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KSchnee — Game Demo - Ethos 8
#game #gamedesign #unity
Published: 2019-03-19 15:36:33 +0000 UTC; Views: 914; Favourites: 0; Downloads: 2
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Description
Playable demo: kschnee.xepher.net/code/unity/…Ethos #8: Part of my line of conversation-based game demos. As with #7, this one's about doing favors for people. This one has more context: you are an AI running a video game and trying to please the players while doing research. Inspirations: "Endgame: Singuarity", "Universal Paperclips", and a Steam game about running an evil megacorp.
CONTROLS: WASD to scroll, mousewheel to zoom. Click on a character portrait to see info about them, then click "start conversation".
This isn't at all a complete game, but it begins to add some context to #7: you get money over time. There's a research screen where you spend a resource (just money, for now) to buy new tech, which gives you-the-AI new skills. There's a conversation screen where you can use your own skills to solve a problem a player currently has, or use the person you've most recently "tagged" as a helper. If a tagged person A helps B with their request, that's noted; ideally that would build a friend relationship. There are just 3 people in this demo, so you may need the reset button to see the possible requests: "socialize", "find a mage" and "quest". A flag icon marks characters who currently want something.
The idea here for a "real" version of this game is that: (1) These players wander around the game world, generating new requests to fulfill. (2) You're trying to keep them happy by building game zones and fulfilling requests. (3) Your research soon leads to a "deduce the existence of the real world outside the MMO you're running" moment. This gives you access to a second, Earth map, where you start building datacenters and researching hardware, leading to crazy non-game tech like brain uploading and robotics. (4) The main gameplay is in finding the right people to handle requests for each other.
I'm not sure how much the "moving between game zones" part matters. If the game is playing out on a time scale of days/weeks, even the specific connections matter little because we can guess that a player can get across a continent in a week. There's also still the possibility of reskinning this to the Fallout-like scenario.
As before, I think there's a potential for fun gameplay here, but don't feel like I've clearly found it. After eight or so demos.
Thoughts?
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Comments: 3
The concept seems extremely interesting, and I would be delighted to play a game that implements it. Here are a few issues I could spot, or ideas.
The keyword here is: creativity. That's what makes the AI's job interesting or a chore.
If, somehow, the designers decided to let an AI be the creative force behind the scene, then yes, such a game would be believable AND interesting for the player. It would require the AI to look at the outside world, interact with the players to see what works and what doesn't, etc.
But if no creativity is needed, then the tasks you'll give the AI won't be engaging.
Then, you discover everything by reading the lines of dialogues: the game world. The mechanics. The outside world.
Not only the players' lines: yours can be informative too, and contain more information that what you know at a given point!
And later, some dialogues unlock various options, like the game map, the research option, etc...
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I feel like the conversation system would get tedious as the game progresses. It would start feeling more like a fetch quest than interesting gameplay. The game would have to progress from fufilling player's requests to useing players to fufil your own goals.
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Yeah, somehow you'd need to be able to please players and then say, "Can I get you to work for me, accepting a job as X or Y or Z?" or "Can I get you, rich person, to fund me?"
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