This is however not in any way what I would expect when someone says "invented The Matrix". What I'd expect in that context would be something that appears so real it is hard to tell (or impossible, even) that it is not real. A world where there are no easily detectable artificial limits imposed by the game mechanics or design.

Yes, this is what was confusing me too. The Matrix isn't a game, which makes it somewhat challenging to compare to games, but I think fundamentally the virtual reality/full sensory immersion of the Matrix is the only thing that really separates it from various modern games. In my imagination the Matrix as a game would be a VR version of a game like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or an MMO version of any of these games. There are several novels and mangas/animes that explore what it would be like to spend time inside a Matrix-like MMOgame. This whole genre is descended from Dungeons and Dragons, and it's certainly not forgotten. Or if you want to include a GM role, you get Sword Coast Legends. Games like Second Life and Shards Online also round out that group of games which allow players to create their own environments and quests for other players. Though any moddable game can do this to an extent, as exemplified by the many Minecraft mods that overlay roleplaying or puzzle mechanics onto the simulation-focused base game.

OTOH a real time version of Advanced Squad Leader or Starfleet Battles would be an RTS like StarCraft/WarCraft or an RPG/strategy hybrid like Mount & Blade, or an FPS like Halo (I'm not an FPS player so I don't know which ones are more strategic or more squad-focused but there are several, maybe Rainbow Six Siege would be in there), while a turn-based one would be the X-COM series or the Disgaea series. Strategic and tactical games aren't the biggest genre out there but again they are far from forgotten.

I should state up front that I have not read everything in this entire thread. I've read the first few posts so far. Primarily, I'm responding to the initial post.
It's possible someone else has already said everything I say.

a simulation design that is indistinguishable from what we all know as "The Matrix", without the human/organic components of course.
... Just try telling someone that you have invented The Matrix and see what their reaction is.

First off, what do you mean by "the matrix"? You assume everybody defines that the same way. Is it what Hodgman said, "a full quantum/atomic-scale simulation of a world..."? But even more than that? A simulation of a universe, not just in a moment of time but throughout all time? You need to express what the matrix is, in ways anyone can grasp quickly. Work to compress the idea into an elevator pitch (about 45 seconds' worth, which is approximately 112 words). Actually, you need two elevator pitches - one to explain what the matrix is, and one to explain what the 12-game series is.

As computer games. Twelve of them, in an epic sci-fo gaming "Universe" that tells the story of humanity from the formation of the earth to the day that the sun explodes... and spent 25 years working on it without ever finding a way to make it.

In those 25 years, has it occurred to you that this idea is kind of grandiose, and hugely expensive? The game industry exists because games have made money. Are you sure your game series would be enjoyable for millions of people to play? I assume you are convinced of it, but the classic problem is to convince publishers or investors that the risk is worth it. It's a good thing that the idea can be broken down into a dozen products. If the first game can be successful in the marketplace, then you can make a case for doing the second one. And so on. Lucas' Star Wars series began with one movie. He may have had a grandiose series in his mind all along, but it was the success of the first one that enabled the creation of the others.

even the few scientists that I know are at a loss to comprehend this because it is not their field.

Why talk about this with scientists?

I have yet to find a single person who is interested in this at all, almost certainly because everyone I try and ask about it immediately assumes that I am crazy. Try telling someone you can make The Matrix and see what happens... Yeah...

It's just because you don't express the grandiosity of the concept in ways that inspires interest and confidence in your ability to deliver. Everybody has ideas for games. Few can pitch their ideas in ways that convince others to invest the money and resources, and the risk to business reputation. Even fewer who can do that have the chops necessary to go along with it.

So, what would you do if you discovered how to create "The Matrix", and knew for certain it worked

It depends. I had an idea for a game about all of human history, but the more I worked on the concept, I became aware of the tremendous time and cost it would entail. And I wasn't sure (how can anyone be sure) that it would be popular. Your idea is even bigger than that - I don't know how you managed to distill it down to 12 games. I certainly didn't spend 25 years on the idea (and it has been more than 25 years since I had the idea).

