The Game

Gamelab's third game experiment at the Game Developers' Conference, Alphabet City is a punk-styled massively multiplayer word game, hosted by the International Game Developers Association. Each player starts out with a single letter and has to work with other players to form words. Complete words earn players funny money that was used at the game's end in an auction for first through tenth place. With its mix of strategic collaboration and cut-throat competition, Alphabet City brought innovative play and punk-rock fun to GDC 2003.

The Design

Alphabet City was really two games in one. The main game was a Scrabble-style word-creation game, which had players throwing their letters into the centers of big game huddles, with everyone trying to make the longest word possible. The second was the auction game of first through tenth place, as players made bids with the funny money they had earned throughout the rest of the game. Two huge consortiums of players pooled their funny money to duke it out for first place, but in the end, the Conference Associates (students and other volunteers) were victorious.