Interconnecting city builders with completely different types of games that play out in those user-created places.
Like as a city builder you suddenly have to deal with people doing illegal car races through your city putting your citizens in danger, or dealing with gang wars from a GTA style game, but from a more macro perspective. Having real people playing MORPGs visiting your city looking for things to do. And so on.
No idea how you would make that work, but I find the possibilities quite interesting.
sounds like a meta-verse with a kind of "game context module" that creates /toggles constraints and features for each user / player.
ive been whiteboarding something similar to this. My scope is geared more towards round-based game loops rather than entire world building but I think the technical implementation would be very similar.
I think there's a lot of potential in connecting traditionally single-player activities, so the core game loops work well without depending on a lot of people being online like MMO's.. but it still benefits greatly from having more people on, so it has snowball potential.
Something I had in mind (which this thread has showed me wasnt original haha) was like an RTS and FPS 1+5 v 1+5 mix. There is a typical 1v1 RTS match against an opponent, and then in the middle of the war is a 5v5 FPS match. The FPS players and RTS players are not sharing any win conditions, but are on same teams. for example, fps players might be confined to a subsection of the RTS map
I kept getting hung up on creating meaningful interaction. It seems like a really cool feature to me, if it could be developed for free.. but i couldnt find a way to justify having a less polished version of either of the game types without the interaction becoming too dominant. In other words, if my gameplay isnt really impacted by the other game types then im just playing a worse version of some game. Alternatively, if it significantly impacted by the other game modes - i become dependent on things far outside my control.
this tension might actually relax a lot by moving out of the context of round-based games and into a persistent world-building context, but that scale / scope is also significantly larger too.
This is kind of similar to what made Natural Selection 1/2 so fun as game.
It was Space marines vs Aliens, but you also had a commander who could build a base and drop items. You had to defend resource extractors and advance your tech. A beautiful blend of Strategy game and first person shooter/biter.
Like as a city builder you suddenly have to deal with people doing illegal car races through your city putting your citizens in danger, or dealing with gang wars from a GTA style game, but from a more macro perspective. Having real people playing MORPGs visiting your city looking for things to do. And so on.
No idea how you would make that work, but I find the possibilities quite interesting.