Slashdot Mirror
In-Depth Sims Online Development Story
Nicholas Palmer writes "GameSpot has a really
in-depth feature story on the development process behind The Sims Online.
It gets into things like how the team had to refactor the game's 3 million lines
of code last year. Will Wright mentions his desire to see TSO to grow into
a community similar to
Slashdot's." Great game - although the latest wipe of the game means all Blockstackers' hard work on our house will be gone. Still, the social dynamics, IMHO, are much more interesting in TSO, because it enforces cooperation.
..and make some real friends!! Leave these Sims alone.
Now, excuse me while I go play some Metriod Prime.
Enters dark room, all alone with only some Diet Rite and some leftover turkey Ahh, sweet sweet bliss.
What, me Tweet?
He must be thinking of Kuro5hin...
*ducks*
Robots are everywhere, and they eat old people's medicine for fuel.
Not a bad idea - Then slashdot readers will know how social interaction works :)
codegolf.com - smaller *is* better.
Like Slashdot?
.
You mean fractured down opinionated economic, moral and technology fault lines?MS-bashers/Linux-bashers, Linus lovers/Linus haters, ecofreak/technojunkies, libertarians/communists, 'information wants to be free' swappers/ 'theft is theft' moralists and JonKatz fans/foes
I can just imagine it, your choice of spouse is decided by the ominous by BSD/Red hat question? Or even worse, Star Trek/Lord of the Rings?
Or you meet a new neighbour and you wonder whether their game house or the computer that they're running it from is more modded?
Or that neighbour constantly comes round your house asking if you've heard of a free sofa that is also a fridge and a multimedia centre (must play OGGs) and a PDA. And is a eco friendly. And open-source. Or when they should start teaching their kids how to code, at 2, 3 or in the womb?
I also wonder how many CowboyNeal based aliases there will be on-line.
Then again, since it'll be a Windows game, I don't think 'all' the Slashdot community will take it up.
You forgot ...
13. Duplicate Everything.
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our American dead!
A traditional online game has a goals of sorts - to adventure, to kill monsters, to work as a team, to compete against other teams, to acquire wealth and status etc.
I should answer RTFA.... They addressed this problem quite clearly, by dividing the players in different categories which like the game for a specific aspect (building, getting rich, socializing...) and trying to include elements which guarantee long playability for all of them.
Personally, I'll never play it (I may try if they give out a couple of months and the program for free), and some of the comments on the sims newsgroup are very negative (they say it's boring), but there will be certainly tons of people ready to pay for the game just because it's "The Sims" and probably a fair amount of them will appreciate the "glorified chat room" idea and stick around even at $10/month (which seems to be quite a lot of money to me).
Beside the nice graphics with the "create your own objects" possibility (which will be added later - and will pose lots of troubles, I think), I don't see any advantage over a good old text MUD.
Amazing article, it goes in real depth into the thinking of both Will Wright - the game's creator - and The Sims Online.
:)
The original point of the game was for popularity - you get money based on how many visitors you get to your house, and to this end can start gameshows and the like. This was reflected in the Top 10 list, basically the "high-scorers". But... people, unsurprisingly, figured out the money-making tactics [read the article], opened the appropriate house, and everyone visited to make money. So they split the list into several top 10s... most popular, most romantic, etc.
This alone provides a never-ending goal to the game, which is what you really need in an online environment. It's like a variant of the Red Queen theory - you're not just up against the game, you're up against everyone else. You have to work to stay at the top... but unlike a levelling game, The Sims Online is far more capricious in that popularity doesn't need a vast amount of experience behind it. Start a fad, and poom - you've got people hearing about it from teir friends, visitng... much like the slashdot effect, but in a game. You're at the top of a list for a week.
In that way it could be far more rewarding than some other online games, and less hard-to-get-into for late starters. Add to that possible features like electing mayors and the like... wow.
I never was that interested in the Sims myself, but this is fascinating to me. Most online games atm survive because of their community... the Sims Online makes the community the goal as well as the tool. It's gonna be big, folks.
As for those calling it sad and to try the real world instead... yeah. That's why you're reading slashdot, right? *ducks*
Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggie" whilst looking for a rock
The article mentions that Will Wright has talked stuff over with Neal Stephenson, and that in some ways TSO will be similar to the "Metaverse", as described in Snow Crash. One thing I'd like to see in TSO is the ability for characters to share non-TSO "objects" with other characters. For example, I'd like my character to hand another character a "file" and have a real file transfered from my hard drive to the other character's drive.
There are a lot of technical issues involved with this sort of stuff -- and some legal ones as well (think MP3s). However, this feature would bring TSO a lot closer to the Metaverse, uh, universe.