Before I start writing, I have read the tips for posting and it didn't say not to post ideas for MMORPG's. I appreciate that constant posts for suggestions on MMORPG's must be highly irritating. However, as you will see, this isn't strictly a typical MMORPG idea. Anyway, on with the post. We all know about MMORPG's like World of Warcraft, Runescape and Final Fantasy. I'm not going to insult anyones intelligence here by running through what they're all about and involve. To be honest, the constant slaying of Dragons and casting of spells gets boring and I find it hard to associate with these fantasy 'worlds'. I also appreciate that a lot people love these type of MMORPG's. That's just my personal opinion on Fantasy MMORPG's. This lead me to my idea of an MMORPG based in Modern-day times, on Earth. User's would create a (human) character that would then function in the virtual Earth. Character's will acquire a job, rent an apartment or buy a house, buy items for their character and their house, buy a car, own a business or explore our Earth. Although I can describe the details and functions for a long time, it is easier to sum this game up in one sentence. A fully functioning online Earth. Now before you start getting ready to post criticisms like: 'Do you know how long that would take to do?' 'Do you have any idea how expensive that would be?' 'Do you have any idea how to start doing that? I know digitally recreating Earth online on a 1:1 scale would be incredibly expensive and time consuming. I do not need to be a programmer or a business advisor to realise that. This game would initially start in either: New York City, London or Tokyo. I have picked to create it initially in a city known worldwide. I do realise creating it in my hometown of Weston-super-Mare, England, would not attract much attention from anyone outside Weston, let alone abroad. My plan would be to have continual development of the game continue after it is released. This would, of course, maintain interest from User's who would want to see what their home city looks like eventually, once it's developed. My dream would be to have the entire globe recreated. The whole game would be self functioning. It would have an internal economy that would rise and fall. There are many routes someone could take on this game. They could for instance: * Decide to go to University, study for a degree, and then try and attain a higher paid job once they leave. * Decide to become a Musician by uploading their personally created music and creating a CD with it (this is much more detailed and I'm trying not to go into great detail) * Own a worldwide Corporate business, in which they continually grow and develop. * Become a Stock Broker, buying and selling shares in companies created on this virtual world. Those are 4 of possibly hundreds of routes someone could take. I haven't invested any money in this yet, and it is merely a Game Design on paper. I have asked Family and Friends for their opinions on this but as we all know, they will usually give Positive and faultless feedback. I am trying to get an unbiased opinion from people who would know best as to whether this could possibly work, if it was created and worked on. I am open to creative criticism, however, if you just wish to slander my idea, don't bother posting. I'm not here to be subjected to that. Finally, I have copyrighted this fully and it's classed as Intellectual Property so if this is an absolutely phenomonal idea and I just don't realise it, don't try stealing it. All of your opinions will give me a clear idea as to whether I should try and pursue this. Thank you for your time reading this very long post. Dave.

This being the story forum, the only thing people will be criticizing here is your game's story. Given that there isn't much of a story here perhaps that's not what you had in mind. If you would like the design criticized let me know and I will move this thread to the design forum.

My only personal comment on the story is that love books, tv, and movies, video games are largely about escapism. Would roleplaying a life in a real modern city satisfy players' urge to go somewhere new and be someone special?

Firstly, yes sorry, I have realised I posted this in the wrong forum. If you could move it, that would be great.

My answer to that is that for someone working a 9 - 5 job in the city with a wife, 2 children and a mortgage is unlikely to be able to set up any sort of business. In this game, they could do anything they wanted. They could try setting a business up, they could explore places they may never see.

I'd have to second Sun's general reaction, this doesn't sound like it would pull people in. Simulated life might be an interesting time-killer, but I have a hard time seeing it really take off. Not to mention this would probably parallel a lot of elements of Second Life (of which there's a fairly small playerbase, so you wouldn't have many people to compete over).

There are all manner of real, pre-existing means to live vicariously through some entertainment medium (which is what you're essentially advertising this game concept as). For example, the Travel Channel/National Geographic/Discovery for all the people that don't get to actually explore the world, all kinds of shows about businesses and random/unique jobs for people that would never get the chance to pursue them...

Plus, I think this would start to create a dangerous concept. In fantasy games, people go out and do the things that aren't even possible in our world: flying around on creatures, fighting dragons, casting spells, etc. You've proposed a game where people can sit at home and try out various things they could actually go learn to do in the world, and probably should if they've got the itch. (Nothing illegal, of course).

Of course counter-arguments to this exist, for example Flight Simulator games, but your example play styles really speak to things that most people would rather do in reality than virtually. (I can't foresee ANYONE sitting through university for a virtual degree instead of just earning a degree through an online university program, and you'd make real money with the degree afterwards)

As an interesting side-note, if you were able to re-create an economy model and stock market system that was intricate enough to accurately reflect Earth's international economy, you could probably sell that to someone straight-up. That'd be an amazing feat in and of itself.