Who do you tell? Who would listen to such a thing (people at Universities don't answer back).

If telling people is unsatisfactory, why keep telling people?

How do you get to make your revolutionary games where there is nobody else who realizes that they are revolutionary games?

That is always the problem. I wrote an article on this. I call it "FAQ 31: The Ultimate Idea." http://www.sloperama.com/advice/lesson31.htm

Who do you take this too?

It depends on what you hope to achieve. If you mean "how do I pitch it so it'll be made," I wrote an article on that too. It's FAQ 21 (I'm skipping FAQs 11 and 1). You say your profession is simulation design? A solid résumé and track record should help. But as I said before, you need to scale back, and pitch just one game (that can be made for under $20MM).

So who do you tell when you've accidentally made a functioning scientific modeling simulation of a god?

It depends on what you want or expect that person to do with the information.

In my imagination the Matrix as a game would be a VR version of a game like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or an MMO version of any of these games.

Even that whould not be enough for me, if you call out "The Matrix", then surely VR is nice, but it's still only an ordinary game with VR. Expectations are really, really, really high if you call out that name. As in, virtually indistinguishable from reality.

I would expect that if for example, in a Skyrim-like game you're attacked by a gnome or kobold, you can just grab him on the ankle and carry him around, and later use him as improvised club. After being carried around head-down for five minutes, the kobold would have a red head, and after half an hour it would probably start vomiting.
All of that should "just work", although no sane designer could conceivably have thought of this possibility.

In GTA, after running over a hooker with your car, you should be able to pick up one of her shoes and drink champagne from it. Why? Simply because at that precise moment, you feel like doing that, and because in the real world you could do it, too. If you feel like loosening a few nuts on the next car's front wheel, then well... then you can just do it.

If you lift up the nearest gully cover and climb down, then puncture a gas pipe, and a few minutes later throw a burning piece of scrunched-up newspaper down the hole, then not only should there be an explosion, but it should also visually damage the road over a few dozen meters, and the gully cover 50 meters down the road should lift off up to the 5th/6th floor. Why? Well, because that's what happens in the Matrix (and in the real world) if you do that kind of shit.

That is what comes to my mind when I hear "The Matrix". Everything else is just... well, VR goggles. :)

Actually those games were forgotten by those who make games. The computer game industry decided right from the beginning that "board games" were not relevant to what they did. So they began re-inventing the wheel in the mid-1980's.

Dude, what?

RPGs even today use more or less the same dice roll mechanics as board games do (which happen to be still around, even if you dismiss the never generation of board games as "not existant"... Games Workshop and their incredibly successfull board games might want to have a word with you).

Yes, its not bound to a six, ten, or whatever-sided dice. It is still the same concept of simplifing a reality to complex to simulate, and actually pointless to simulate when the result of those complex processes look pretty random to the average person, to a simple random outcome.

The games you mentioned faded a little bit in popularity in the 80's, when they got competition by newer, more colorful and sometimes more simplified board and tabletop games, AND the videogames that started to be able to compete with Pen-and-Paper when it came to give people that RPG expierience, that is all. D'n'd is still alive and kickin, good friend of mine is playing it a lot with his roleplaying group. The other two I don't know about, but wouldn't be surprised to still see them around.

Nothing crashed in the 80's, besides the videogame market. Which was a temporary thing, really.

And no, video games did borrow quite a lot from board and tabletop games from the start.

In my imagination the Matrix as a game would be a VR version of a game like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or an MMO version of any of these games.

Even that whould not be enough for me, if you call out "The Matrix", then surely VR is nice, but it's still only an ordinary game with VR. Expectations are really, really, really high if you call out that name. As in, virtually indistinguishable from reality.

I would expect that if for example, in a Skyrim-like game you're attacked by a gnome or kobold, you can just grab him on the ankle and carry him around, and later use him as improvised club. After being carried around head-down for five minutes, the kobold would have a red head, and after half an hour it would probably start vomiting.
All of that should "just work", although no sane designer could conceivably have thought of this possibility.

