The female is no doubt an integral part of the tribe, however, I don''t see the fun in being one. You don''t want players having to take turns being the female because no one wants to do it. I can see that you want to see how aspects in real life play out in an online environment, but some real life aspects are highly undesirable. Hence, women''s liberation.

Men had provided for women because women''s lives were tedious. In most cases, even though they were provided for, they were not treated well and even taken advantage of.

Why do _I_ want to play a female? What do _I_ get out of it? Yes, I want my tribe to survive but I also want to feel that I''m accomplishing something on a personal level.

In real tribal society, men are stronger because they need to compete for food/status. Women took care of the home and children and didn''t require as much strength. If you are going to try to recreate this sort of social structure, I don''t see the fun in being a female Zwappa.

- Jay

There''s an old saying in Tennessee... well, it''s in Texas but probably in Tennessee too. It say''s, "Fool me once, shame on... shame on you... uh... ya fooled meh uh can''t get fooled again."
- George W. Bush

Get Tranced!

Hey, sorry if you sent me an e-mail. My computer was down for several days and I did not receive anything which is weird because I still should''ve received old e-mail but I had to re-install the whole system. So update if you could if there''s anything going on. :-)

Hi Geogod, I''m pasting your email here. Please send me your email adres (to Marcdemesel€hotmail.com) because I''m not shure I have the right one. Here''s the email:

Hi GeoGod,

Marc from ZwappaLand here. I did receive your email and am happy to hear that you are interested in this project. You asked me what kind of people I needed for this project. Well all kinds of course! I somehow hope to build a big organazation of artists, programmers, game designers, marketing people, website designers and what not that you need for succesfull interactive entertainment projects.

Since I only abandoned education last year I''m just starting out creating projects on my own and finding people who are interested in the same goals.

So, for now we are with 3 people. Fred is a good artist, (3d models, websites, conceptart) with a great technical mind. Filip is a programmer, he''s only on the team for one month. and then you have me. For the moment I''m playing I''m playing gamedesigner and organizer of the project. My history is in architecture (followed it for 3 year) and some film (tried some stuff on my own) and philosophy (free student at the university).

I have been cooperating with fred on the gamedesign the last six months, on and off. And filip has jumped in only the last month. We are trying to compile the ''snowball'' game now, this is a technology demo of the nevrax(.org) engine we are planning to use.

I should say that for the moment advancement is not that big. In fact we have not even a regular shedule of communication and have no goals set forth other than the gamedesign.

The reason why I didn''t reply yet to you was that I felt I had to take some important decisions before taking on new members on the team. I haven''t made those decisions yet but were happily surprised to hear from you again on the gamedev forum. So maybe I can start with explaining the decissions that trouble my mind but have to be made somehow. These are mostly ideas in progress.

The first question is about the gamedesign. I''m wondering whether if you would change the title, change the look of the game, and change some properties of the world whether it would be more appealing to a bigger audience. I would like sim players to be more attracted to this game and for that it needs more possibilities for actions to do in the game I think. It needs more differentiation, more detail, more attributes to be played with, more possible roles to be offered by the community. The housing should be build out more, they should be able to express themselves more through the look of their avatar and the look of their house.

Maybe the avatars should look more humanlike and the actions of making love should be the same movements of having sex like we know them from the real world? When you give me your email I''ll send you a picture that shows an attractive world we could inspire us upon.

I think zwappaland is ok and funny but somehow I think it needs to be different from this in order to attract more people. Maybe when the figures would be more human like (cartoony is ok but more humanlike) and if you would allow for more diferent roles that could be played out (more different professions, roles) you would create more debt, more variety into the game. I want to bring in the fun that sim players experience when buying lots of household stuff, creating there identity through their clothing, while at the same time make the world more believable in the sence that houses can be destroyed, players can be killed, mothers can have children, and that way I hope social roles will be more real too. Being a leader means being a real leader with a big possible impact on the gaming world.

(At the other hand rereading the mail I wrote 1 month ago, I do see a future in the zwappaland like it is presented in the gamedesign document. With those visuals, tribal group gameplay, and the shapable cloudy landscape.)

So like you see, I''m still having doubts about the gamedesign and I would love to hear your opinion on this. Since you were the only one reacting to the gamedesign on gamedev (next to coderx ofcourse, who made interesting points about the gamedesign, to which I haven''t replied yet eather).

So, I would love to hear what you liked about the gamedesign.


Another important decision is about the license of the art. I don''t know if you are familiar with this licensing stuff. I''m thinking of making a completely gpl''ed game meaning that everyone can copy not only the engine but also the art and also the title and run a server themselves. I believe in this as a businessmodel. Just like Linux (although here the name Linux is trademarket), I think copying our work is not worth it because like Linux the software constantly evolves and if you run your own world you will have to keep up all the time because we constantly innovate the world. So if people make money with this world we can offer services to them. Anyway I don''t know if you are familiar with these problems, let me know.

Another idea I''m thinking and reading about a lot is how the organization should be organized. I''m thinking of a system which would alow a flexible share of owner percentage of the organization. Your income would be not a wage but a percentage of the profits made by the organazation. There should be a wy that this percentage is changeble so that when somebody does a better job his percentage of ownership, his amount of money made and his influence in the organazation augments adn vice versa. How the organization is structured and organized is important. I hope to make some progress here pretty fast.

So what are you doing in real life? You haven''t made a lot of posts yet on gamedev so I have no idea what your ideas are or what you do in real life. I see you have an email from bell(south) so I''m guessing you are a programmer? Could I also ask how old you are and where you live?

Seeing forward to hear from you,
MarcDM