“The Game”
Exposition
I think many people have some idea for something big, complicated and epic what you want to make. Some idea; like write a book about universe and everything inside it. And maybe at some point you started to write it and started organize sections and chapter. And may be you started couple a story lines or may be you have idea about a game and you think it would be awesome to make MMO game, game simulator to Oasis game from Ready Player one.
For me after I started developing, putting things on paper I was running out of ideas and direction and just motivation. Questioning: why I am doing it? Is not it waste of the time? I need to find some fundamental values I passion about. Some examples of “wrong” values. In quotes because they are not necessary wrong, but they are not fundamental enough. Mobile games, augmented reality, VR, MMO, social, addictive, user generated content, crowd sourcing, open world. As I mention before it is not necessary wrong but it is not fundamental and is was making me to question: Why the game has to have it? would it make it successful game? Is it right thing to do this way?
Values
I grew up in Russia on brothers Strugatsky books. Brothers Strugatsky are Russian SciFi writers, in many books they are challenging idea of happiness. Spoiler warning! In the book Roadside Picnic the main character at the end of the book found the golden orb which can make any wish true and this character did had only one wish in his mind: HAPPINESS FOR EVERYBODY, FREE, AND NO ONE WILL GO AWAY UNSATISFIED!
This thing stuck in my head and become my meaning of my life.
Later on in my life I realized I do not know what makes me happy, but I have something inside me which give me happiness, also I realized I cannot make happy other people, they have to do it by themself. But there is something which can help become them a little bit happier.
It is hard to explain what is it, I’ll give some examples:
- Cup of coffee at morning
- Sunlight at morning in your window
- Dying zombies and skeletons under sun in Minecraft after restless night
- Chasing and hugging and kissing your kids
- Seating on the beach and watching waves
I think the game what I want to make should feel like this. I want the game bring this bit of happiness everyday to billions of people.
Conflict
Billions of people quite a big number, all of them have different set of buttons what make them happy, different cultural background (Star wars empirial march cannot make exited a person who never watch any Star wars movie), different dreams, different personalities.
I realized a lot of people would not like what I like. I realized it is hard and probably not possible to learn culture and needs of other people.
I was doing some research and was trying to figure out Fortnight phenomena. First I had hard time to find the person who likes Fortnight, second the person had hard time to explain why she likes the game.
I was trying to talk with random people and understand what dream what makes them exited. It is hard, it feels like they do not know by themself.
Billions of people is a big number. Even if I knew exactly how to bring this bit of happiness personally too every single one, someone has to program it, model, animate, it is a lot of content and a lot of work. Where to get army of artists?
Proposal
I play two games at the moment VRChat and Minecraft. Both of the games are driven by player generated content. VRChat provides SDK to allow players to make worlds and avatars, Minecraft main gameplay is building. In VRChat you can create quite complicated content you can use all power of Unity and SDK has rich set of perf labs, but learning curve is steep. Minecraft is very simple a lot of kids play Minecraft, but you can build only big things in Minecraft red-stone mechanics is limited.
I want to combine power from both games, my thinking is to make the game like Minecraft and add in-game device which can make things smaller. So players would be able to make all different new in game items, mobs, NPC, avatars using similar like in Minecraft blocks and program them using similar as in Minecraft red-stone circuitry and when make them smaller. Also have ability to make a copy of the item.
Players can make a clone of the whole world and make a parallel world.
It is MMO game.
It is voxel based game like Minecraft. Players can make new items, mobs, NPCs, quests, avatars, mounts, skybox, sun/moon/suns/moons.
This system would be powerful enough to be able to make mini games: escape room, simple 3D shouter, build quest line, puzzle game.
Players can make a parallel world, exact copy of the world the player right now located.
They can talk with each other using voice or text chat. Ability to hear them depends of how far away people from you. Like in VRChat.
Game will have phone so you can talk with friends regardless where you are in the world. Also you can teleport to your friends.
You can install in your world a teleport and it will give teleportation stones. When you use the stone you will teleport to the place where teleport is installed.
Owner of the world can give different permissions to other players: visit, build, clone.