In GTA, after running over a hooker with your car, you should be able to pick up one of her shoes and drink champagne from it. Why? Simply because at that precise moment, you feel like doing that, and because in the real world you could do it, too. If you feel like loosening a few nuts on the next car's front wheel, then well... then you can just do it.

If you lift up the nearest gully cover and climb down, then puncture a gas pipe, and a few minutes later throw a burning piece of scrunched-up newspaper down the hole, then not only should there be an explosion, but it should also visually damage the road over a few dozen meters, and the gully cover 50 meters down the road should lift off up to the 5th/6th floor. Why? Well, because that's what happens in the Matrix (and in the real world) if you do that kind of shit.

That is what comes to my mind when I hear "The Matrix". Everything else is just... well, VR goggles. :)

Lets not forget the most important part. If the Kobold gets the better of you and kills you in the matrix, you are dead. If the technology behind the brain/computer interfaces fries your brain, you get stabbed to death by some murderous devices or whatnot doesn't matter.

If you die in the Matrix, you are death in Real life. Everything else is VIRTUAL Reality. The Matrix is a REPLACEMENT Reality, ALL the rules of the Realworld should apply (unless you are the chosen one or a computer program, of course).

In my imagination the Matrix as a game would be a VR version of a game like Skyrim, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin's Creed, or an MMO version of any of these games.

Even that whould not be enough for me, if you call out "The Matrix", then surely VR is nice, but it's still only an ordinary game with VR. Expectations are really, really, really high if you call out that name. As in, virtually indistinguishable from reality.

I would expect that if for example, in a Skyrim-like game you're attacked by a gnome or kobold, you can just grab him on the ankle and carry him around, and later use him as improvised club. After being carried around head-down for five minutes, the kobold would have a red head, and after half an hour it would probably start vomiting.
All of that should "just work", although no sane designer could conceivably have thought of this possibility.

In GTA, after running over a hooker with your car, you should be able to pick up one of her shoes and drink champagne from it. Why? Simply because at that precise moment, you feel like doing that, and because in the real world you could do it, too. If you feel like loosening a few nuts on the next car's front wheel, then well... then you can just do it.

If you lift up the nearest gully cover and climb down, then puncture a gas pipe, and a few minutes later throw a burning piece of scrunched-up newspaper down the hole, then not only should there be an explosion, but it should also visually damage the road over a few dozen meters, and the gully cover 50 meters down the road should lift off up to the 5th/6th floor. Why? Well, because that's what happens in the Matrix (and in the real world) if you do that kind of shit.

That is what comes to my mind when I hear "The Matrix". Everything else is just... well, VR goggles. :)

Lets not forget the most important part. If the Kobold gets the better of you and kills you in the matrix, you are dead. If the technology behind the brain/computer interfaces fries your brain, you get stabbed to death by some murderous devices or whatnot doesn't matter.

If you die in the Matrix, you are death in Real life. Everything else is VIRTUAL Reality. The Matrix is a REPLACEMENT Reality, ALL the rules of the Realworld should apply (unless you are the chosen one or a computer program, of course).

Eh, the Matrix would be a pretty lousy game if you wanted to interpret it that strictly. You're right, but since we're talking about game design it's probably more useful to not go for hyperrealism or permadeath, and instead think more in terms of Star Trek's holodeck, or at least incorporate some kind of reincarnation.

I think Kavik Kang has found some interesting description of a world element- and it depends on a player how deep wants to dig in so it can be car fleet, car, piston or bearing of the piston->quantum level. But I may be wrong...

The thread displays my problem for the last 5 months or so quite well, doesn't it? Discovering something important isn't like you would expect, it's actually impossible to find anyone who will even listen too it. Thank god it's not a warp drive, I probably would have been committed by my own family by now, haha!

