Hi aramstudios, good questions.

Well, the first person won''t get born ofcourse. To get started we will have to cheat and put people in it without them being born because simply there are no people there yet.

Time on that place would be 1/100st, so after 1 month your character is like 10 years old, that''s a jong boy, after 2 months you are in physical top condition, a twentier. So after 1.5 month you will be able to make children yourself.

So the question pops up, what will you do for such a long time in the game? What is the activity that keeps people bussy all the time. What''s enjoyable when you play?

They will have to farm. The farming is an activity that gives downtime. This means that you plant your seeds and you than have to wait. This gives people the opportunity to cummunicate, play with eachother while waiting for the crops to grow. In the meantime they have to protect there crops to ofcourse. The rules here should be made as such that it is economically wisely to cooperate with others so that youy get team farming.

These aspects are not worked out yet.

Can you become a dictator. Well you definetely can become a leader enven a political leader if the community has created political structures that all the members respect. The danger of being a dictator is that people will flee, will chose to get born somewhere else into another community. So if you act like a dictator your community won''t be successfull probably as this is not the real world and people have more choice here. You will probably soon get murdered by some of your close powerfriends who take over power than or maybe through an invasion, attack of another community.

But the important aspect is that this should be an environment where people start to organize themselves into bigger structures, bigger communities with leadership structures, an own identity of the community.

Another nice feature would be that you can start several lives at the same time so that you are playing different characters in that world whithout other people knowing it. This allows for interesting experimentation of other people. Spionage will be because of this a very important factor. And TRUST too. Trust is everything. If you do not trust someone you should avoid them or kill them as in this world stabbing in the back is as easy as in real life.

Maybe I''m trowing to much through eachother. Anyways I appeciate your reactions a lot as I find that there are not many! (Did I present this a bit too chaotic maybe?)

Thaks masterconjunctor I''m glad you like it.

So tell me what is it that you like? What images appear in front of you when reading this stuff that attract you? Is there something you don''t like that much?

greets,
MarcDM

that game sounds like it would make a great experiment into sociology however for it to be popular, you''d need to make the other world very different from our own. perhaps a fantasay or other-wordly environment. the needs would be the same but it should be different enoguh from our world to make people want to play it.

there should be very specific regions of this world with people that are distinctly different with each region. a person can be born into a particular clan or village and have to live and grow in that community. mabye they''ll travel and meet new people. mabye on their travels they''ll meet danger. who knows. the goal of the game should be player defined and have a lot of options. mabye a goal one person woudl have is to form and lead their own community. mabye one persons goal is to conquer an existing community. maybe one person''s goal is to have a lot of wives or another person''s goal is to be really rich, or to bake a lot of break and be the best darn baker in the land (remember UO?)

it could work but not as a clone of our real life.

My question is what do you do when some stronger people go around, terroizing the countryside, killing all the farmers, and taking their food?

While it''s a very neat idea, I have little faith in the players of mmorpg''s to build something.

When you consider downtime (someone burned down the farm while I was at work, the kids starve because I went on vacation for a week), and the fact that there doesn''t seem to be a direct reward for raising kids (or listening to parents, or helping your borthers and sisters), the important thing would seem to be attracting just the sort of people you want to play your game.


Good luck with it.

Kyotan, there is no reason to ecept that it should be a fantasy setting or other-world setting in order to be popular.
I would love to plat multiplayer online game wherein you are a citizen of the city, every citizen is a real player, and in this society you can become a cop, a poltician, a maffiosie. This is nofantasy or other world but still attractive. (though I do like the idea of an other-world, fantasy cartoony like setting)

The game (a prefer world) you described is a very open-ended game, whit lots of possibilities to do in that world,... a living environment.
That's excactly what I'm looking for to create.


You said that 'it could work but not as a clone for/of real life'. Why not? Isn't real life one big game either? What exately do you picture when you say this so I can understans what exactly it is that you do not find attractive at the idea of 'a simulatiob of real life'?

(Do you mean something with the (UltimaOnline?) between brakets?)

[edited by - Marc De Mesel on June 2, 2002 7:51:47 PM]

quote: Original post by ThoughtBubble
My question is what do you do when some stronger people go around, terroizing the countryside, killing all the farmers, and taking their food?

While it's a very neat idea, I have little faith in the players of mmorpg's to build something.

When you consider downtime (someone burned down the farm while I was at work, the kids starve because I went on vacation for a week), and the fact that there doesn't seem to be a direct reward for raising kids (or listening to parents, or helping your borthers and sisters), the important thing would seem to be attracting just the sort of people you want to play your game.


Good luck with it.

Yhoughtbubble, to answer your questions you should only find the solution why those things that you described don't happen in real life.

For instance your first example, what happens if a bunch of aggresice hunk together and start to go kill all the farmers. Well if the gameworld would be sittuated in our times now than the answer would be:

Well, it is possible that indeed a bunch of crazy people hunk together and start to kill all farmers but that won't ruining the gameexperience from all the players in our world because:

People have organized themselves. They created a police corps that intervenes whenever people do damaging things to other people. They defined what damaging is. They also have communication tools like the phone. So sooner or later there would be a farmer who succeede in phoning the cops to come and help him ... .

[edited by - Marc De Mesel on June 7, 2002 4:05:00 PM]

One point i have to make- what if you want to play for more than a year - you char would be dead after about 10 months?

Hypotter, you simply start a new character, get born again.

You could also play several different characters at the same time in the same world without other people knowing it that you are the same person behind those different characters.
(at the same time I mean while the other characters still live, not controling 2 ccharacters at the same time, you have to log of before you can log in with another character.

If you play the game like this you always have different characters to build on and that way you get more freedom.

[edited by - Marc De Mesel on June 4, 2002 5:36:36 AM]

I have the impression that there hasn''t been much thought here on this subject. I would have been glad to meet some people who are interested in this new worlds.

Comon people, Scream it out loud!

An original idea ye, but i''m not sure if it would work, for example what happens when you have more people wanting to join the game than people having sex. Another one is the outlook some people (Me included to be honest) would have on the game : Whats the point in doing it in a game if you can do it in real life. Anyway i''m sure you could work around these and other problems.

One question i would like to ask people here as well: Why are there so many developers jumping on the MMORPG badwagon? I don''t have any problem with MMORPGs but there are loads of them and almost all of them are very similarm, usually with a Fantasy (Elf,Dwarf,Orc) or Sci-Fi setting its getting a bit boring.