Kind of a boring dystopia we have here. People enjoying the great outdoors from their climate controlled bedrooms. Good thing they only kept the cute animals in the game and not the mosquitos or black flies.
Imagine the number of irresponsible people going camping or horseback riding in the wilderness increasing by 100x instead of playing a game.
My worry isn't that lots of people would die--because they would--but I worry that nature would be destroyed far faster. Seeing beautiful locations that were undiscovered suddenly become tourist hotspots, they're completely destroyed in the span of months.
See dwarf fortress for a counter-example. I’m of the opinion that story-writing is a red-herring in video games; an attempt to apply “tricks” from other mediums, by disregarding the “interactivity” of video games. A story can be sufficiently created by means of the player’s operations , if the simulation is sufficiently complex and built to support it. Another example is competitive fps games like CoD/Halo/Quake — th…
Dwarf Fortress is a different kind of game from No Man's Sky or The Witcher 3. It has a huge learning curve and takes a lot of effort to play. For every amazing story that people crafted there are hundreds, maybe thousands of failed game attempts. That's fine and purely procedurally generated games can be amazing (I'm working on one myself), but they are a different type of game play, and often attract a different ki…
For those who would like to play Dwarf Fortress, but are turned off by the incredibly steep learning curve or the offputting visuals, I suggest you look into Rimworld. Its similar to Dwarf Fortress in that it is a procedurally generated story with creation and survival aspects. But it is easier to learn to play, and has modern (albeit simplistic) graphics. I've enjoyed it quite a bit.
Kind of a boring dystopia we have here. People enjoying the great outdoors from their climate controlled bedrooms. Good thing they only kept the cute animals in the game and not the mosquitos or black flies.
The other way to look at it is that these experiences promote a desire to go and see the real thing, in a similar way that zoos spark a lifelong interest in the kind of wildlife and habitats that you would never have normally interacted with otherwise.
I'm sure we'll get there eventually, its just much more difficult to write for. Even in Westworld, the interactions were semi-scripted, with packaged "quests" along the way. Some games come close though, the Witcher 3 includes choice-based gameplay with real consequences that last thoughout the game. However the developers still had to explicitly write each scenario as it unfolded.
Since we're listing games with long-lasting consequences, I'll have to recommend folks who have been living under a rock to play the entire Mass Effect trilogy – to me, still the greatest game ever made (and I've played far too many games)
"Long Lasting Consequences" like changing the color of the sky during the final cut-scene...
Don't get me wrong, I loved those games, but when I played 3 and that was the big pay off...jesus.
Rockstar should consider breaking their games down into sub games. They could build a G rated game about caring for wild horses and sell it for kids; they'd only have to remove content. In the full RDR2 game my daughter might have fun caring for horses, but she might also witness a random murder, pick up new words I'd rather her not repeat, witness a rape, who knows. I haven't actually played RDR2 but all of those th…
Exactly! The taxi, ambulance, and firetruck missions were some of my favorite parts of the GTA games, and featured relatively nonviolent, legal activities. They could easily be standalone games... One could argue the taxi missions already are, if you count Crazy Taxi.
War Zone Taxi Driver (GTA: San Andreas with cheat codes "everyone has guns" and "everyone's hostile to everyone" applied, and me in a taxi running missions) is a really, really good game. I'd absolutely buy and play a whole game of just variations on that.
Since we're listing games with long-lasting consequences, I'll have to recommend folks who have been living under a rock to play the entire Mass Effect trilogy – to me, still the greatest game ever made (and I've played far too many games)
"Long Lasting Consequences" like changing the color of the sky during the final cut-scene... Don't get me wrong, I loved those games, but when I played 3 and that was the big pay off...jesus.
The DLCs fixed the endings somewhat, but in any case the journey itself was amazing. Sometimes it's not just about the destination but how you got there