only hard rule is I don't bad mouth anyone but Sue. As for everyone else, I either agree with them, or I dunk on Sue / praise not-Sue, or meet them halfway if I want to improve my reputation with both the caller and the subject of the gossip.

I'm not sure how much this strategy actually helped my standing, but it barely mattered. Expert gives you a whopping 14 magic arrows to use, which is more than enough to turn three frowns upside down.

The game state on the final day - I've already landed Jim and Joe, but Tom and Dan need some magic encouragement.

Yeahhh! Taste defeat, Val.

 

GAB rating: Bad. This is a neat system idea, but it is not nearly enough to build an entire game around. Gossip just isn't entertaining to play, and has zero lasting appeal. I can't tell if strategy even matters, because you'd have to be wildly unpopular for the magic arrows not to be able to pull you ahead in the end. And I really don't care to try again.