The biggest weakness with this idea would be the simglish approach. It seems to me that there is a rich landscape of ideas that are begging to be communicated by different characters with different perspectives. It would be a waste to offload that into a tutorial or other documentation, and unless you're preaching to the converted a missed opportunity for those who might not know much about the idea but be attracted to the concept or gameplay.
I was hesitant about the idea of a symbol based communication system for this reason as well. But writing the script for the thousands of NPCs, where each one has to be just as useful and applicable as the next seemed pointlessly daunting. The symbol system allows the design to simplify the interaction and communication of ideas and enable the design to incorperate emotional elements that alter the dynamics of communication instead of just exploring the topics. Like this we can understand the character's feeling about the topics while having a loose sense of what the subject is. I wasn't planning on wasting the player's time with tutorial or documentation for aspects that require more concise explanation however. I was thinking that vital ideas that need clear communication to show all sides, could be done through the character's digital correspondence with specific characters. It could include Baraka inspired images and music that align with the point they're making to quickly and clearly drive the point as well as put the player in the know.
If I were tackling your concept I might try to represent personalities and leaders of groups who represent all the interests with which the game is dealing. Most importantly it would be crucial to represent opposed sides as closely to their perspective as you can get, much in the same way a good writer gives insight about their antagonist by revealing why they are the way they are.
I do plan on having leaders, and representatives to as many major driving forces that exist in the world but I don't want to miss the fact that the other major driving force in this world are just people as well. Ideally I'd like to make a scaled up version of the 100 person planet. Representing our world as honestly as I can in a way that players still feel is manageable and not too redundant. And the opposing side will be loud and clear and very reasonably argued. We wouldn't have been using the same system for this long for no reason. Besides I don't want flat character's for my boss battles ;)
As you're challenging a fundamental system I'm wondering if part of the game would benefit from a more nuts and bolts life sim angle, as well. Maybe show how heating, transportation, food, medicine and other basic needs would be met by people in the new system, including the player.
I'd be interested in hearing more about how you could convey the ethos of the idea itself through the gameplay. One thing I don't care for with games of this type are the typically polemical approach I've seen. It would be nice to see a game that conveys an unusual set of ideas while still remaining a game rather than becoming an authoritative soapbox.
I imagine you're referring to the character's hunger, comfurt, etc. I think these elements are the only way to convey the basic challenges that the world faces. Its easy to imagine north american cities in this game, but the African, Asian, Antarctic, South American continents will be a different story with very unique challenges and much more deeply rooted and dangerous challenges to overcome.
Much of the concrete arguments will exist through the short video correspondence between the player's character and the characters that they connect with. Along with the social interaction is the resources, goods and services structure. I was thinking of exploring a very basic resource system (Influence, mass, renewable mass, energy, money, region specific iconic resource, etc) These would exist for the player to learn how to track (the first step to building an RBE), for the player to find ways to collect and build the technologies the city, region or world needs as well as a simplification of the driving forces that truly rule our societies. Since the player will be finding ways of collecting these they will also get to see the impact the collection of these things has on the planet, like excessive extraction of renewable mass and the destructive ways we extract certain mass from the planet (mass representing most any solid or liquid we extract to build goods), the use of money to decide ownership of resources and tracking systems that drive the movement of those resources, good and services should help players to understand not only whats going on and why but also make the ideas of a RBE clearer (and hopefully clearer as to how to achieve them). On top of the resources will be a layer of basic products to convey the types of products accessible to the world and on top of the products will be transportation systems and buildings meant to properly represent the different cities in each of the continents.
To try and steer clear of the authoritative sandbox I'd like to make the characters that populate the cities exist as fairly complex individuals, I can't test the idea until the communication and symbols system is at least roughed out but I was thinking each one would have a profile of up to 30 symbols that define that character(unseen), as the player interacts with that character they profile them (seen) getting to understand the symbols that define them. Using up to three + symbols or - symbols beside it to represent that character's opinion and experience with that subject. As the game's world events take place, affect different regions and are expressed in different media (newspaper, the web, TV, radio, etc) the city's characters would react to the news based on how it's conveyed and how the event reflects on that character's personal opinion of those topics. These new events could perhaps bridge the gap between scripted audio/text along with symbols for the character's to react to.
By the way, thanks for the concise feedback. This is useful and really helped me to honestly question if these elements should be reconsidered. Does the extra details help/interest you or do you feel I am still overlooking something with this design choice?
