The UA entries were nice, but here are some games that I felt were missing from the list…
Super QueueUp!
In this game, the player stands in a slow-moving line. Their target line position moves in small increments over the course of the game. Moving too far out of position will cause the game to restart, as the player will lose their position in line. Not keeping pace with the increments (which will be randomly timed) will cause others in line to glare. The AI standing in line with the player will make random comments about how exciting it will be to get to some undisclosed thing that everyone is waiting for. The catch is that around each corner, the line and environment is dynamically created, so the line is effectively infinite.
Real Second Life
This is an MMO where real world systems exist. To buy things, for example, your character will have to get a job. They will then have to spend all of their time grinding at their job, but probably still won’t be able to afford anything worth buying. Should they miss work, they will be fired and will have to find a new job. Other exciting features will include in-game bill payment, taxes, and seemingly random illness. Looking for more fun? When the Economic Meltdown expansion pack is released, players will find their character’s net worth reduced by 70%, their in-game properties foreclosed, and their character’s credit rating decimated. Fun for all ages!
Traffic Jam Delivery
You play a delivery driver in a traffic jam. Watch as your tips disappear while you are stuck in gridlocked traffic. The game takes place on a hot summer day, and your car is slowly overheating. To simulate this, the game turns off your system’s fans and runs complex calculations in the background to overheat your CPU.
The Long Drive
From the makers of Traffic Jam Delivery, this exciting game allows players to experience a 4 hour night-time drive down a straight highway. The game is mostly black. You can see distant tail-lights, and the road in your headlights. Will the steady hum of the highway lull you to sleep or will you make it all 4 hours to your destination?
The name is slightly misleading. The game is actually one lone marble on an infinite plane. The camera is locked so that the marble is always in the middle of the field of view. In fact, the game should probably just be implemented with a sphere on a plane and no user input (since the view will never change). Get ready for hours of Infinite Marble fun!
Actually, a real Second Life might not be outside the realm of possibility. Take a look at the world of sporting events and how much technology is being poured into broadcasting them. Within a few years, you may literally have the option to watch an interactive, computer-generated version of the game in real-timed from any view you choose, without being able to distinguish it from normal video coverage. Combined with something like augmented reality, you could literally be at a game without ever leaving the house.
The reverse also works. Technology is being developed to import your real-world activity into a 3D space using a series of cameras. A small kit of these cameras applied to the walls of a room in your house would be more than enough to generate an electronic version of yourself that imitates you on every level. This data could then be streamed onto the internet to other users. Again, combined with augmented reality, you could literally have a personal conversation with someone that looks as though they’re sitting right next to you, without them actually being there. Both ends could experience this perception of the other person.
It would be both natural and awkward at the same time, and could eventually redefine our own perception of reality.
That would be cool, but it is so not where I was going with that… I would like a game with all of the disadvantages of real-life but with crummy low-poly graphics. Ideally it would also be pay-to-play.
In some sense, Second Life already does this. If you aren’t careful, the “game” can literally cause you real world debt, since you actually have to buy property there to be a resident. The “game” also has it’s own economy, complete with exchange rates between it’s own currency and the US dollar, which fluctuates much like our real world economy does against other countries.
Oddly enough, there are people who have successfully managed to make their second life persona’s profitable for their real world counterparts, simply by creating content and providing services within the game. Likewise though, many of the risks that come with starting a new business in the “game” have real-world consequences if they fail.
Quite possibly the most bizarre thing about this, is that you might actually have to pay real world taxes for your activity within the “game” itself.
Ultima Online was fairly disturbingly close to Real Second Life, with the additional feature of having roving gangs of psychos ganking newbies just outside city limits to loot their starting money.
