Ingame Gods | Skill Tree #38
Ingame Gods | Skill Tree #38
FOGcast: God-as-a-Service for Autonomous Worlds
Highlights
MILES: Massively Interactive Live Events. offshoot of cloud gaming. e.g. interact with AI characters hosted in a cloud
Example Blaseball: Watch simulated fantasy baseball and bet on the outcome. Earned currency (not crypto) can be used to influence factors. Even the devs don't completely know the outcomes as it's a simulation -> players change the rules of the game.
AI (provably fair) can dynamically adjust the gameplay, acting as a god. Can help to balance games over time
Challenge: making sure no one can predict how the AI reacts to exploit it -> only have the AI in a blackbox and prove that it acted within the set rules. no one needs to see the blackbox to validate the results
Players may not even be aware that they're playing with an AI
Impact: The god acts as an additiional content layer beside the team to support in liveops
Could also have multiple gods interacting with each other
More about Blaseball
Free idle browser game
Fictional baseball simulation: Players bet on teams to earn currency
Fictional as in hilarious. For example, simulated players have stats like 10+ fingers and can have electric blood
Match outcomes depend on player stats
Earned currency can be spent on voting for blessings, aka buying raffle tickets for team upgrades. And to vote for decrees (permanent changes to the rules of the game)
The outcomes of blessings and decrees are not known beforehand, sometimes not even afterward
Mixing sports and its own creative world, players began to expand the game. For example, imagining background stories for characters, creating wikis, or roleplaying as characters on Twitter.
Each team has their own community which create their own lore
Emergent social gameplay: Players were able to vote for characters as idols to earn points every time they hit the ball. The 14th most idolized character could be stolen by the team with a certain blessing. Players realized that a dead character could be voted for. A team of players tried to use that mechanic to resurrect the character by getting him to 14th place and get the specific blessing. The game studio ran with it and expanded the lore by adding a new mechanic to the character where he throws the balls at the opponents, which could lead to the death of these characters
Devolver Digital shares Pitching Lessons
Looking for teams they emotionally connect with and want to work with for years to come
Government-backed teams help Devolver find good games. Gov initiatives like VicScreen even go as far as curating games lists for publishers to connect them with studios. Other support includes funding, mentorship, and connecting with partners
Teams should pitch with playable builds of the core gameplay loop
Teams have a hard time becoming visible. Governments can help here too
Why ‘We Were Here Expeditions: The FriendShip‘ was Shadow Dropped
Pros and cons of shadow dropping as a free game vs building hype with wishlist etc
