Wolfire Games Forums

Everyone remembers being a kid, right? Always running around, making things up as they went along. Whatever you could find was some sort of adventure, and your imagination could always lead you into creating some sort of game.

Well, what if we were to make games out of more mundane things? Like childhood, with a rule set.

Take this PHPBB board, for example. It runs on PHP, sure. It's a message board. You wouldn't think much of it.

Well, what if we could take it and change it into some sort of slow-paced game? Add in some sort of dice-roller or other form of conflict resolution and you've got your basic, text-based, turn-based board game. Shouldn't be too hard to do, granted everyone understood the rules, and most importantly, most of it would run on creativity.

Another example - PlayPen by Farbs took Wikipedia and turned it into an open-ended, user-run adventure game. It took something we wouldn't think much of, gave it a simple creation suite and a way to bring it all together, and let the public loose on it.

Now, parts of PlayPen are NSFW, and are completely random, as well, but the point is, it worked. It all flows in one way or another and people can easily spend hours on it both being creative and looking at what others have done to be creative.

These kinds of things, like books, MUDs, interactive fiction, and so on, inspire creativity. They don't just give you a world to play in and set you loose on it. They give you the tools to create a world to play in and say "have fun building this world for others to enjoy."

What if the reason that the gaming (and cinematic) world is slowly failing, in comparison to books, which are still in popularity despite more visual alternatives, is because they don't inspire you to be creative? Sure, they may be an easy escape, but so is the text-based alternative, as well, and it can be much more fun. Half the fun of reading is imagining the world and events that are going on around you. The other half is getting involved in the story.

In games, you can't do that. In games, there's already a pre-defined world. In games, you can't imagine the way in which things happen, because the game does it for you. I know I'm not the only one that's gone to a movie after reading the book and saying "huh, the writer was involved in this...is that really how he/she imagined said character?"

In a further exploration of the appeal in virtual worlds, ignoring World of Warcraft, EvE Online is one of the most popular massively multiplayer virtual worlds. Do you know why it's so popular?

Because it lets you do whatever you want. It lets your imagination run free within the confines of the game. I remember reading on EvE recently about a story where a fleet had infiltrated a rival corporation, assassinated their CEO and cost that corporation the equivalent of $10,000 as well as the CEO's fancy ship. It was allowed, and it was glorious, I'm sure.

Another popular game in recent times is Fallout 3, and even more so Oblivion. They are popular because they let you build a character, however you want it built, and then set you free to do whatever you want in the game world, within your power. Want to kill everyone? Go ahead. Want to be a thief in the night? Go ahead, you can. Adding to the immersion is consequences for your actions, as well.

Even more so, games like LittleBigPlanet have been on the rise in popularity. A lot of people may not see the appeal, but it's all in customization. With the release of LBP2, we will literally be seeing a game that, through the user's own work, houses an editor that can create anything, from a platformer, to a racing game, to an RPG, all topped off with an astounding amount of options for customizing your character and world. I personally loved putting stickers everywhere.

Anyways, my point in all of this is. What if people don't really want fancy graphics, and they don't really want a plethora of choices inside a game? What if what they really want is a way to immerse themselves in a world of their own design? What if the reason text-based games have been on a decline as opposed to 3D games is because they haven't been innovating enough, and despite any amount of depth they have, they're still the same (the same reason 3D MMOs are now on the decline, and I suppose the gaming market in general)?

Some places like Iron Realms Entertainment are still running strong on text-based MMOs. Visual novels are still some of the best sellers in Japan.

There's no saying we need amazing graphics. There's no saying we need a million ways to play a game. All we need is immersion, and whoever can provide immersion, no matter how they do it, will get the customer every time.

Don't you agree?

I read the bit about kids then i realised i was one of them ^_^
So yes.
Good idea.

No one else?

Blorx wrote:No one else?

I didn't read all of it. This part, though:

There's no saying we need amazing graphics. There's no saying we need a million ways to play a game. All we need is immersion, and whoever can provide immersion, no matter how they do it, will get the customer every time.

Don't you agree?

This is true. Anything a person can immerse themselves in, they want to play. If the price is worth the perceived value, there's a customer. However, not everyone can immerse them in quality work if they don't have visual cues, and of those who can, not everyone is willing to pay for a work that's so far below the "norm" in production values.

Dwarf Fortress is great. There are many people who won't play it because it's ASCII. Roguelikes are still going strong in their own community, but I don't know of any ASCII roguelike that's currently being sold (there are some GRAPHICAL roguelikes that are).