Gian-Reto, you are incorrect. The hobbyist game industry collapsed in the early 1990s and it ceased to exist. The more recent board games are what we call the "Neo-Hobbyist" game industry which is a completely different thing. Read my blog, it covers this quite extensively in an attempt to preserve this lost history and the epic stature of "The Big Three" and the vast influence they have on games even to this day, Everyone knows that D&D has been the most influential game of our time, few know that SFB and ASL are a VERY close second and third. All modern game design ultimately comes from The Big Three games... especially Star Fleet Battles. These games most definitely have been forgotten by the modern game industry, if they weren't then you would all be calling Stephen V Cole "the father of modern game design" but instead you've never even heard of him before. Which is a perfect example. You have heard the names, but know none of the story of what those games even are. ASL and SFB are not like any other games that have ever been made, they are on a completely different level. Both were designed by hundreds of people over a period of decades, no other games ever were. They are, far and away, in a class by themselves represent a level of detail and complexity with which modern gamers do not even have a frame of reference to begin to imagine. There is no question at all that The Big Three era was forgotten by modern game makers, almost from Day 1 in fact. They were absolutely certain that "board games are not relevant to what we do", I was there. I know.

Someone asked why I would take this to scientists, that should be obvious... it's a pretty big deal. And also a new theory about how time might function, eventually physicists will be interested in it (once I can find one who is willing to so much as glance at it), but I have given up on them for now and am going back to games with this for a while.

So, with this thread being a perfect example of the only response you ever get to all of this... Who would actually be interested in something like this? Who would want to actually look at it with the idea that they might want to do something with it? Who do you go to with this? I am working towards trying venture capital firms next, but I doubt that will work either. Where do you go with a new discovery that almost everyone will insist cannot be done? Who do you take it to to actually do something with it?

I am really, really bad at this. That is a part of my problem. If I were not so terrible at this "self promotion" aspect I would have been making computer games since the late 1980's. I am worse than bad at exactly this, which is the whole reason I never got to make my games to begin with. So, from a truly retarded person when it comes to self-promotion and "selling ideas", where does a smart person when it comes to this stuff go with a thing like this? In my case, the better the thing is the less chance I have of convincing anyone of it... that's how especially bad I am at this and I have known this for two decades now. I am completely, worse than, incompetent when it comes to this, and freely admit that and know it. It's what has prevented me from having any success all along in spite of my games which work nothing at all like other games because of what is actually called "Rube", named after Rube Goldberg. That is what I really call this functioning simulation of a god, its name is "Rube". So where do I go with Rube? Who do I tell about Rube? How do I use Rube to get to actually complete my life's work assuming I will even live long enough to make all 12 games now. There has top be a way of doing something with this no matter how terrible awfully bad I am at it...

[P.S. I wish it was a phaser instead, then I could start disintegrating things until people paid attention, haha!!!]

Tom Sloper... I hadn't noticed your name on that post. We've met before, very briefly at the 2009 GDC. I am actually a big fan of the advice you give people looking for a way into the industry, and the way you present it. I often refer aspiring game designers to you for "that hit over the head" they need about the realities of the situation. My situation is a little different, I'm not an aspiring game designer looking to get into the industry. I have been designing simulations that a far more complex than anything the computer game industry has ever produced for longer than the computer game industry has existed. It's quite a different thing than "an aspiring game designer". If our era had not been forgotten your industry would have a lot of respect for people with my background, but instead my experience counts for absolutely nothing even though in reality I was among the very first "modern game designers" and am practically a "founding father of modern game design". And yet, in the eyes of modern game makers I don't hold a candle to a recent graduate of the Devry School of Game Design. So my situation is unique, I have the knowledge and experience... it just is not, and never has been, recognized by the modern game industry. In reality, at this point in 2016, there are very very few people in this world who have as much experience and knowledge as I do when it comes to game and simulation design. I guess since I've mentioned "The Matrix" already there's no reason no to throw this out here as well. I know of two "savant game designers" in the history of the world, Steve Cole... and me. SVC's thing is "The True Power", his special talent lies in the core mechanics of how simulations work. I am practically the opposite of him, all trickery and illusion based on the "Board Game AI" I began to develop when I was only 7 years old. I naturally "see AI" in all games, I make games that play themselves, and Rube is very much just a highly evolved version of my "Board Game AI".

