SL Gaming should be all about the people

I know it's hard to imagine it, but try to think of a world where there are no computers.
You know, like it used to be?
Nowadays people have become increasingly dependent on machines where their own brain should be doing the real work. Namely, imagination. No one has any amount of imagination anymore, whereas people in ancient times spent their lives looking up at the stars, imagining fanciful creatures in their shapes and weaving complicated mythologies around them.
This post is something that has long been waiting to be said.
YOU DONT NEED TO SPEND 6 MONTHS SCRIPTING SOMETHING IN ORDER FOR IT TO BE A FUN GAME!
You shouldn't need to script it at all. I can name a few dozen games that should be heaps of fun to play without requiring any amount of scripting... but I will leave it up to you instead!
Call this an unofficial Game Development Competition... or rather, a Game Imagination Competition. The gist of it would be something like:
1) Think up a game that is FUN, and requires minimal or zero scripting to work
2) Build a prototype
3) Face the wrath of my / someone else's judgement
4) Win $$$ and a place to host it for free (if any is required)

Thoughts / comments?

Actually, that's a great idea!

One minor change though - allow for minor scripting for stuff the default editor does not allow. By this I mean:

- Allow particles
- Allow sounds
- Allow animation loops
- Allow set text

... in other words, allow things that are properties of primitives to be added. Since we can only add these effects through LSL, but don't need the script afterwards, it's a decent litmus test.

I said "requires minimal or zero scripting "
You can script, but the emphasis should be on socializing and having fun rather than building a technical masterpiece, especially one that requires the resources of a whole freaking sim

I thought long and hard about the merits of using SecondLife for Game Dev, when I was designing the game I eventually submitted to the Game Developers Conference. While SL is certainly flexible enough to create standard genre games, I wanted to specifically exercise some of SL's strong points. I think at this point I thought to myself: "SL Gaming should be all about the people" ... "and the grid"

So while there is tons of scripting in my game, and it would miserably fail your Game Imagination Competition, I hope you'll enjoy it. You must travel the grid finding other players, and when you meet them you have to trade riddle pieces. When you collect all of the pieces for one round, you go to one of our themed builds to play a simple mini-game (the kinds that are played without computers in RL), and answer the riddle. So here the focus is on other players meeting each other, and mutually benefitting from a riddle swap. To tie it up nicely, the webpage will display social networks of Riddle City Ransom. I.E. type in "Satchmo Prototype", and see everyone he's traded with. Click on them and see everyone they've traded with... etc...

That being said.... I love the idea of the "Game Imagination Competition"... I like Jeffery's idea of formalizing the rules, because I got L $2000 going to whoever Eggy judges as the winner

One thing that comes to mind is board and P&P games.

Because Second Life can, many people take stuff down the "omg crazy scripting!" route. I've discussed this with a few people, and the general concensus is why not play the old fashioned way? SL has physics, it has a constant place - you don't need scripting for a lot of this stuff.

Actually, getting back to the basics is a step in the right direction. I happened to be speaking with a friend earlier concerning just simple books and how they could enrich Second Life if people spent the time writing backstories and fiction to go with each sim.

Mm... alas. Maybe eventually.

How bout "Kick the Can" Sprite Quartermass showed me how to do these kind of things with physics when I was a newbie. She even made a sort of knock hockey, where you just grabbed the paddles and used them to hit the ball back and forth... no scripting at all

I used to get a huge kick out of playing Hide & Seek with my younger family members.

If at least private sim owners could simply disable the mini-dots on their properties, it'd be all about the builds, baby.

And the occasional scripted water balloon.

I find your thoughts intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Funnily enough, most of the games I'm involved in in SL are of this sort; social games. Roleplaying games and Primtionary are the two things I do most often, and neither of those require any real scripting (beyond a handy dice-bot bracelet for RPGs).

Have you guys seen the Tag games? Too fun, and I dont think the script is too big.

What number am I thining of?

(Warning: It has a 8-figure decimal component...)

No Scripting?!?!?!!?

OMG, my place in this world would be lost

I'm going off of almost no sleep for a while, so dont' mind me.

How about a Lost and Found Hot/Cold game. The object to be found has it's key registered in an attachment, and the players roam around a given area and press the attachment (to eliminate lag of perpetual sensors) and it tries to find the object and gives off particles or words to describe approximately how far you are from the object. First to find it wins.

Not very much scripting to that and if set in an individual parcel very social.
Could even do a team one on a bigger plot.

And one that gives out clues to be used SL-wide woohoo.

My family and friend have hours of fun playing push the AFK person into the water.
No scripting, no LSL, no nothing...even the newbies can play...fun for the whole family.

It's fun to build ramps and push people up them. Pleanty of AFKers are used to ending up at the bottom of lakes, but few won't be surprised to find themselves on the roof.

If you are actually interested in games that are really centered, that is to say 'built around' the people of SL, then you may find the EVA Project interesting.

Please feel free to check us out - I think you'll be pleased to find it likely one of the most socially-driven game engines you'll ever encounter.



Shakuhachi Muromachi
Lead Technologist, EVA Project
evaresearch.blogspot.com

LOL, I too would like to subscribe to this product and/or service!

