Pardon, this is a little more "stream of consciousness" than I usually post... One of the major draws of games where you can take on some sort of a role or identity is wish fulfillment. Be it an RPG, empire builder, or action shooter, the ability to take out frustrations, achieve dominance, receive virtual accolades or experience feelings not accessible / acceptable in real life can addicting, harmless fun. One form of wish fulfillment I'm keenly interested in right now is the kind that's satisfied by experiencing a possible future. How do things turn out? What happens to us all? Where are we going? Is the future worse, or better?

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First, I'd like to know how much you think this form of wish fulfillment can attract players. How appealing would it be to you to experience a range of different future environments? If your interest is low, what would have to be true to raise it, or why is it impossible to raise? If it is high, what can be done to fulfill that interest adequately? (story, graphics, gameplay, specifics would help) I imagine that two things would have to be true for almost everybody: You'd have to be able to relate, both in content and gameplay, to whatever future was depicted; and you've have to be given a powerful motivation to care about the game world itself and how it turned out. To some extent, this last might mean that the whole focus of the game would be in how you influence events (like a good RPG such as Fallout, which has multiple "future" endings; or Alpha Centauri at an abstract level).

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The next and last question is a bit fuzzier: How important do you think it is to base tomorrow off of today? Lately I've been obsessing about how to generate multiple game worlds along a future timeline, given severely limited art and such. Each stop along the timeline would be like a chapter in an RPG's story. Each game could generate variants on the timeline that would reflect future outcomes (such as surviving World War III, or China winning a future space race). My rationale for spending thought cycles on this is that wish fulfillment to know the future is made more powerful by being internally consistent. You don't necessarily have to create a realistic future world, but it must be believable, in gameplay, story and other content. But how true is this? Here's a test: Assuming decent to good gameplay, how important would it be to you that a future world be believably adapted from present day? If it's set, say, 50 or 100 years from now, how valuable is it to feel that you're taking part in a world that might happen versus a world that could either never happen or one that's so generic (insert empire B into society A) that you don't care.

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I post all of this to get clear on what exactly I'm trying to make and why. Originally, I threw my game world so far into the future that I'd have the same freedom that fantasy RPGs have. Nobody questions or protests over how magic works; or the secret lives of elves, trolls, and dragons. You expect a fantasy RPG to be a way of getting away from it all. But when you take a game like Deus Ex or Fallout, I think the world is strengthened by take the present and projecting it forward. Being able to experience gameplay in places like San Francisco and Cairo, and see how life has changed, makes the gameworld far more interesting to me than a generic world. Maybe I'm alone in this, but the fact that the world is a mutated version of what could be makes the game universe more compelling, spicing up the gameplay. Then again, maybe not. Any thoughts?

Certainly a game where my past actions have recognisable consequences ater a leap into the game future get a much better "Wow!" factor than games where the future is just another game-world. The pitfall for a game which offers two way time travel, of course, is that you can end up feeling forced to achieve certain things in the past in order to fulfil changes seen in the future - in a way that isn't woven into the game-world - the time-travel equivalent of the invisible wall syndrome... Equally, the cross-time "pull lever, open door" syndrome where your actions in the past unlock options in the present becomes rather transparent after a time - if changing the past changes the present, how come only key actions make a difference - maybe introducing minor changes every time you return from the past would work better - details like names and maybe minor aspects of world geometry...


As far as tying a game-world to a plausible real-world future goes, there are definite advantages to using real settings - being able to play a game and say "I've been there" or "I know that place" is always a plus. On the other hand, with things like GTA London, where instead of "I recognise that" it's "I guess that must be meant to be ...", you have a sudden and total loss of immersion.

The biggest advantage of using "real" locations comes when a person familiar with the real world area can use that knowledge to help do stuff in the game world, and someone who's only played the game can use that knowledge to find their way around the real location. At that point, you don't need to invest effort in getting players invested in the game world - they already have the emotional attachments to it as a real place - being able to wander around a game map and say "that's where I watched the Millenium Fireworks", "that's where I took my girlfriend on our first date", "it was raining the first time I visited here" - at that point you no longer need the character to say those things - the player has their own history for that place. The catch of course is that only some players will have that sort of connection to any given real world location, and the better known the location, the more shallow the attachment to it is liable to be.

The disadvantage of "real" locations, of course, is that (even if you set the game in the future) whatever parts of the real location survive have to be right. You can't have the Golden Gate bridge connecting St Paul's Cathedral with the Taj Mahal even though you could have a futuristic tower taking the place of Big Ben on the Houses of Parliament. The more real you make your setting, the smaller the details you have to match become.

