Hello community! My first ever post, please dont flame me or tell me im stupid, if im repeating someone else its because im new to the forum. Please if you can read as much as possible. Thanks !! To break this mould of the game after game that is now being released by the games empire EA, something new has to come out. We all saw how revolutionairy half life was. And arguably it wasnt the defining game of its genre, however, its gameplay and style and graphics were revolutionairy. It was easy to pick up and play, the characters took notice from you when you toddled on past. I would not be able to tell you which was the first successful MMPORPG game, everquest? I'm sure someone would be able to tell me. Anyway my point is, these games have broken the mould, and set something new. And from their success comes a whole host of other games all trying to follow in their footsteps only with slightly different twists. (stick with it an idea comes soon, a bloody good one) Where games writing is important, is in this area. To come up with the new, and the different, and COMPLETLEY forget about the action hero who wanders through his linear world created for him killing everything in his path. Or the level 1 character that levels his way to victory in 5 long months. Sure these are successful formats, but now, as a writing community we need to "think outside of the box" Ideas that get thrown out that are completley away from the norm are often immediatley thought to be bad ideas, "wouldnt work" "too difficult". I have an idea which maybe alot of you would say that to. The idea, more of a concept than a story uses to its advantage us, the developers and the enthusaists everywhere around the globe who enjoy making and playing games. What if there were a game which completley relies on webcontent to work. If there were a world created in a game so big that you could wonder around it for days, the disk space required for it would be MASSIVE. Im talking gigabytes. What if there were so many levels for the game, so many experiences for the game that you could never finish it? My point is, is that halflifes modding became so successful that you could spend weeks months or even years playing them all. But what if you made a game that was just that. You make a top end engine, borrowing if neccesairy. And you make the beginnings of a game. A list of characters, the ability to completley design your character, even using 3d Studio max, or downloading one made by a modeller somewhere. The character in this game all start in the same place. and form then on in, they are faced with choices, of where they want to go. Opening one door, or getting onto a boat and sailing somewhere may require some downloading of an island developed by some people in france. But it is downloaded completley seemlessly. In this island, you are faced with whatever the developers have thrown at you, and you come out of this island whenever you please to go somewhere else, carrying with you anything or anyone else you got from the island with you. The point im trying unsuccessfully to make is. Could a game be made that seemlessly downloaded webcontent to make it an almost never ending experience as it is in constant development by gaming fans and players all round the world. There could be oceans, islands, dungeons, cities, sky scrapers, airplanes, spaceships, planets, blackholes, 1000's of AI characters, lakes, fields, dessers, polar ice caps, boats, jungles, rivers, mountains, caves, animals. A completley never ending discovery of new things to do, and new missions to be had. A sort of never ending morrowind. It could be ported to a community based game. What if, an area designed by a group of designers had a mission to do on it. And the first person to do this mission gained some sort of power over this area. The person in power of that area could then rally together an army, to go and take over another area. All of this online? But the servers would only serve certain areas? as there would need to be hundreds. People would say no team is big enough to complete such a task, but there are thousands of us, all waiting to develop. I've seen the talent of you all when developing under a pre made enginge. With pre made tools. Your works are fantastic. Just imagine if that could be seemlessly put together to make a complete online world. run completley by the gamers. Its THE perfect game. its not even a game its a new world. You could be a hitman in 2020 or a war lord in 1066, because a scientest from dehli created a time machine in his developed area. You could be the ruler of a financial empire, or the king of a giant island. Is it just a dream? or could this ever happen. I dont think i explained it too well. Please excuse any spelling errors or grammar mistakes.

you've gone too far ahead. Hackers are a problem with ANY game especially online. And when i say seemlessly, i mean all downloading is done in game, in the background. Your character is told to come back in however long, and to go and explore somewhere else. etc etc. as for people making their own island, place etc, they would have to go through checking from someone first before they are added to the game. as for UBER weaponry, why does there have to be uber weaponry? and walking from one side of somewhere to another for 30 minutes, whats to stopp you having cars? boats? horses? aircraft?

hacking is of course always an issue, but the presence of hackers and cheaters cannot stop the development of games.

Quote: Original post by phillyharper
the disk space required for it would be MASSIVE. Im talking gigabytes

*GASP*
You realise that games have been in the GB ranges for over 5 years now yea?

Also, the first Successful online game as Ultimate Online, but there was even a game called The Realm online that came out before that.

Your idea sounds good, but you would need a pretty big infrastructure inplace for that.. I mean if you have 4000 people making worlds then you are going to need a team to screen them all and approve them and review them and check up on them when they make changes.. Because all of these worlds will be 'seamlessly' a part of your game you will want all of the worlds to at least be legal and not be sick places were perverts go to look at child porn.
The idea also isnt' new unfortunately, there are open source projects like this that have been going on for a long time..Hell Adobe even released and toyed with its Atmosphere product which is free to use and it isn't booming or even popular(my guess is that you haven't even heard of it)
So the model just doesn't work.. you can't let players do the majority of the creating in your game because then you will end up with 5000 12 year old kids creating absolute shit levels/worlds and 15 people putting a lot of effort and time into it..
So your players are going to have to wade through a sea of crap just to find anything worth playing and by that time they will probably have cancelled their membership, if you are charging them

also, if a mission is to require stealth, what is to stop the server from removing all items from your inventory, or whatever you may have in order to complete the mission. The mission its self will not be that rigid. there are of course technical issues but they can always always be resolved. Nothing is impossible

sorry sorry sorry sorry, honest mistake on the gigabytes. Yes i did know about gmaes being in gigabytes. I meant 100's and 100's of gigabytes, is it testlabytes? tessabytes? what is that word?

Obviously each world would be screened. Theres no way youd let 12 year olds making shit ruin a top end game. Each world would have to be developed in a professional manner, and then put forward to a screening committee.

And no you dont charge anyone. A free open source development

So...it's free, but requires massive amounts of resources, both in personel and in equipment. Who's footing the bill? Advertisers?

"there are of course technical issues but they can always always be resolved. Nothing is impossible"

I think you're going to have to think this through some more. "Nothing is impossible" isn't a very good solution to the various problems others have posted. Rather than wave these issues away with a "well, we can figure it out," you're going to have to find actual, physical, real world solutions. Granted, you're just toying with the idea at this point, which is perfectly fine... Just understand that these are some of the issues you're going to have to deal with.

Quote: Original post by phillyharper
Theres no way youd let 12 year olds making shit ruin a top end game. Each world would have to be developed in a professional manner, and then put forward to a screening committee.

And no you dont charge anyone. A free open source development

Levels and maps:
What makes the professional teams create levels and maps for your game instead of their game? How do you make your game engine so impressive that those professionals will rather use yours instead of theirs? What is the economy behind this top end game?

Seemless download:
Why having seemless download? All the maps are in different style (artistically and gameplaywise). Even with seemless download, will the player feel immersed? Of will he just feel that he has kazaa on and is just downloading a bunch of free games that use the same engine?

Quote: Original post by phillyharper
Is it just a dream? or could this ever happen. I dont think i explained it too well. Please excuse any spelling errors or grammar mistakes.

It is not a dream. What you need to do now, is to create an immersive (themed) graphical forum / chat program, where you allow the "player" to signup, customize their look, allow them to discuss on game dev issues, and allow them to browse, download, buy, and subscribe to your selected set of professional grade games. This is all very ordinary, but the evolutionary thing is, that you sugarcoat all the links and options as if they are game features.

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