"What if?"
This is just an idea, or cloud of ideas that have formed over time and I will attempt to transcribe them.
You need not bother reading or replying to this as a serious game topic, more as a diversion if you have free time to read it instead of the comics.
What if a game world was created that consisted of a large variety of game types. A 3 dimensional world that could be navigated to enter into many game modes, many of them interconnected. One limited example of an interconnected game is the way eve online interacts with the dust console game. In eve players play the space faring part of the game, on starships, and in dust players are on planets and control in first person shooter style combatants. And the actions of one group of players impacts the other.
What if a core world was generated and then spun off many lateral games that would interact?
A good game engine for such a game could be what will be used in everquest next. It and other newer games use a voxel structure that allows parts of the world to be assembled and disassembled. Instead of limited battleground instances that warcraft uses for pvp combat, eq next could allow players to build up villages, towns, forts, castles, or even just lonely tents and hunting cabins. And then players could form alliances to protect territory or go to war and destroy enemy territory, or conquer their lands and take control of the resources they generate.
I know that letting players go off and dig and destroy or build anything anywhere could be rather... messy in the long run. So maybe limiting the lasting changes a player or group of players could do to the game would be good. I know eq next says they plan to have any destruction revert after a period of time, maybe as quickly as 30 mins. I think giving players a certain capacity for lasting change and letting them decide when and where to effect change would be better.
A game that starts with a completely formed landmass and living plants and animals, as well as indigenous fantasy peoples both friend and foe would be good. No large existing civilizations, let the players decide when and where to begin development of the towns they will use. And allow players to develop magic and technology via experimentation and interaction with the environment. So that players would drive the direction of the game, be it more of a technological, magical, spiritual magic, direction or even to achieve a more classical level of fantasy tech, arms and armor up to the discovery of gunpowder.
But it would not just be an mmo, as players could form guilds or civilizations and elect leaders, those leaders could then take part in a macro game similar to how SimCity, and civilization play out. But instead of sending npc spies on missions, every action taken would be done by a player. So to have a real intelligence network, you would actually have to have rogue agents installed in the enemy civilizations and safehouses and methods for relaying information and materials to and from the agents.
Instead of just sending a /tell or a /whisper, if you wanted to communicate with someone you would have to be physically close to another player in the game or hire someone to transport letters or relay messages.
But the game would not just be everquest like, and doac like, and civilization like, there could be a lot more added to the world. Whole other games accessed within the world, say your character is going out hunting for game, you could access a form of the deer hunter game using a bow and arrow, or possibly later with the technology a firearm. The game could be taken in the direction of modern technology, with combustion engines, vehicles, ships and weapons that would allow a form of the world wars to play out.
A micro part of the game may be like playing Farmville, someone may work to build a farm in the game. And others might work to defend, or to ransack that farm.
Not only could many games link up to a world like this, I think another thing could be added to it, the ability to browse or use the internet itself, in a form of 3d browser.
Maybe the whole game aspect of this idea could just be scrapped as it would take years to sync up so many intricate aspects of the game,
There must be something like it in the works, and here I just found a link to some news of one: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=98753&page=1 / http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/201/1/3DWeb.pdf / http://www.foxnews.com/story/2008/09/18/three-dimensional-web-pages-possible-with-browser-plug-in/
So what if a browser was created that allowed you to flow to and from a 3d gamelike world, to sections of the internet?
Maybe there could be sections of the 3d gamescape, where one continent is all very secured and verified to be filled with "links" to virus free adware free sites. And a whole nother island could contain all adult content, and another island could be dedicated to social media linkages like facebook and twitter. One area could allow you to access many types of games. And another island could be filled with repositories of knowledge, libraries, and connections to colleges.
Since a 3d game environment does not really have to adhere to physical laws, it could have connections in the way the game myst plays out. Going deeper into the rabbit hole.
There could also be a 3d environment for shopping, each store could either have links to their webpage or better yet each store could create a 3d building that people could walk around with avatars and shop online. Travel to individual stores could be instantaneous, once bookmarked or if you know the name of the store or website. You could even have employees working at computers on avatars right there to answer questions about products instead of waiting on phone lines or for email responses.
If a 3d engine became widely used and accepted it may even take the place of normal webpage formats.