There are people who will refuse to read books.


Any way, my point is that the possible market for text-only games is smaller, and if it's too small, text-only games as a genre aren't economically viable. Much of the crowd who'd play text-only computer games would much rather play pen-&-paper RPG games, or P&P games through an online forum, or something like Neverwinter Nights with a group of players and a GM type, etc etc.


I'm not sure if it was your point, but it's not that simple, economically. Besides, in most of those games you aren't running things out of your OWN imagination, any way.

Well, my point wasn't that they'd be economically viable, but that games like DF are more immensely popular than a lot of AAA 3D games with realistic physics get today.

It's probably because it's well-made, as opposed to something like Dark Void, but the point still is that - you can make games out of more mundane things.

The main goal of this post, however, was to inspire creative thinking.

Dwarf Fortress isn't popular because it's well made. That helps. It isn't popular because of what it's made to be. It's popular because it allows PEOPLE to decide what to do.

It took me a while to understand why some people kept raving about a game which I thought didn't have much actual content going for it yet. I got bored because, while good, the game wasn't actually that challenging. Well, at that point the people who like it decided to try and do something on their own.
I like to play games whose creators were thinking creatively. DF, in my opinion, isn't that creative. Instead, it lets the PLAYERS to be creative.

Seriously, have you seen the stuff DF people are doing? Towers of glass and iron, floating fortresses, underwater domes, huge walls around the entire area, moats of lava, whatever. I wouldn't be surprised if someone had come up with a way to do Venice-like city of moats and floating platforms.

Like I said, it's all about immersion. One of the greatest forms of immersion is to allow the player to really get creative with it. It works like this because the more you can control about your environment, the more you can really get into your environment.

Also, DF uses ASCII/ANSI graphics. I don't know if you've read reviews on it like I have, but most reviewers tend to say that the graphics help to immerse yourself because you have the freedom of imagination.

That's...that's great Ren. Do you have something to say about the topic or are you just going to sit here and trash DF? -_-'

Blorx wrote:That's...that's great Ren. Do you have something to say about the topic or are you just going to sit here and trash DF? -_-'

He has a point though, its rather hard to actually get into. Its not for everyone.

Grayswandir wrote:

Blorx wrote:That's...that's great Ren. Do you have something to say about the topic or are you just going to sit here and trash DF? -_-'

He has a point though, its rather hard to actually get into. Its not for everyone.

Point or not, I was hoping for intelligent discussion...and I'm getting a bunch of DF. *sigh*

Intelligent discussion? From here? Really?

Grayswandir wrote:Intelligent discussion? From here? Really?

Good point. =P

Blorx wrote:Also, DF uses ASCII/ANSI graphics. I don't know if you've read reviews on it like I have, but most reviewers tend to say that the graphics help to immerse yourself because you have the freedom of imagination.

I know that from other roguelikes, but Dwarf Fortress didn't affect me that way.

Using letters for things works because they're symbols. A white 'd' for a cute dog works if white is otherwise a rare color, and 'd' is used for dogs and canines, and it's easy to remember because "d is for dog". Dwarf Fortress goes a bit too far - trying to represent various tiles with the characters loses the symbol aspect. Now, Tarn Adams is being very clever with his symbols, and doing things like ANIMATING WATER, which I still think is one of the coolest things I've seen in ASCII/ANSI games. Unfortunately it's better for playability to show the depth of the water, which means replacing the ~~~~~~~~~~~'s with 12223347.

Endoperez wrote: Using letters for things works because they're symbols. A white 'd' for a cute dog works if white is otherwise a rare color, and 'd' is used for dogs and canines, and it's easy to remember because "d is for dog". Dwarf Fortress goes a bit too far - trying to represent various tiles with the characters loses the symbol aspect. Now, Tarn Adams is being very clever with his symbols, and doing things like ANIMATING WATER, which I still think is one of the coolest things I've seen in ASCII/ANSI games. Unfortunately it's better for playability to show the depth of the water, which means replacing the ~~~~~~~~~~~'s with 12223347.

Ah, I get what you're saying. Yeah, it does generally help when you can learn to relate a to b.

In any case, I still wish people would be more creative with the way they do things, like I was saying in the OP. Even though it may not have the longevity, I would definitely give more props to someone who had the creativity to turn a text editor into a game, than I would someone who made another FPS.