The other drawback of a future setting is that it tends to age badly. While it's possible to extrapolate obvious trends, every so often something completely unexpected happens. In recent times there was the 9/11 incident, which has changed the face of international politics. The internet is still changing the world. Air travel has had a big impact - 25 years ago, the typical British Bank Holiday weekend was a trip to Blackpool. Now, it's a trip to the south of Spain. There are several candidates for world-shaking events in the next few decades, some of them predictable (oil shortages, resistant diseases, practical VR) some not (alien contact, major meteor strike, human-level AI) and probably at least one or two unimaginable (???). For a game that's intended to be a big seller for a few months, maybe a year or so, and then obsolete once the hardware moves on, it's unlikely to be a major issue. For a game that aspires to be a classic, it's probably better to focus on having the world fit the game than on historical accuracy.

I think the future has meaning relevant to the present. If you create a present gameworld with characters the player cares about, then the player will want to see what has become of those characters in the future. At one point I was working on a game design where you are the guardian of a city called Destiny, and it was your mission to go around (ala the movie Groundhog Day) fixing problems and influencing the city towards a good future.

Welp, the deluge of responses I've gotten so far really suggest that I need to be much more clear about what I'm asking. [lol]

I realize I could have asked this in a much more simple form. New thread time.

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Original post by rmsgrey Equally, the cross-time "pull lever, open door" syndrome where your actions in the past unlock options in the present becomes rather transparent after a time - if changing the past changes the present, how come only key actions make a difference - maybe introducing minor changes every time you return from the past would work better - details like names and maybe minor aspects of world geometry...

I just wanted to say that I wasn't suggesting time travel so much as whether or not a timeline that's realistic would make a game more attractive. But you've made good points here, in that you may have to be able to impact the timeline to care about it.

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As far as tying a game-world to a plausible real-world future goes, there are definite advantages to using real settings - being able to play a game and say "I've been there" or "I know that place" is always a plus. On the other hand, with things like GTA London, where instead of "I recognise that" it's "I guess that must be meant to be ...", you have a sudden and total loss of immersion.

Yes, you're right, and the danger of that sudden total loss of immersion may more than outweigh the advantage of using reality to draw people in. If you get it right, it may only be a small boost. But if you get it wrong, it may be much, much worse.

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The biggest advantage of using "real" locations comes when a person familiar with the real world area can use that knowledge to help do stuff in the game world, and someone who's only played the game can use that knowledge to find their way around the real location. At that point, you don't need to invest effort in getting players invested in the game world - they already have the emotional attachments to it as a real place - being able to wander around a game map and say "that's where I watched the Millenium Fireworks", "that's where I took my girlfriend on our first date", "it was raining the first time I visited here" - at that point you no longer need the character to say those things - the player has their own history for that place. The catch of course is that only some players will have that sort of connection to any given real world location, and the better known the location, the more shallow the attachment to it is liable to be.

The idea of greater emotional investment was maybe the main reason why I wanted to start the game world closer to the present and put Earth back into the equation.

However, I've been talking with a number of friends, many not really into sci-fi at all. I'm starting to get the distinct impression that people have a real boundary when it comes to being drawn into the future. Either you're into it, and so almost any depiction of the future will be fun; or you're NOT into it at all, and so even an I-ROBOT or Minority Report future is something that you simply can't relate to.

Meh, so I may be wasting my time.

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The other drawback of a future setting is that it tends to age badly. While it's possible to extrapolate obvious trends, every so often something completely unexpected happens.

Hmmm... yeah, I thought about this, especially in what you said about "classic" quality. This happens to me when I read Golden Age science fiction that talks about the jungles of Venus. Or books that talk about the USSR. [grin]

Yet as badly as those age, I still sense the ghost of some possibility in giving people a future that they can relate to. It disturbs me when I can see no trace of the present in a game that supposedly takes place 50 years from now. It seems lazy, but maybe my standards are a ridiculously high.

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Original post by sunandshadow I think the future has meaning relevant to the present. If you create a present gameworld with characters the player cares about, then the player will want to see what has become of those characters in the future.

Yes, for some reason I think the meat of this idea (if there is any) lies in amplifying emotional attachment. I should have been asking what is required to do that, rather than the rambling post I did make. Oh well.

Do you think this emotional attachment holds true for countries or communities? Will you care deeply about what has become of America or England or France or whatever your home country is? What about identity groups?

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At one point I was working on a game design where you are the guardian of a city called Destiny, and it was your mission to go around (ala the movie Groundhog Day) fixing problems and influencing the city towards a good future.

Hmmm... my thinking of late sounds like it parallels your idea (even your city name), except on a larger scale. Is this a case of telepathy, or do ideas run a natural course? [smile]