i have this idea based on what im working on for fun. Stevietopia. a civ-ish strategy game, but with fantasy element, quite sedately played - for example, massively multiplayer - well as massive as my current cable connection can allow. I think i can manage 100-1000 online at one time due to the sedate nature of the game. potentially upto 10,000 of players in the persistant world... ...and its all free. shocking but true. The idea is that I pay the players pay me in other ways. Not just threw corporate sponsorship but through distributed processing. This project I''m working on is driven by by madness for artificial intelligence and my desire to up my computational processing power without having to spend any money. but then i thought quite recently - this could actually be a business. Games such as stevietopia or others could be payed for by research institutions and companies requiring extra processing power. what do you think? free games for players, payed for by industry, who gain their payment inkind via increased computation on projects that require such things. things like seti@home and such are for fun, but are voluntary. free games attached to such things could make more ''volunteers''

This actually sounds like an awesome idea and I would be all up for playing something like this.

Stuff to watch out for:
I have doubts about your cable connection handling 1000 people, and unless your ISP allows servers, they would shut this thing down pretty quick. So you might find yourself having to spend some cash to get a proper server going, in which case you gotta make sure that the computing power that you are gaining is really significantly more than the money and resources you are devoting to running a such a game. It''s not easy, and you will have to worry about server outages, people cheating, providing a reasonable level of support, just look at all that goes into keeping EverQuest running.

Good luck, the concept sounds awesome.

I agree, its a really seriously good idea. Everytime you download some data for the next misison, you download some more data to analyse.
Its very cool

http://www.positech.co.uk

ahh crumbs, my ISP will only let me have 10 connections to a service at a time like ftp or some such. These are tcp/ip services.

I wonder if they can block udp ones in the same way. pity since i can only do tcp/ip at the moment for lack of networking knowledge.

It would be grat but, I tink you''ll have to use a dedicated server and many Gb of bandwidt... that''s not cheap.
Hummm... a difficult game to write too... you''ll need a team to develop it in some years.

I disagree, just because lots of real dorks take years to make a game doesnt mean everyone has to. You can no online games much cheaper and quicker. Some of the posters on these boards have done them as i recall.

http://www.positech.co.uk

Definately a 10 for creativity. I guess it would work a bit like the SETI screensaver right? But instead you play a game and in the background you use remaining processing power? Original idea!

seems like a good idea that should be investigated, i´m not sure if you´re going to make enough money with it though.