I write various types of fiction and am an avid gamer and although I don''t have any clue how to program myself I am constantly playing and discussing the new gaming. I know programming is tough and it takes alot of time to create a game so I want to influence any people who make games to take ideas into consideration because a great game is inventive not just pretty or another title in a flooded genre. A great game creates it''s own niche. One idea I have, and maybe many have before me, is to create the new line of sports games of MMORPG. I heard a baseball game is in beta to the tune of this idea. Here I focus on football. The idea is to create a game that has the graphics and gameplay of current top selling sports title. On top of this we create a new Sports Role Playing game genre. In the game you would create one player, in whatever sport here it''s football, and you could create his history, physical attributes, clothing, etc. Online you could participate in drills that would assign you certain skills. This would keep from being tedious like Sims online by being multiplayer and interactive. For instance, pushing a sled or doing sprint drills with other people online in a mass held practice. After this a league or leagues would be set up on servers that consisted of 32-64 teams. Each team would have real players playing real positions for real teams. They would play league games together against other humans. So you could have a kid from Arizona as your starting defensive back while a 40 year old dad from Texas is the Running back. Some positions like kicker, offensive lineman, etc. might not be popular so these would be standardized and filled in by A.I. players. Teams could play in leagues for seasons and playoffs. College versions of this could be done as an expansion where you play through college and get drafted into the professional leagues. I think this is the next wave of Sports Games and could revolutionize the genre.

Well stinky,
You may be correct in your vision. It all sounds pertty fun, and maybe there are projects like that already on the board. In the case of football (American football) I think multiplayer online gaming would be fun. Since players would be required to build up a reputation and skillset to play in the big leagues, you wouldn''t have to be as worried about some jerk screwing around during an important game, as those malicious players would likely be weeded out before attaining the big leagues.

And of course they''d have their reputations to think of. I can see that becoming very formal and exclusive in a big hurry. How can newbies prove themselves?

Well like someone already said the people who might desire to join and play simply to mess with other people would be weeded out. So you wouldn''t have your starting Running Back on your team running the opposite direction everytime he touches the ball because he would be concerned with his characters own stats and people on the same team would become cohesive after awhile. For rookie players or those new to gaming or the genre in general could be serviced by different leagues leveled on different areas of competition. For example, you would have a die-hard league and a newbie league where people with like attributes for their characters could play on teams together. It would be the same game with a full league but people could spend a season in that league before moving up to more hardcore gaming to familiarize themselves if they wished to.

The thing appears to be a cashcow. Software price plus monthly fee and other various charges could make it lucrative. For example you could have people buy their town teams and manage their rosters as far as picking up and drafting new real online players for their teams.

I like this whole new idea of a sports MMORPG, but these days it is hard to organize events that brings out all players. I think the problem that might arise with this football game would be when your team is about to play a league game, and what if 3 or 4 players didn''t log on to play in the league game? Your team could be out a kicker, or some other important position that greatly affects the success of the team. This lack of dedication from players could cause a major disadvantage to fellow players. One solution to this could possibly having backup players for the team, but it would be hard to give those backup players an incentive to log on and see if they could play. That is just one problem that I thought might occur.

I''ve considered this problem and I can share what I think the possible solution to this would be. First off people would be investing money and time to make their player good and the process of joining a team and cooperating for practices and what not will be considerable, think in reference to leveling up a character or forming alliances in Everquest. So, I think this will be the first factor that will make people want to show up for the assigned league games.

Secondly as I said in the first post some people may not want to create players of certain positions, think offensive lineman or kickers, so during games online they would be filled by well taught A.I. or computer players to fill the empty spots. If people hated this idea there could be another system in place where as I said in my last post there would be different leagues of varying difficulties and dedication. So we would make it where people in a superfan league could negotiate with players in a casual league to be on reserve for their individual team and vice versa. So if valuable players are absent they could instant message a player on their approved list to fill-in. So a missing player would almost become like an injury so to speak.

I think the key is to create a game and interface that is very involving that would keep at least 50,000 players on at all times training and negotiating and playing. That way if games are happening finding back-ups wouldn''t be as tough.

That''s a good problem though and it would need to be adressed.

If a team needs a player, and either can''t find a suitable replacement or refuses to let non-clansmen play or is forbidden by league rules to substitute undeclared players, AI bots could be an option.

Or you could divvy up the responsibility. Insert the missing guy''s character, but control it wil mediocre AI and allow another player to "switch" to that character when appropriate, like when you''re playing one-player. Once the pass is thrown, the quarterback player can possess the receiver, doing two jobs with one man.

There are a lot of solutions to try. This problem shouldn''t be a terrible obstacle to the idea. This is a very good one, although it will probably require broadband to be effective.