Design For The Game I’d Rather Be Playing

Oh wonderful, it’s Monday again.

Over the weekend I spent some time pondering The Game I’d Rather Be Playing. That game is not preCU Star Wars Galaxies, or an emu of it, or WoW, or anything I’ve been into previously. And although I know you all love my endless rants on politics and philosophy (/grin), and my criticism of what’s out there, I’ve been lax on specifying what exactly it is that I want.

Well, this weekend, after discovering a serendipitous link to Dunny, an infinitely customizable bunny, and to a site that marries this splendid idea to the ever iconic Darth Vader helmet
I’ve become convinced that the future is infinitely customizable, and the perfect game is the hub – the Vader helmet, or the vinyl bunny – that is constantly being customized.

It works like this.

The Set Up

This game takes place in a distant space colony a few generations after humans sent a satellite containing a whole lot of DNA into space. The package was retrieved and downloaded by sentient aliens, who ran the install sequence, thus enabling the humans to extract themselves, educate themselves via tutorials and establish their presence in a largely uninhabited solar system. The headquarters for the humans is a large city under a dome, known as The Hub. From The Hub one can travel to various locations.

Logistics

The Hub is free. The Sub-Areas require paid admission. The Hub contains auctions, banks, nightclubs, stores, apartments and a media center where players can get news, help files and stats.

The stores and apartments are player owned, instanced, can be set to public or private and are infinitely customizable.

Instead of having multiple copies of the universe on different servers, the hub functions as login server for one or more subarea servers. So, instead of (example) ten identical servers, there can be a few hub servers, each connecting to ten different subarea servers. You could even make it possible to travel between the hubs.

Player avatars

Four races. Normal boring humans are one.

Another (“orc”) is large, stocky and orc-like and has fighting/strength bonuses.

A third (“elf”) is slender, graceful and has defense/speed bonuses.

And a fourth (“hermit crabs”) are small creatures that can inhabit the bodies of people, robots or animals, thus switching their avatar at will, with bonuses depending on whatever avatar they’re wearing.

Avatars are infinitely customizable with regard to clothes, facial features, hair, coloring.

Sub-Areas

From the hub, you can travel to whichever of these exciting sub-areas you’ve paid the fee to unlock:

Low Tech Fighting World
Primitive combat against humanoids and animals in the far reaches of this solar system, in regions where “magic” applies and technology doesn’t work right. Featuring quests, instances and all the other things found in other MMOs.

High Tech Fighting World
Just like the low tech one, except all or most of the action takes place in a futuristic city and instead of beating up animals there are various kinds of robots, and instead of fighting them with magic one fights with technology. The actual game engine can be interchangeable with the low tech one.

Space
Much like the space combat in SWG, with player-built ships.

Casino
A wide array of games like maj jongg, scrabble, chess, cards, sudoku, etc.

Racetrack
Vehicles, animals, footraces, police obstacle course type races with targets that pop up.

Platform
Mario-like cartoony platform arcade games are here.

Role-Playing Holodeck A world of player content, with elaborate uninhabited pre-built sets, instances where players can build their own custom sets, and skills which allow them to do such things as record and edit video and sound (for making in-game movies), play music, dance, do stunt fighting (all the animations associated with the combat games, they just don’t actually damage anyone).

Manufacturing Center
This is where all the crafting takes place. Crafting requires resources from the PVE worlds, which can also be bought with cash prizes from the casino and racing and platform worlds. Players collecting resources have the option to sell them directly to the manufacturing center. Manufacturers then create products which are sold in The Hub.

Graphics are different in each subarea. Although peoples' avatars are very customized in The Hub, once they enter the subareas they either become their vehicles or wear standard armor, thus limiting the amount of work the server has to do to individuate them. The subarea servers can have places where avatars can socialize out of uniform with full avatar detail.

Guilds

Players can belong to one combat guild and any number of non-combat guilds.

PVP

There is a computer generated main enemy, The Bad Guys (TBG), who can show up anywhere to compete with players.

In some areas, players can work for TBG, thus allowing them to kill other players, but they can expect TBG to use them and cast them aside. Players may not reach high rank within TBG.

Most pvp is player content and based on combat guilds struggling for control of strategic areas.

