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.
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.)
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.
Steam just apperently cut off support for windows 7. I better still be able to launch the games I paid for. At least offline. I haven’t tried yet. I only bought a few games.
They did. Support was discontinued from the start of 2024. That you’ve been using it up to now without any problems is literally because they didn’t break anything on purpose. As long as none of the software changes it will continue to work.
Nice idea but unfortunately good luck convincing everyone to collaborate into single super-game and integrate each “X simulator” as DLC assuming everyone also adhere guideline and consistent
Man, I managed to completely forget about that. My dad was really, really into that game. Like, that’s about all he did for most of 4 years and ended up leaving my mom for someone he met in game.
I guess SL wasn’t really any worse about that than any other game, plenty of people meet and get married in MMOs, but I think the raging custom-content sex parties in SL probably didn’t help matters at the time.
Wonder how that game is doing these days. Cursory web search says it’s still alive. I probably would have found it to be pretty interesting if I wasn’t so turned away from it by my family experience.
I was playing the demo of TCG sim today and was just thinking that myself. In fact, I’m pretty sure I watched a YouTuber play a sort of life sim game where you could do just about anything but it had full 3D graphics and an isometric view. I wish I could remember the name, because from what I remember you could start a business or be a criminal, or work your way up to CEO or even mayor.
If your goal is to achieve realistic looking city streets the best way to do that isn’t an expensive online infrastructure and much more advanced simulation.
If the developers had the skills and time to do that they could more easily have more dense NPC crowds and richer local simulation.
The reason the games aren’t already like that is likely just cost, talent, and target performance, which you’d need a lot more of to execute your plan.
Give all of those things a try. None of them are “wrong”. Experiment and see what works best with the type of people you want to spend time with. Just don’t get discouraged if your success rate is low (some people just won’t be interested) and respect people’s decisions if they choose to ignore you.
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