What your thought on the subject? Is it worth doing?
Is there anyone here , who would be keen to participate in such a project?
I know just a couple of projects that are implementing the same idea. The best example is http://virtonomics.com.
But that's almost everything that is avialable on the market. Of course, if not taking into the account the recent update to the Capitalism franchise and few small and seems to be abandoned games like http://micronomics. Another project, that might possibly be compared in terms of concept is E-Republic. But it is less economy-centric and position itself more like action game with politics and economy aspects. And it also doesn't seem to be that popular.
Plus, this project can be promoted not only as a MMO, but also as an educational product for non-for-profit organisations and Universities. At this market potential company can get a good start by using bootcam grands and get a decent mentorship from business incubators working with this sector.
The main problem for me, is that I'm a software developer and I my understanding of economics and how market works is quite limited. And I guess for a such game this knowledges might be critical for it to be successful.
On the other hand, they are not that necessary in order to prepare the prototype with a limited features and only the basic simulation mechanisms. Also, the lack of knowledge could be improved in a short time.
I'm not sure about audience this game will target. I would probably prefer to produce a relatively difficult and advance game for a limited audience, rather than something casual for unspecific players.
As about myself, I live in Australia and work as a software developer for a big media company here. I have no experience participating in a real gamedev project in the past. But I always want to. And now I want to invest some time/skills and probably money to create something cool.
Why economic simulator? I strongly believe that there is a genuine deficit of such games on a market. And I'm a biggest fan of Capitalism II. That's why I find it pity, that there is only a single game available as MMO in this topic.
If starting to work on project, for a prototype I imaging the game with absolutely utilitary interface but with a set of flexible display & control instruments that user can use to observe current market situation and possibly take actions which affect it. I haven't decided yet how often recalculation of the world situation should occure, but ideally we should perform it faster than once every 24 hours as it happens in Virtonomics. But generally, I also support an idea of turn-based game mechanics. It means that all players during the some period of time must decide on the set of actions regarding their companies and capital. At the end of the fixed period, game world freezes for a fixed period of recaclulation when nobody can make any changes.
About technologies stack. I see it as something like this:
- Frontend: Typescript, React, Material-UI, Websockets
- Backend: Scala, Akka
- Deployment: AWS
I haven't think about monetizing yet. But I guess standard scheme will do for us: freemium/subscription-based reals. There is also possiblity of monetizing by providing custom-tailored solution for educational organisations, but it is too vague to use it as a basis for revenue generation. At least for now.
If you like an idea and want to help (Development/Design/Business) concat me on Telegram: +61475961186 or by e-mail on: cyril@nikelin.ru
P.S. I hope I posted it into the correct topic. Please, correct me if I did not.
Cyril
