Ongoing Events Experiences

[Wolf_22]

One thing I've always wanted to see game developer shops incorporate is ongoing world evolution. PZ is a game that centers on a situation that, once happens, solidifies the journey of the player from the standpoint of direction, but I think one thing it would greatly benefit from is a form of ongoing "phone home for event updates" functionality where tie-ins to in-game TVs or radios could be fed news pieces or news host-provided stories of ongoing world event developments based on other player game session conclusions. For example, it'd be cool for your player to turn on the radio and see the broadcast narrate news pieces about things that happened to John Doe on day whatever when in reality, the piece is telling a story about other players and the ends they came to or the successes they may have had in their games. Of course, this would mean The Indie Stone would have to incorporate a form of in-game statistics database to store the content these feeds would depend on and periodically send those to an Indie Stone-managed central system to curate the feed data back to the world for players (call-and-response functionality).

 

Adding to this "ongoing world evolution," the same Indie Stone-managed system could dual as a form of pushing various sub-world events. For example, PZ can sometimes get boring once you reach a specific point in the game. I mean, even in PZ, you only have so many buildings and places to explore, right? So wouldn't it be great--especially once you guys get to the point of incorporating NPCs--to have the capacity through the aforementioned call-and-response functionality to inject occasional world events for players? One idea that comes to mind are a rare gang injections where you'd have something like a biker gang or band of raiders come through Muldraugh ransacking things or trying to fight the player before driving on through if they're beat, or seeing the government try to install emergency militarization zones with some appearing to have medical staff on-site or other enclaves being focused solely on eradication efforts by employing a soldier-focused staff. It'd also add a new experience to see occasional "zombie herds" move through. Another idea that comes to mind is an effort to restore power by finding a power plant in the game, reconnecting / repairing whatever requires it, but then defending it from whatever through time with an established and functional power plant resulting in more friendly NPCs being in the area (giving the player incentive to do it as more friendly NPCs would translate to a stronger team, etc.).

 

What comes to my mind in this is some kind of function that could perform the periodic check using an encrypted Indie Stone endpoint with returning payloads consisting of JSON or XML or some such data deliverable the game client would then use to evaluate whatever event-specifics the payload consists of.

 

Has anything like this been discussed or considered?

 

The point, regardless of whatever you think of my examples, is that PZ needs a way to continue being "alive." Yes, the world is filled with undead, har har, but that doesn't mean the world in general stops moving or that all the world consists of is just zombies. What's going on in other cities, states, or countries? What's the president / government planning on doing or trying to do to fix all of mess? How will his or her efforts affect the player? More antagonistic regimes or maybe some supply chains? New radio frequencies popping up? What about an interactive HAM functionality whre the same call-and-response functionality could queue HAM messages between player game clients? It'd be cool to use the HAM radio to send messages and have responses to those messages from other players without being in multiplayer or be able to tune into radio stations and get actual live updates about the world. Everything centers on the player character's first-person experience but it's awfully siloed when so much more would be happening in the wider world and somehow, "if just some of that other stuff" could be incorporated into the game in-game either through the injected actions and events idea I mentioned or else through some other means, it'd help the player feel as if the game "keeps going" and "keeps evolving," and therefore, keeps providing incentive to keep caring about it (and keep playing). Having a way for Indie Stone to be involved in that ongoing evolution, directly, and in-game and through a way for the player's game client to enjoy call-and-response activity feeds, would be an amazing way to achieve much of that wider ongoing worldly (macro-level) experience.

Edited September 29 by Wolf_22