Dual Universe is a computer game being worked on by some developers in France who are currently looking for extra funding on Kickstarter. It is a multiplayer game set in space that is attempting to have a player-driven economy, much like Eve Online, with resources in the game being bought and sold between players on markets. It goes further than Eve, though, with players able to design new items from scratch and even script them with Lua, which should allow for invention of new in-game technology, which should allow for player-driven economic growth within the game.
Another feature which caught my attention is their approach to the dilemma of enabling player versus player combat while allowing for players to enjoy playing the game without being attacked at random. There is the concept of a safe zone in which an anti-violence bubble is generated by expending energy. What is more, the player who owns the machine that generates the safe zone can give out mining rights within it, and exclude other players who do not pay him a tax.
I think they should rename this game Libertarian Utopia Simulator.
Want to know how to end up with a million dollars?
(If your lucky!)
Invest 4 million dollars in crowd sourcing “developers” of a (UN “controlled” internet?)game promising the biggest, bestest, cloudiest, thing EVAH!
Sorry, love the idea but my internet is so feeble it drops completely and at random all the time. I therefore don’t MMOG.
Coincidentally, I happened to look at this Kickstarter project just this morning. I’m not a gamer, but this one looks really interesting. I wish them well.
I hope these developers ensure that the female characters in the game are presented ever-so-carefully. One miniscule failure to be “inclusive” or one woman presented with a slightly unfavorable characteristic could set off a social-justice shitstorm from here to the Romulan empire.
I played the Eve Online Beta many years ago. The basic problem with Eve back then was a player could sink a lot of cash into a kick-ass weapon system and blow up others with one-shot, the unbalanced weapons in the game caused an arms race of heavily weaponised ships and not much else. I wanted to trade and evade and that was a losing strategy. This was a long time ago and I’m sure the game took on a different approach as it went live, but the fundamental problem of having vastly unbalanced firepower causes issues and it degrades into Call of Duty in Space.
For PvP, rather than safe spaces, make awesome weapons cheap, available and affordable, that makes it a big risk if you decide to opt for violence, make the penalty for death high, then you’ll approach real world and Libertopia.
Samizdatista guild (or organisation, or whatever this game calls it)?
Secondlife has had game creation, scripting, safe zones, etc, for years. But I wish them success.
I was just going to ask, what happened to SecondLife? It was in all the news, and then it vanished. I thought at the time that you could simulate different libertarian visions of society, and have people sample them to see what it might be like.
Secondlife is still around, quietly making a profit and developing their next generation of code while keeping the current “legacy” 13 year old system running. Political systems have essentially devolved into “whoever pays for the server, makes the rules”. There is always a balance between absolute tyranny and easing the system enough to keep it attractive to players. Much like I think space settlements will become.