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The Massive Genre - In Single Player

Name:	Bryan Rayner
Date Posted:	May 23, 2006
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Blog post

This is my first forray into documenting my particular twist on the art of game design. I already have made many 2d games, although primitive (I'm in highschool, c'mon) that display a unique flair for snagging in players, and becoming quite addictive.

For torque, I am going to invent a new genre: The Massively Single Player Online Role Playing Game.

Here's how it works:

The gameworld will be rather complex, with every aspect (although not level design) being affected by other aspects, and the player. Thus, multiple pathways in the story can be branched out. The gameworld is also changed on a database on the server computer, this change is the accumulative effect of every player in the game. For example, a player decides to attack and destroy a freighter. The freighter was carrying ammo, which will reduce the ammount in the destination, which in turn will change the price of ammo across the system (although not by much). This relative data is refered to the server. Every day the game is played, the game will update with the server world. This in turn will effect all worlds, effecting all storylines.

In short, you have a massively single player game.

So, my question is: Will it become a new form of game genre? Or will it just be a class of it's own, wether good or bad? Only time will tell!

Submit your own resources!

Michael Vanderpool (May 23, 2006 at 01:15 GMT)

sounds like an interesting new Genre. I havnt heard of anything of this kind before. It would be something interesting to play to say the least :)

Treb Connell (formerlyMasterTreb (May 23, 2006 at 01:29 GMT)

Actually sounds a bit like spore. What players do have affects on other players but there is no direct contact.

Matthew Langley (May 23, 2006 at 01:40 GMT)

Well Oblivion & Morrowind are the same genre minus the Online part, so I would imagine adding that the genre could work as well.

X-Tatic (May 23, 2006 at 03:01 GMT)

This is what Spawn does.

Maxwell Marsh (May 23, 2006 at 03:43 GMT)

So basicly its multiplayer, but not simotaniuosly? Intresting.

Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314) (May 23, 2006 at 06:24 GMT)

Makes me think of Spore too. Great concept, though remember to set baby steps for the beginning at least.

Joe Bird (May 23, 2006 at 08:28 GMT)

Yep, cool concept. Check out a Spore demonstration to see how Will Wright is doing it. I think eventually Sim City and The Sims will move in that direction as well since they have wanted something like this for a while, but have mostly resorted to asset sharing through their exchange site until now.

Ian \"Xest\" Winter (May 23, 2006 at 12:17 GMT)

Ultima Online X or whatever it was called followed this idea IIRC. Also spore.

The biggest issue with it is for an indie, once again content development. The fact is if you can develop enough content for this type of game it's not relatively too much additional work to go all the way and just make a full on MMO.

David .NfoCipher. Bunt (May 23, 2006 at 17:04 GMT)

This is actually a very old idea - and one that worked. Door games on BBSes come to mind, like tradewars, esterian conquest, legion of the red dragon, etc. Man, I miss those old games.

Joe Bird (May 24, 2006 at 20:41 GMT)

Thanks for reminding me! I used to be addicted to BBS games on my commodore 64, especially Tradewars.

Brian "Ayavaron" Ross II (May 25, 2006 at 00:12 GMT)

I think the online aspect of this seems a little unnecessary. If everyone is playing, than there is a chance that a person can be screwed out of what they like just because of some other players.

If the game is meant to be played singleplayer, the player should be allowed to play the game in any way they please. They should be able to decide what they want to do as they play and it shouldn't be up to other players. The database should be kept in the individual player's computer, I think.

However, multiplayer-esque things might still be neat and fun. If you can do a lot wiht your world, it'd be fun to visit other people's world. It's also fun to have an online market place for your in-game stuff. It's all up to you of course. This is just my opinion.

But I also recomend you read some of the stuff Sean Howard wrote about a game he never intended to finish. http://www.squidi.net/blog/gd/zombie/index.php It talks about a lot of really cool ideas for random generation. If your actions affect things in game, it might also be cool to affect the variables in random generation.

Good luck with your project.
Edited on May 25, 2006 00:15 GMT

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