cynthia.nie, a digital portfolio

Schism is an online, persistent-world multiplayer game in which a team of players band together to help build up their small town into a prosperous city. Players' actions in the game consist of both individual efforts and collaborative ones, and create compelling social experiences without requiring an extensive time commitment.

class: Master's Thesis (CTIN 594a/b)
advisor: Peter Brinson
medium: PHP / MySQL
completed: Spring 2010

The inspiration for Schism started by looking at the two main categories of persistent world games available today. On one end of the spectrum, there are the hardcore MMORPGs (i.e. World of Warcraft) that provides an unparalleled social experiences for their players, but generally takes too much time for many people to consider playing. On the other end, there are the casual games located on social networks (i.e. Farmville, Mafia Wars) that are exceptionally accessible to their target audiences, but rarely provide anything in terms of memorable social experiences.

The aspiration of Schism is to bridge the gap between these two vastly different types of game worlds: to improve upon the social experience that is currently delivered in casual games by looking at what hardcore MMORPGs do well. Schism aims to be a multiplayer experience with a low daily time commitment, while simultaneously retaining enough depth to create a compelling and involved social experience for the players to think and talk about when going about their business for the day.