I''ve followed the game industry quite closely now the last 3-4 months (Internet only, but it''s a rich and share-willing community). My past experiences are commercial client/server systems development, but this gives less and less satisfaction, so maybe in 6-12 months I''ll try out the gaming industry. So, the real meat of this post is: How are all you seasoned game developers used to the concept of MetaThinking/MetaDesign/MetaImplementation? To explain, Meta-anything is usually concerned with the knowledge-level above the actual problem-level. Example: designing an ER-structure for an SQL-based database server is mostly meta-level work. You try to organize the knowledge of the actual data into common rules that materialize into an empty structure. This is known stuff, but in my experience, it is quite beneficial to continue the meta-level thinking as a common rule, not as a case-based necessity from time to time. Still too much rambling from me here? What if one takes the element of ''missing the diversity in games''-core of some of the posts here, and design games from a meta-level perspective. My example idea: MMORPG''s seems to fail longevity due to lack of diversity and ''new explorability'' (not parallell to HUGE maps/land-masses). Make a basic game world for Internet MMORPG, with basic game rules, but little produced content. Concentrate on making a designer-tool for GM''s (any player who wants to create instead of playing). Satisfy these creators by giving them the chance to populate the whole world with balanced elements. Their score could be calculated based on visits/time players spend in/on their elements, etc. The internal competition between GM''s to make the most popular ''sites'' would (in theory) drive the positive development of a VERY diverse world satisfactory for most players. These ideas are only part of what could be achieved by a more meta-level focus. Re-use and a core understanding of the fundamental game elements are other, more tangeable effects. The down-side is more time spent on design than coding (the team need to know the system really well to design good meta-level systems), but in my experience, the total time spent on any system is 20-30% less (sometimes even more) when concentrating the effort on the meta-level instead of the direct problem level. Ehh.. some posts/articles about game development state that procedural content creation will be the future of game development due to the reason that the effort of constantly creating all (or most) game art from scratch every time will be too high to stay in market. Procedural-anything seems to me to be very meta-level in nature. Comments are welcome.

wow !
It''s an impressive post...

To me the META keyword explain something at the nearly highest le vel of abstraction.
However, I don''t think META anything is used in Game Design, basically game design is how to make a game fun, what mechanics to use...
The higher abstraction level in Game Design is the CONCEPT.
This is THE idea behind the game, something that explain the game mechanics (yes game design is about game play and gameplay is all about gaming mechanics).
(nearly:p)

About the Procedural things, I use procedurals textures (so no game design involved) and they are ''just'' used to avoid creating several art, and being dynamic (I mean changing with the environnement).

META and PROCEDURAL things aren''t called that way in Game Design, because they are too technical.
Game Designer want anybody to understand them, since they are the heart and soul of the game.
Yes we are going to use procedural plots/quests/story, and use some metacontent, but we simply don''t use those word cause they are if not misleading, hard to understand by common folks.

You''re MMORPG idea is not new in the essence/concept, many of us in here (I think, well, at least me) have thought about something similar, in fact live RPG using computer graphicsn sounds and music to immerse the player.

Your idea seems good.
Next time you try to communicate with us, try to use simple words since many of us aren''t english and so do understand only a limited vocabulary/words.
Simplicity is the key to success

(I hope I did not annoy you)

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

At last!

Somebody else brings up the concept of meta level thinking. I made a post a while ago about it and got zilch for responses. Basically I was asking if anybody else was familiar or intrigued about the concept of coding a function like Reason() which is effective at reasoning about the function Reason().

Sounds complex or difficult? Of course it is. But it is fascinating.

neverwinter nights is going to be that way. Officially each server is a seperate world with and can only hold 64 players. However if two server operators agree they can put a portal between their worlds. Inevitably a network of hundreds of servers will appear. Each server will be controlled by its own administrator. The company is going to set up a system to keep abuse (such as making your server to treasure rich) within acceptable bounds.

If you want to see a good example of extreme meta-thinking about RPG design, visit the Goblin Game Developers at goblindev.sourceforge.net, and look for the EzBoard link. The webpage is pretty ( read: extremely ) basic for now, but that doesn''t detract from the discussions.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~

Thanks Mad Keith V, the goblindev.sourceforge.net-site seems promising. Do you need any help? I''m currently researching (hobby only at present) how to implement a flexible, large-scale, economic system that would work for MMORPG''s, and where the actions of the players may infulence this economy (not like UO''s add-hoc economy system). This system is meant to be based on capitalism as both a philosophy and policy as the ultimate perfect economic system where possible real economic sub-systems (yes, they will be hierachical and linked) have ''flaws'', say dictatorship where major economic parameters are controlled by the whims of one person, socialism where the state interfere by illogically spreading whealth around, etc. What do you think?

Economics systems will not be part of core-Goblin, but the input you may give to our discussions is always invaluable, because you could point out what kind of interaction with the core of Goblin you need to implement this system later on.
We''re really thinking of making Goblin work.


People might not remember what you said, or what you did, but they will always remember how you made them feel.
~ (V)^|) |<é!t|-| ~