There is also a “cops and robbers” system. From time to time, players get dialogue boxes asking them if they want to commit a crime. Crimes start out small (speeding, drugs that give a mild buff, petty theft) and as the criminal becomes more experienced, they work their way up to team bank heists and large scale smuggling rings and assassinations.

Players who would rather be cops can sign up at the police academy and be enabled to perform arrests. This means they can force a criminal player to either pay a fine or fight. High level cops have access to better tracking, the ability to call for back up and crowd control weapons.

Chat

Other games reward griefers by giving them access to a wide range of people to torment. Not my game.

My game lets you set your chat filter when you start an account: Family, Normal or NC-17.

Family channel has cuss filters, moderators reviewing chat and has a community flagging system in place. Rulebreakers are either locked out of the game for a set period of time or busted down to Normal if the account has designated that. System messages go here.

Normal channel has only a community flagging system. People in Normal can see Family chat but can only speak in Normal. Those getting a lot of community flags are investigated by moderators and either locked out of the game for a penalty period or are busted down to NC-17.

NC-17 is anarchy. They can see Family and Normal but can only speak in NC-17.

A player that manages to keep their nose clean can have access to family chat for getting their messages about trade, recruiting, etc. to the widest number of players. Meanwhile, those players who just can’t say anything nice can say it to similar players without bothering more sensitive players.

***

So, what goes on in this game?

Player Arnold logs in and checks mail and auctions briefly before getting a buff in the nightclub and hopping on the monorail that takes him to the high tech fighting subarea, where he spends a blissful evening doing quests involving a malicious robot factory.

Player Betty logs in and heads straight to the casino, where she has a blast playing competitive wordgames with her girlfriends, all the while IM-chatting with her boyfriend, Arnold.

Player Chucky logs in and just wanders around the city spraypainting graffiti on things and trying to build up his criminal reputation.

Player Dave logs in to police the area and PVP with guys like Chucky.

Player Eddie heads straight to Roleplay World, where he is working on a machima movie with several of his friends.

Player Frank is one of Eddie’s friends that he met in Roleplay World while having a showdown between two contenders for king of the outer space vampires in an elaborately decorated private instance. He has never ventured into any of the other subareas because he doesn’t really like computer games.

Player Gabrielle logs directly into space and helps her combat guild set up a blockade against an armada dispatched by their enemy guilds.

Player Harold logs directly into low tech combat, where he plays an elvish being who fights with a rapier and wears a cape. He never leaves the subarea except for a few ventures into Roleplay, where friends of his have made a stone circle with a perpetual full moon hanging over it.

Player Idamae is seven years old and loves the game in Platform where you are a turtle and jump from cloud to cloud. Her mom loves the fact that nobody can interact with Idamae unless they are on her pre-approved contact list. However, other turtles can surround her, jumping up and down, and this always gives Idamae the giggles.

Player Jarvis logs into manufacturing, does a run of spaceship mufflers, unicorn horseshoes and hovercar brakes before haggling over some parts and running out to the auction to download his goods into the marketplace.

Player Kenny just wants to race people around and around the track on his turbo powered pegasus.

Player Leeroy is hanging around the hub nightclub playing soft jazz on his saxophone and giving buffs, but in a little while he will wander over to one of the theaters for a screening of a new in-game movie where he has a bit part.

and

Player Darth Bunnywabbit is hopping madly from area to area, gaming a little here, talking to buddies there, blissful because for a change everybody’s at least in the same game and she doesn’t have to alt tab in order to post messages to them.

Anyway, that’s the game I want to play someday. For now, playing WoW, where I had an interesting offer this weekend to take over the account of a person quitting WoW . . . all her toons are alliance though. Still it might be interesting to be an ally for a little while just to see all their content, something I meant to do eventually, and this way I won’t have to grind it out myself.

And as far as the other stuff, because this is a blog about gender and games, I couldn’t help but notice this huge thread in the WoW forums today about this subject. Since it’s such a massive thread, any comment I could think of making is already in it.

Second, I recently heard good things about game company feedback on Rose’s blog, which makes me want to cheer. I even noticed that the evil SOE is launching a new MMO targeting teen girls and note with interest their plans to do away with subscriptions to games.

All of these very positive steps have been encouraging and inspiring, and have reminded me that although I complain a lot, it's been a while since I've thrown out anything remotely like constructive suggestion. I hate it when people do that!