Reply To: Need of beryllium and other rare materials for Focus Fusion

[epimenide]

As a professional programmer, I’d like to throw in my 2c, trying to summarize a bit what’s emerged so far, putting myself as much on the “regular player” side as much as possible: the fact that I’m actually developing kids game (albeit on mobile platforms), perhaps gives me a bit more of an inside view…

FoldIt: Nice, really nice! What’s intriguing is that the players don’t understand, and don’t need to, anything about biology and molecules, they’re just solving puzzles. I’d love to find out something similar for fusion, but I don’t see any possibility right now: there could be some merit in building up a simulator, however, and let people play with different configurations. My personal knowledge is too little to understand if there could be entertainment in that…

MMORPG: Oh well, that’s a multi-million industry, big firms spend huge resources developing those worlds, and keep them interesting enough so players don’t drop off… Yes, there are minor publishers that have their hardcore fans: probably the nearest to our ideas I could think of is EVE Online (space-themed, where technology development has a high value), but there are decades of sci-fi books & movies that have built up awareness of the possibilities (either real or not), thus it becomes a way to “see” your imagination at work. That is the main point , after all: who in his right mind would play as a lawyer? :vampire:
I wouldn’t start with that, the awareness isn’t here yet (that indeed was the initial point for publishing the game), and at this stage it would probably fail in keeping people involved for long.

MafiaWars: The accent here isn’t so much in building up something, but in doing so in a very competitive way: crushing down enemy gangs is as rewarding, or possibly more, than dealing with day-to-day tasks! Would you build up a community spirit with that? I think not… Most of the clones I’ve seen rely on the same schema, it isn’t surprising many sports are represented this way: sports are all about competing…

FarmVille: As it has been said, it’s quite dumb: no real knowledge of how a real farm is built, it will not get any better while you proceed in the game, nor there’s any connection with real-world agriculture as a whole… Still, people like to play it (and its clones): why then? Well, my personal answer is that there’s pleasure and entertainment in the sheer beauty and harmony of your creation! Showing it off to the other players, and searching cooperation for the most difficult tasks, is part of the “social” side, still the small adjustments here and there have little purpose other than make everything look as pretty as possible to one’s own eye.
I still think this is the better approach for a game where fusion could have a role, however there should be a special attention to make it entertaining and elegant at the same time: as it’s not a simulation, no real need to mimic the real world issues, exactly like FarmVille wouldn’t help farmers to work any better.

As a personal comment, in this phase I’d focus more on the general “energy management” side: there IS indeed awareness that energy is and will be of the outmost importance for our future, the simple fact that fusion reactors would be present at all in the game, and in all its forms, should be a good start…

All the above IMHO, of course: I’m a programmer (and willing to help), not a game designer…

BTW, pardon my English, I hope it’s been clear enough…