What is your Dream Game?

As long as investors don't shit their micropayments all over them and interfere with design questions.

But the potential is huge, eventually really truly great games will come out.

 

I think we're at a point in the gaming industry where we have schism - we're moving away from the 30x AAA titles per platform per year because it just isn't sustainable. Games are played and forgotten almost immediately after the next AAA title hits the shelf. The world and market of the consumer kiddies and console-styled games and production is quite literally attaining it's own niche.

PC developers - wanting to exploit the full potential of PC hardware, have stopped trying to copy/port console games and genres and I believe we are on the verge of seeing a very distinct sort of game for the PC platform - it sort of Epic-scale game started off by ED and SC. Games which take advantage of the savage amount of horsepower PC-enthusiasts let go to waste year after year. And these things take time, seeing as they're effectively developing games within games and seamless transitions between every conceivable boundary.

The bad news? You can't have that kind of creative and production freedom in a traditional Publisher model - you have to get rid of the Publisher to allow the artists to create their art. That means that crowdfunding/alternative funding is going to take off. Expect to pay $100's for the game you really want to see made.

The upshot? It's the fucking game you WANT TO SEE MADE. Consider the Consumerist Kiddies who get their folks to spend $60 multiple times a year, many many years in a row... it adds up. This new wave of PC gaming, however, is going to flip that around. We're likely going to play these games for many years, not really bothering with other titles all that much. Yes, high cost of entry, but the software is as close to 'bespoke' as you can get without actually commissioning a game yourself.

TL;DR - Stick a round PC Gaming for the next 10 years or so - all this crap we theorycraft may actually still happen.

 

I honestly don't think the industry will change until something like the fully VR/immersive netgear like you see in a bunch of anime these days (Sword Art, Log Horizon, .Hack) where you go -into- the game fully. At the moment we are just stuck in a cycle of "game!!!!>New cpu parts!!!!!> same game better graphics speed!!!!>new cpu parts>same game new wrapper and faster!!!!!!!>new cpu parts>" well you get the idea. The ORift is a great start for this kinda of thing but we need something like full VR or large scale holographics (think Avatar not star trek). Holographics seem the more likely given how terrifying a full brainscan and gear like that would seem to people.

on edit: This is really just my excuse for not having the game/equipment i want. I would play WoW in a heartbeat if I could dive into with full VR systems

 

Heya Moro - I was actually referring more directly to actual game design, the amount and depth of game mechanics. For instance - Star Citizen. If all goes well, that would make SC the first game I know of where you could be in a space battle (modelled physics et al, including damage states), land your space ship, get out, trade up for a profit, buy goods (like a real 4X game) and pass the time watching a sporting event happening while your goodies are being physically loaded, get into a bar-fight and likely be able to shoot somebody in the face... WITHOUT loading screens, fade-ins, or some artificial barrier between what's happening inside the vehicle and outside. The same is likely to be true of ED in it's future iterations as well.

If this design trend continues, we could have people buying games based solely based around the Universe. There will be no single 'genre' - you want to shoot people, pick up a gun and go shoot them. Drive a Tank? Jet? Helo? Space Ship? Fuck you guys I'm going to another planet? Mine for gold for my golden "throne"? Build a house? Build it here or over there? - The concept of "Open World" and "Sandbox" is trumping the linear narrative game and it's only getting better with each new technology and innovation.

Also, Moro, what you're saying is very important - it goes to the paradigm of how we experience our games, and the massive difference that method makes. And future interfaces will obviously change the entire dynamic. However, I'm talking about how Developers could be building our games in the very near future.

 

It could very well be headed to that direction because
-marketing
-the amount of games a player can keep up with
-they can have unrivaled amount of detail and depth simply due to the resources available

It all supports big productions that have high quality (<- !!). Indie games have one major disadvantage - no one hears of them. There are thousands of games that have had only a few hundred people ever hear about them.
What indie games can do is they can use lower cost structure to their advantage and make niche games.

And finally, there's a final big thing going for big games
-what your friends are playing

Playing with friends is not important for everyone, but once you recognize you are playing a game with your friends or notice that you can, it quickly becomes a big deal. If almost unplayable games can be nice with friends, what about truly great games?

So for big games the push will be towards whole alternate life style virtual worlds, they can be scifi, fantasy or whatever, they can even be much like this world. But for a lot of people, these game worlds will be the preferred reality. They will be more interested in buying things in these games than buying a new car, eventually because of the emotional investment the portion of players spending thousands per year will increase tremendously to a point where a substantial amount of people use their most of their 'spending money' in their preferred reality.


We too have had many really great visions and dream game ideas but, fuck it, we're indie. There's just not a whole lot we can do, it's not like we have tons of options. I had to work in fucking phone sales for two months this year to pay my bills. Right now the big immersive virtual realities have not yet arrived, there are still chances for people outside the established order of AAA devs. But once we go years into those games, it will become really difficult to make a living with indie games because they will be even more relics than tabletop games are today.

 

Yes, it will get there. We have seen some of this already. Second Life. Entropia. With real economies tied directly into the real world. When average people can actually make a living in game, they will spend more of their time in there. Sounds awesome. Also sounds scary and Dystopian.

 

Oh wait. I just realized we already have this. It's called Mechwarrior: The RPG.

Sheep? Can you take a couple of hours this weekend and code that into a multi-player graphic version?

kkthxbye.

Oh, and don't forget the Oculus Rift APIs.

 

The Transverse concept is actually pretty brilliant and rather straightforward. Conceptually they're rather unapologetic about who they're aiming at. It literally is EvE 2.0 with cockpits, and they're just barely mincing words as to that fact. Too bad the... denizens, I suppose you could say, of EvE online are not quite warming up to them.

But like you said - had they basically not hobbled themselves before setting off, it might have been a good pitch for a decent game and a pretty cool concept.

 

A MMO focussing on naval combat where one starts as a simply sailor, operating for instance a single AA gun or similar low level ship system and being able to work your way up to captain of the ship you started on (let's say a frigate) from where on you can move on to bigger ships. Like a mix of destroyer command, navyfield and such but keeping it realistic (and not like that battlestations rubbish).

 

my dream game would take way to long to explain here in just one forum post, so basically it's an MMORPG with multi class/ multi character, with a mix of Star Wars Galaxy's crafting/ resource management and city creation (just done differently) and each player faction would be run by a god (basically a player with GM powers) each faction (6) would control a part of the world, and each god/ demi god, would use a dungeon creator to create instances for the enemy factions (3/3) to assault.
Players could be merchants, guards, city owners/designers, adventurers, traders, sailors, and many more. in a Skill based system, tied in with leveling. (good luck balancing that shit)
So basically the world would be created/ edited by the players, with the Devs watching and helping form time to time as the creation gods but the actual factions would be ran by other players (unless they were being abused or not paid attention to, then the dev's would step in)

There is alot more info about the game, but thats all I feel like typing right now