A suggestion to maybe make this a more exciting concept: consider how to use what you're talking about here, and make it "interesting" and unique -- give players a number of exciting "adventure" options, in terms of careers, etc. Even in fantasy games, most players don't, or aren't intended to, live the lives of "normal" people -- they are adventurers and heroes, living out extraordinary fantasies while the NPCs around them are the ordinary butchers, bakers, fletchers, blacksmiths, innkeepers, guards, etc. These serve a necessary purpose, and one which players enjoy participating in but only for short periods of time; they spend most of their time off killing great epic monsters, fighting epic battles, and leveling epic hordes of assorted mobs. Take this as a hint in your game: You need to give players something unique and special to do.

Contrary to some others I think the idea has the potential to be very widely played, despite its emphasis on the "ordinary" or on realism -- look at the success of The Sims -- but you still need to consider, first and foremost, your audience's enjoyment.

Thank you all for your replies and comments.

As I only know what I would like to play, I can only go on that. Personally, I would find the many different possible career paths exciting. I would never get bored with the game as there would be so much to do. I enjoy Financial Games so the thought of starting a Virtual business that has most of the challenges opening a Real Life business has but not the huge risks to your life. I enjoy the thought of being able to trade stocks and make a fortune that way.

Alternatively, I'd enjoy exploring places in the world I'd never been. I know this can be done through other Mediums but that doesn't mean it can't be done through this one.

Like I said, this is only what I would find enjoyable and I understand everyone's different and that's why I posted here. But if only 1 in 1,000 people liked this game, it would still be an enourmous success.

Please post more feedback. It's highly appreciated.

Believe me, plenty of ppl have dreamed of recreating Earth into a game. Strictly saying...its not possible. Too much reliance upon others, society, and polotics to literaly recreate the world.

That said you could still create a game based on our society. Such as a kind of Sims styled game (not neccesarily gameplay but idea) over the internet. Lay out career paths, life choices, vacationing to Europe or wherever. Implementing interaction between characters at work or neighborhoods.

How you grab attention is up to you. Sims is based on the world and somehow it made it.

And even if you could recreate Earth the idea is too risky. No use saying more...

My honest and brutally blunt opinion is that I think this idea as you've presented it is completely and utterly unfeasible. The sheer scale of trying to create a simulation of something as massive and complicated as the entire Earth is beyond the capabilities of a game company. Plus even if you did manage to do so, the world would be fairly empty (I doubt you'd get the entire world population playing ); you'd need to simulate the people as well.

If you are talking about a hypothetical game which simulated Earth, I'd agree with sunandshadow in that I'm not sure I see the point. I also tend to play games for escapism and real life has too many boring parts for me to want to play a simulation. Even the Sims which gets close to a life simulation abstracts away some of the drudgery and has a handy acceleration feature which you couldn't put in a MMORPG.

I'm sorry but I just don't see how this game idea would work unless you scaled it down drastically to focus on a narrow niche.

By the way, just for your own interest you can't copyright an idea. You automatically have copyright on the expression of the idea, i.e. your forum post, but not the idea itself. However you generally don't have to worry about people stealing game concepts; I've occasionally seen people get inspiration from other concept posts here but the resulting game designs are usually end up vastly different anyway.

The simulated world idea is interesting, but its not a game. If there's no gameplay you need some other kind of attraction, like currency exchange between game money and real money, or user created content, or user created gameplay.

What's wrong with the Earth we already have?

To be honest, I think this idea is naive at best. There are more issues then I can list, but I'll name a few.

- The scope is too big. Not "too big for the average company" big, but "too big for Google or NASA" big. And just starting with one city isn't the problem... the scope of the jobs, progression, economy, etc are way too much as well.

- The world is too big for the number of players. Unless the biggest city in the world only contains 10 buildings, you would never have enough players to populate this "world". Consider this: to get the same population density as the real world with 6 million players simultaneously (good luck) you would need to make the game at 1/1000th scale. This means Los Angeles would be less than half a square mile!

- How do you interact with a world like this? How do you "go to a university"... do you actually have an online professor? Is it something like the Sims, where their stats just raise?

If it's the former, it's complete nonsense to think that you'll get anybody will "learn" anything from the griefers and nerdy know-it-alls that are bound to get in these roles. And if they do, who grades the work? Who makes the work?

If it's the latter, wheres the fun? How is it any different than a really slow grind, slaying dragons without the interactivity? Or is it a minigame? In which case, how many hundreds of minigames are you planning to design/build?

Are you ready to tackle questions like these for hundreds of possible roles?

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The list goes on, but the rest are more nitpicky. I think the above three points are the big reasons why I think this cloud-nine idea has no legs. Your intentions are good, but you need to think out the interactivity before you start trying to recreate "reality". The Sims created a fantasy game based around our everyday lives, in no way did it try to recreate reality. Why recreate reality at all, when we already spend all of our time there?

[Edited by - JBourrie on April 24, 2007 12:34:22 PM]