A kind of similar thing has been floating around for decades now. Combining something like Farming Sim with Euro Truck Sim and with flight sim to create an all-in-one logistics simulator
…omg that sounds AMAZING!!! I haven’t even played any of those games. But like, your friend playing trucking simulator, and you play farming simulator. You grow corn. He trucks it.
This is a cross-game modification system which randomizes different games, then uses the result to build a single unified multi-player game. Items from one game may be present in another, and you will need your fellow players to find items you need in their games to help you complete your own.
Ive played in a few of these. It’s an absolute blast once you get your settings dialed in and balanced to everyone else. If they’re not, then the player in the smallest game tends to have a lot of downtime.
The only downside is that the participants need to be familiar enough with their chosen game to do a randomizer which means roping in casual players is difficult.
Also, there are a massive number of unsupported games that you can play like this that are not part of the main website. multiworld.news/apworlds.html
The only downside is that the participants need to be familiar enough with their chosen game to do a randomizer which means roping in casual players is difficult.
Casual players can be fine with some games. Some actually become easier with Archipelago (e.g. Noita, Risk of Rain 2) since you’re getting meta-progression between runs that normally wouldn’t be there. Others though are especially punishing for new players (Doom comes to mind - you have to be pretty intimately familiar with the levels. There’s keys hidden in secret areas sometimes, for example, and ammo can be very scarce.)
It is a nice concept in theory. It has a bit of resemblance to the metaverse minus monetary enshittification, but there are some challenges to this.
It would for example end up just as dead if the other players got bored of it and stopped playing. Then there is server costs for something where there really isn’t that much realtime interaction in, and all these metagames would need to be just as fun with a global time at a set flow, or be OK with synching only at the end of the day.
These of course aren’t impossible challenges.
You could leave the “online” part to a simple global api backend and skip the gameserver itself to greatly reduce costs. You wouldn’t see the other players in person but you’d see their shops grow each new day, and there could be an NPC of their owner walking around.
You could bankrupt inactive players and give their lands to new players, and implement import/export costs for distant shops incentivizing local trade. You’d probably still want normal NPCs, but their interactions would have to be predetermined each day if you don’t have a game server running all day, and want to prevent cheating.
The implementation difficulty and cost greatly varies depending on how much interaction and fairness you want, but setting up an API server is fairly easy if you don’t worry about scaling in case the game really takes off.
Bought it on a whim and really enjoyed it. Kond of docked around to survive and upgrade now gotta run back and do those level based tasks I over looked originally.
50s here. I’ve had that too. Sometimes due to low mental health, but often just a change in interests. Gaming is one hobby I’ve kept coming back to since the early 1980s, and overall it’s pretty constant. Other hobbies have come and gone - I think it helps to have a variety of things to spend your time doing, rather than one big one.
What isn’t constant is the type of games. FPS used to be amazing, but now I get motion sickness with many, including some third person games. Also my reactions are slower with age, so online is often frustrating. I adapt by playing more cosy and strategy games. Factorio Space Age currently taking a lot of my time, but I’ve a few that I keep going back to.
I finally cracked into Phase 4 of Satisfactory when I haven’t been able to do that before, so I’m enjoying seeing some new things but also feeling a bit analysis paralysis on where to go/what to focus on. Currently trying to build a cool sky train that connects my bases. Also working on the Castlevania DLC for VS and doing my best not to just “look up the answers” to all the new content. I don’t have a ton of nostalgia for Castlevania outside of Aria of Sorrow, but I’m enjoying the sheer amount of new stuff they added in.
And lastly, Rise of the Golden Idol came out yesterday and consumed my evening. I loved that first game so much that this was a no-brainer.
As others have said loss of interest can happen and the interest can of course come back with a vengeance. I’d recommend picking up another hobby until gaming suddenly grasps your interest again.
Two types of hobbies that have lasting positive impacts on people are creative hobbies and physical hobbies. Your brain is wired to invent and create and your body is wired to move, so being able to do each for fun is brilliant for your mental and physical health. Hop on a bicycle, go for a walk and enjoy the crisp fall air, stop off at that gym you forgot to cancel your membership for, and start doing it regularly.
For creative hobbies you can get a pack of printer paper for a couple of bucks and a pack of Crayola crayons or colored pencils and just start doodling. If you suck at drawing make wierd geometric shapes to rebuild the fine motor skills that computers have killed. Or if you want something more in-depth model making is always great because it has elements of fantasy while having entry points at any skill level. Personally I’ve been getting back into model railroading which if that seems boring to watch a train go around in circles, consider it has its own table top roleplay scene in the form of operations
The YouTube channel Stop Skeletons From Fighting made an entertaining and informative series of videos on the Zeebo and its games. Definitely recommend it.
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