Seriously, Eggy brings up a really good point. I remember a post about a month or so ago by Suezanne I think, suggesting stuff like relay-races.

I have a very simple 4-player racetrack I made. You sit down, it rez'es a little RC racecar, you race against the clock or other players. Very few people have shown interest in it, many people have suggested, "Why don't you put a turbo button in", or oil slicks, or make the track bigger, ect, ect.

I think it's very easy to take a simple idea and escalate it to some big, overly complex project ( I'm actually quite GOOD at it ;P )

& as Foulcault and Tiger mention, some of the most fun I've had has been just simple screwing around like this in SL. I still laugh every time I run across, in my inventory, the picture of me hunched over in away-mode being kicked in the rear end. Among other disturbing pics. ;P

I can't tell you how many times I've done this since I read this post a few weeks back, and it is suprisingly fun. It's even fun to push your Alt off a huge mountain.

Base jumping or running down a huge mountain has always been fun to me in every MMOPG I play... I can't explain why, but it makes me chuckle EVERY time. I've recently been doing it in SL with a skateboard strapped to my feet which is really fun.

AHHHHHHHHH NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! /nightmare

If you are truly interested in games about the people of SecondLife, you should look into the EVA Project.

EVA is not centered on SL - nor on code, or even computers.

Its center is the people of the metaverse.

Real people, real minds, working cooperatively as extended into the virtual world - EVA realizes this capability as no technology-centered solution can.

Search around, you'll find various messages about it here and elsewhere.

Shakuhachi Muromachi
Lead Technologist, EVA Project
[email]shakuhachi.muromachi@gmail.com[/email]
http://eva.unvirtual.com

Thanks for starting this discussion, Eggy. I think its important, philosophically and practically, to focus less on the pyrotechnics of a particular game and more on the social dynamics of the experience.

Here's why: While SL itself is a sort of game, the realm of what's possible/works well is strongly skewed away from script-heavy games and strongly toward games that align well with the platform.

Tringo's an interesting case study: why has it been SO successful? I'd argue that above and beyond the fact that it's polished and works (a relative rarity) it combines 3 things that work wonderfully in SL:
1. Social
2. Wagering
3. Syndicated

If you think about it, the 3 are interrelated in a fascinating way that create a sort of perfect game storm in SL. The core game is fun and allows players to win money -- the sets are sold to Tringo hosts, who also make money.

So simple, yet not script/graphics intensive.

Hi Reuben

...you forgot 4. addictive.

In the first Game Developer contest, my team's game was up against the attractions of MahJong, scripted by Xylor. While he is an amazingly talented scripter, and a very nice guy to boot, the major advantage that MahJong had over all the other games was the addictive nature of the game.

Just as many people play repeeated games of card solitaire, many also find that they are locked into playing repeated games of tetris and other games where the only target is to beat your own score. There is a addictive quality to those games, and I would assert that Tringo also has this. Thus, even if one cut out the one two and three of your reasons, and made it a stand alone game played against the equipment, with no wagering and no syndication, I believe it would still be successful and popular.

Although you can argue that it is a social game, in that it is generally played in groups with a host, I would say that for life in Second Life in general it has been anti-social...people playing Tringo are unable to cope with ordinary conversation, and there is very little interaction between players while the games are going on. The more money, the less conversation.

The plethora of Tringo games in the events calendar seems to have put many people off consulting it at all. So there are other aspects to be taken into account.

And Eggy - Numbakulla is a game along the model that you suggest. It does have scripting, but that isn't the major attraction. What the scripting does allow however is a huge amount of flexibility - thus it is possible to play the Pot Healer's at numbakulla alone, in a team, in a changing group, or in any mixture of the above.

For everyone out there who hasn't seen it yet, come and take a look at Numbakulla! just select numbakulla in the list of regions in your map, and you will find yourself at the beginning of an adventure.

Now that it looks as though the financial future of Numbakulla is secure, we will be developing the game, introducing new elements, and trying to involve the players in new life on the island.
Cali

When we were designing our game, I liked the idea of buiding a MMOG using SL as the platform, rather than building a game inside of an MMOG. I have Torque3D/2D/RTS, and I'd argue they have many advantages over SL when it comes to single player, or multi-player (up to32 players) games. But when it comes to creating your own MMOG games, SL is second to none. I can expand the list and identify 3 more strong points.

1. Access to a MMOG architecture, without running your own servers and updating your client interface.

2. A huge world with a landscape more diverse than any company would touch. This begs for gridwide games.

3. Incredibly large and strong social networks. People want to play games with their friends, and play SL to meet new freinds.

While scripting is often necessary to tie things together, there is no reason the games can't be fun, social and simple enough for newbies. Many of the games mentioned above take advantage of SL's strengths to do just that.

I just had a good idea for a new game that adheres to all of Eggy's rules. Place little copies of the Snapzilla Dragon throughout the world, and have a contest on who can Snapzilla the most of them. You could get the help of all the shop owners, club owners, etc in SL, because who doesn't want to see thier place on Snapzilla?

It could be a fun, incredibly social game (sharing pics), that forces players to explore the grid. Like a gridwide "Where's Waldo?"...

No scripting involved. All the heavy lifting is done by the Lindens and SLUniverse...

Note: I think ReallyRick beat me to it.