It was back in the heady days of the mid-to-late Nineties. A group of us that eventually became Saddlefish Entertainment were regularly taking over the Mac’s in the design office for “Network Load Testing” (as we announced it over the intercom). That was the code phrase for folks to gather for the kill-fest that was Bungee’s Marathon. When we could sneak into a PC-based office, we’d play Quake, which was pushing hundreds of these things called “polygons” every frame. And this game called StarCraft was eating up a lot of time.

And when we got to talking about the games we wanted to make, well, things would get pretty grandiose. And the trump card was always this:

“It’s a first person shooter, you’re running around doing tactical stuff, jumping in and out of vehicles, but then you pull out a level and your playing the RTS, giving instructions to troops, and getting the birds-eye view of the battlefield, and then you pull out farther and you’re playing Civilization, building the support infrastructure to support the troops, who are in turn protecting your cities and territory.”

On a good day, we’d work in a sim-city layer, and a political sim where you run for office, and work your way up to commander-in-chief.

And then we’d laugh, and come back down, because 128 megs of ram was still a big deal, and the internet was still slow, and only the cool people used it, and we said one of these days, but not today.

Here we are, 10-ish years later, and here and there, in bits and pieces, you can start to see some of these grandiose ideas beginning to show up in games. Battlefield 2 has the commander mode, allowing a bit of the RTS layer. The Outfit lets you play the RTS from the FPS layer (from what I gather. I haven’t played it yet). From my BF2 Stats, some would say I haven’t played that game either, but hey, that’s just mean. And who’s got time? These things don’t blog themselves.

But I think we got it wrong, in some of the important details.

Let’s talk about the World.

Unless you’re Will Wright, it’s crazy to imagine a single game that encompasses all these various genres. But Spore is not quite what I’m talking about. Spore is a sequence of smaller games that take you through a progression, from spore to galactic overlord. In my head, I’ve already planned a month’s sabbatical to be horribly addicted to this game, but I’m talking about a different beast.

I’m talking about a world where all levels from tactical FPS through Planetary Leader are available all the time, and where you can, as a player can jump into any of these levels and play that meta-game, and thus influence the fortunes of your avatar/faction/nation on the other levels.

But I’m not talking about a game that does that (see also crazy). What I’m talking about is a series of games, each a well-crafted, focused game for the appropriate level. These games all interoperate on-line, and the games, taken as a set, create the world.

This is not a project for a small developer. It is as much a branding exercise as a game design strategy. It is, in my opinion, the successor to the MMO as it exists now. I’ve really got that whole grandiose thing under control now.

Practical Challenges

How do all these things interact with each other?

The world is persistent, and each game acts as a special client to the World. If a commander at the RTS level gives orders to troops playing at the FPS level, the World handles the interaction, making sure both games share the information they need. If the outcome of battle at the RTS level affects a political boundary, the World updates that at the Civilization level.

How do you get all these people to cooperate with each other?

There must be great rewards for cooperation, such that ignoring your commander and freelancing is not worth the effort. You take a page from the MMO, and hard-code bad behavior out of the systems whenever possible. The rides have rails, but they are fun rides.

Not everyone can be King of the World.

The biggest challenge is managing the varying populations of each level. How does the RTS level work if there are more commanders than FPS foot soldiers? Well, you make more foot soldiers, and give the people playing the FPS an incentive for commanding AI squads. At every level of the game, playing that game either well, or at all, accrues benefits to your Avatars at the other levels. So you provide in-game incentives to move players toward the game-levels that need population. Sociological load balancing.

What if one of the games sucks?

Then you only have one normal sized game to fix, he oversimplified. The flip side is this: new games can be added to further enhance the World. Here the Sim-City level (where disasters are less Godzilla based, and more middle-of-a-war-zone based), the Political-Sim level, where players can vie for political office, run campaigns, participate in game-wide elections. And when one planet grows too small, the space exploration and conquest game level,

It’s totally crazy.

Yes, well that one is hard to argue. But keep in mind, I’ve only had ten years and one afternoon to mull it over.

I’ve got to the end of yet another post without addressing narrative. Take your choice: Modern day global conflict, historical global conflict (The System of the World world would be good fun), Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, the Star Wars universe. Dune. Build it and they will come.

-game over-

Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.