This is where I think the challenge in incorporating real-time into a game, because having players activate it and then having to wait for the rest of it I feel is equally annoying. Like I said, I think the best way to do this would be to have content spread out over a broad enough time. Have very little be day or hour specific and instead use something like whether its day or night. The main problem I see with telling the player to come back later is that now a player has to schedule around that timeframe, as opposed to them wanting to by going on missions that are influenced by the time of day they play at. I feel like if the game doesn't outright tell them to schedule their life around the game I feel like most players would be less annoyed.

Also, I think that a good compromise between having a real-time clock and not denying content to the player is to have all the content always available, but just have it slightly altered depending on the time of day/season etc. For example, if a mission was to rob a bank, if in the day, its a big brawl with gunfire, explosions, and civilian hostages but if it was at night, it becomes a stealthy mission where you have to sneak past guards.

Or better yet, you could do both styles of missions regardless of the time, its just that in the daytime there would be lots of people there, so if you want to be stealthy you might try to blend in with the crowd and at night, there are more guards so it could be a tougher fight. I agree that outright denying game content to a player can be a bit annoying, but perhaps if the game was just influenced by time but overall all content is accessible, then that could make for a fun experience, especially when people can see how dynamic it all is.


The Farmville example is also pretty interesting though, because a game like this theoretical one could still use waiting and such as a mechanic.

What if your game world spanned an abstracted real world? You could design and balance the gameplay that corresponded to day / night then allow players to travel to different parts of the globe based on what they wanted to do. So if it was day where they were playing the game and they were based in a location that roughly corresponded to their region of the world, let them travel to the opposite side of the world to perform their night-based activities.

Oh, another thing...
I played Zelda Wind Waker since I last read this topic...and now I'm thinking maybe you should just totally ditch the idea.

It was really annoying waiting 15 minutes for it to become morning. They definitely overdid it with the time you had to wait. Maybe give your character an item that could change the time, like singing a song in the other (better-designed) Zelda games?

Oh, another thing...
I played Zelda Wind Waker since I last read this topic...and now I'm thinking maybe you should just totally ditch the idea.

It was really annoying waiting 15 minutes for it to become morning. They definitely overdid it with the time you had to wait. Maybe give your character an item that could change the time, like singing a song in the other (better-designed) Zelda games?

There is a song in Wind Waker that allows switching between night and day, it is not easy to find tough.
I think that kind of thing, a mechanic for skipping/acessing events is a must in games that are based on real clock.

My project incorporates just this. The game is playable in real time using real locations around the world (a "mirror world"). The game is called Monster Realms, it's an in-development browser-based monster training MMO. Cities we create in-game (like Prague, Czech Republic as our first city) will closely resemble it's real counterpart (not only look/feel, time of day/seasons). We're considering implementing a weather system that uses some kind of API.

All of these things (time of day/seasons) effect the monsters available (as they would in real-life). Players that can't be on at a certain time will be forced to use the community markets to obtain things they can't get themselves (through trading and whatnot).

You all raise very valid points (about the inconveniences)...but it has it's benefits, as well!