Yeah, this seems totally reasonable...
http://launch2.universeprojects.com
I mean, why hasn't it been made already? People are just lazy. Obvs.
I mean, why hasn't it been made already? People are just lazy. Obvs.
Comments
*tongue in cheek*
It would be cool, though I too had (have) dreams of one day building a game along these lines, though not so much having to go through the ages, more having a freeform style of play in an existing universe. (Like Sword Art Online for instance, the Seed, not the pre-existing worlds)
If this is real, the only certainty I see is that when they Kickstart it, and they succeed, this will forever be the game project that critics of Kickstarter point to and say: "See, I told you Kickstarter is a fickle system bursting at its virtual seams with broken promises and unctuous money snatchers".
If it is a joke, then I'm amazed at how the narrator managed to sound so serious. LOL. And good on them.
It would be sad if this was a scam, if this were serious, or it fails.
I don't see how it could possibly be achieved though... Maybe if Google built it.
It would really suck if it was a scam though...I intensly disklike people stealing from other people.
Personally it sounds like a really bad game... No NPCs? If every character in the game is a person, then why would you go to a town to sell anything? Some dude would have to stand his character behind a counter and run a shop. For fun?
Why would anyone want a game world that was so huge, and then terminally under-populate it? Even if you had WoW numbers, 12 million people on a planet aren't going to fill it up. Not even almost, and it only gets worse as your player numbers go down... There's a reason games compress people into areas that's not simply technical. Minecraft already has the sort of abandoned world exploration feeling going on (which is about the only fun I can see this game producing), you don't need a huge MMO to make that happen.
I feel like it's often the constraints in a game that make it fun, trying to remove "all" constraints ends up with nothing being interesting at all. Even the sandbox games have constraints to drive gameplay: In GTA you simply can't be a nice human being, it's impossible. The constraint is that you never have any other option than crime and that's what makes the sandbox navigable without being overwhelmingly bland.
But it's weird, the video got me excited because everytime they suggested some game play mechanic I thought "HEY! it's just like real life....so maybe I should just go out and do that stuff!". So maybe this is a really weird intro to some kind of Augmented reality game they are planning :P
...But a game which simulates life, but is much easier than life, would be incredibly compelling. The Sims wasn't a failure, and that had child rearing and going to the toilet in it.
Sims, Second Life, many MMOs, etc, all kinda live on that premise. Go do stuff, because it's easier to do stuff by clicking than by doing stuff by actually climbing actual lava-drenched mountains.
I totally agree though that if they were to really completely duplicate earth and populate it with people who are willing to be in it alone we'd be quite alone. However if we could all build giant robots size of continents and battle them it'll sort out the under-crowding. Or create giant robot armies and hunt other players. What other people want to do is up to them, grow a rainforest. Or grow giant mutated rabbits. Dunno.
I'm pretty sure all that schpiel about an underpopulated live size world and whatever isn't what people hear when they hear the pitch, it's that OOOH YOU CAN DO ANYTHING and IT'S MASSIVE.
Seems like a giant badly thought out pitch. Oh wait.
See, everyone thinks about being Neo, but doesn't notice when a concept is actually offering you the ability to be Man With Phone #3.
Which would make me Flying Man With Shades #12334. Sounds like another MMO. I dislike MMOs.
I'm still honestly curious as to what makes this game idea so compelling to many people: So far the best explanation I have is that it's vague enough for people to impose their own enjoyment criteria on the game they imagine, which then becomes a reflection of whatever their fantasy of empowerment might be. I think the only way to get people to see your game this way is to never mention any kind of constraint at all, which can only really create dissatisfaction when the final thing eventually comes out - See what happened with Spore.
I think people find the game idea compelling because the pitch video is a really good pitch video. It's basically saying play the game you've always wanted. Which I really want to do...I want to play the perfect game. Whether this game can ever be that or even a working product is something else entirely. The video doesn't say that there will be no constraints. It actually says that at the very least it will have all the constraints this world has because it's a world modeled after our own. But it in the end it's still a marketing video. I don't think there are any game trailer videos that mention the constraints in the way you seem to want this one to do(but that could just be my ignorance).
Also, anyone else noticed how Neo never wears leather?
I don't think any serious dev house would seriously do something like this seriously, but just as people who aren't entrepreneurs think everyone should just start their own business for fun, people who buy into this stuff aren't us. At all.
I didn't really think about what kind of black anyone in the Matrix wore. They just all wore black :)
OFF TOPIC : I watch movies OCD mode...I also hate that the main characters of barnyard are male cows....I really hate that...
@Tuism: That's why I'm curious about the kinds of things people imagine when they hear about this game. To me it instantly sounds bad, just like the idea of a gun that can shoot through walls with insane damage and a super-fast refire rate sounds like a horrible idea in a CoD game. But to a lot of players, that sounds like something they'd totally want - it's only when they've modded that into the game and someone else wields it against them that it feels unfair or broken. I find that kind of context switch from emotional "Wouldn't that be COOOL!" to a slightly more holistic one really interesting. When does that happen and how do people learn to do it? It's a core skill for good game designers, as far as I'm concerned.
But the point when people discover it, it's like OOOOOH POWER.
Another example: Magic. Power creep. Players are always chasing that next OMGIMUSTHAVEITINMYDECK rare. But when it saturates, another pile of OMGetc cards are needed to keep people interested. Then it continues. I quit that merri-go-round a long time ago, but many people still love it.
So people aren't designers and don't care for broken. They enjoy getting what seems broken because it'll make them UBER. Till everyone else is uber. Of course WE RECOGNISE THIS. And we also recognise the commercial opportunity that is in monetising broken things. And while some of us reject it, some of us make MMOs and Magic and embrace it.
@dislekcia, Do you mean that because they say it's an MMO that the player will infer some constraints(because of past experience), but that those constraints will not be present because the designers specifically took them out to make the game the "best ever"? Is that what you're trying to get at? Otherwise I'm not sure what you we're talking about...