OK, so here's how you get people to listen to your ideas:

First, you've spent a great deal of time talking about the history of game design. Drop that. If your technique is interesting, it doesn't matter where it comes from. It doesn't matter that you've worked 30 years on this, that you come from the game industry, any of that. Right off the bat it's a distraction from the topic at hand.

Next, it's not the Matrix or a God Simulator or a new theory of time. It's a promising new simulation technique that will create far greater fidelity in video games. Or it's a faster alternative to Markov chains for scientific simulation. Whatever. Talk in terms of exciting but incremental improvement. Use the language of whatever you're trying to replace. Promise just enough to catch somebody's attention and then over deliver. If you say "it's the Matrix" people will look at all the ways it isn't. If you say "it speeds up simulations of X 30-fold" they'll hopefully say "my God! It can do so much more too!" After they've appreciated the boring aspect of it, you can point them towards its fuller potential, but wait until they've bought in to something incremental.

As for the theory of time, that's it's own thing. Every superlative you glom together makes it less believable, so pursue that line separately. It's tough to break into academia from the complete outside. You'll have more luck after succeeding with this simulator, but if you want to pursue the theory of time directly 1) do so on its own merits, don't pitch it as part of your god simulation and 2) identify a particular problem in physics, a particular aspect of time that can't be dealt with in the current theories, and provide a solution. That's how academics tend to proceed, so that's an easier way to catch their attention. "Here's a convoluted equation used to simulate this interaction of particles, here's a simple equivalent using my technique."

Next, you've said remarkably little about the technique. That's a red flag for cranks and scam artists and people with an idea that sounds good but won't work in practice. I'm not saying you are those things, I'm saying that your communication style falls unfortunately close to their scripts. If you want to be vague about a secret sauce, at the very least very clearly explain the problem that your technique solves. What is it about weather simulations, protein folding simulations, particle physic simulations that's "wrong". Specifically. Or on the video game side, why do existing simulation techniques fail at interesting sizes? Don't use this as an opportunity to criticize modern games. Don't argue against trends towards abstraction and simplification. If you've got the Matrix that's something developers couldn't produce today if they wanted to. What computational problem is stopping that. Is it inability to deal with combinatorial growth in possible states? Is it the difficulty in thinking up all the interesting interactions between systems? Is it performing calculations on billions of computational entities fast enough?

If you want to be vague about a secret sauce, get as close as you can without revealing it. For example, what's the math behind this system? Linear algebra? Chaos Theory? Deep Learning? If you're talking to a lay person be brief about the topic but reference it. If you're talking to an expert, converse comfortably in it. Use the correct jargon. Give simple derivations as necessary.

Have specific examples. Working code is best. But explain how the obvious alternatives fail in a situation yours excels at. Even if you aren't going to reveal what yours would do, give a situation (simulating the weather, simulating traffic flow in a video game, interacting with a virtual gun), tell where it fails and why. This demonstrates deep familiarity with the problem, suggests that you've looked at and understood all the obvious solutions. I think you tried to convey expertise with your discussion of game history, but that's the wrong expertise. Focus on the problems you're solving.

To reiterate: Talk directly about specific problems you can solve, ideally giving evidence that you really can solve them better. Call it something exciting but not grandiose. Don't talk about yourself or your interests. Practice your pitch, refine your email, whatever until you can succinctly convey, in a couple minutes, that this idea is valuable. This idea is plausible. I am competent and professional and trustworthy. I have achieved what I claim.

And ideally, prepare a crazy demo. If this is as important as you claim, it must be capable of some sort of outrageous thing. Demonstrate 50,000 cars driving realistically on screen. Or achieve best in class results on some problem set (protein folding? weather prediction? mouse neuron classification?). Something that people will look at and think "wow, that's pretty cool."