The Design Pillars of Eco
Ecos design mission is to have players Solve the Tragedy of the Commons, taking place among real people. That means creating conflicts among people with the same end goals, where a collection of self-interests is not enough to succeed, you need some representation of collective interest. To implement that, the game exists within the intersection of the game's design pillars: Economy, Ecology and Government.
The role of these pillars in the game is as follows:
Encompasses the efforts and progress of humans. Manufacturing, creating infrastructure, building, harvesting, performing research, specialization, trade. Collaboration and competition is a big goal of this pillar, to connect players together in productive (as well as adversarial) creation. The features of the economy should be grown to support these features, as well as influences from the other two pillars. Key goals of this pillar are: [olist] Asynchronicity, allowing players to collaborate across time and space,
Discoverability, making it easy for players to find the information they need about how to participate in the economy.
Involvement, incentivizing players to work together, especially between different levels of experience.
Organization, allowing players to organize labor seamlessly through the interests of many parties, with lots of data on progress and economy state.
[/olist]
The substrate of the player experience, this is the reality that they are forced to contend with. It is both the source of their solutions and problems. Our emphasis when building the Ecology simulation is a feature-set that both affects and is affected by human actions. That is, resources that are useful to the economy, and systems that are vulnerable to pollution and over-harvesting. Beyond that, the ecology is a goal in itself, and the beauty of the ecosystem has natural value in the game outside of any human purpose. Key goals of this pillar are: [olist] Visibility, players should be granted powerful tools (the stats system) to understand how the ecology system works and how players are influencing it.
Impact, simulated features are highly reactive to the actions of players.
Diversity, promoting the usage or more far-spread regions of the world, increasing needs for transport and collaboration, and allowing for myriad complex effects from different biomes.
Existential Threat, the ecology needs to be capable of dying and creating a losing world for players due to their actions.
[/olist]
Government in Eco serves as a tool to manage and dictate the relationship between players in the economy, and between the economy and the environment. It needs to be powerful and flexible enough to express a rich variety of governmental structures, and still easy and fun to understand and build (I see these two goals as supportive of each other rather than opposites). Government must be necessary to win the game, allowing players to dictate the interactions that happen with the environment. Key goals of this pillar are: [olist] Ease of use. All players should be capable of understanding and using the system.
Power. Many different and deep structures of government should be possible with the system.
Created by Players. Government should be both run and constructed by players, allowing them to form it as a solution to their problems in the economy and in interactions with the ecosystem.
Meta-Game Support. Promotes the positive interaction of players in the meta game (active players coming and going, property arrangements, etc). Serves to handle problems that occur not just in the game but in the meta-game.
Transparent. The workings of government should be available and in fact highlighted for all players to see and participate in.
Iterative. The government should be expected to change throughout gameplay, not simply be created once and run forever that way.
[/olist]
The second mission of Eco is to build meaningful community, and some features may apply to this even if they dont directly promote the Tragedy of the Commons goal. Examples of such features include:
[ 2019-04-30 20:39:49 CET ] [ Original post ]
This week Id like to dive into the core of Ecos design a bit, and talk about the principles that guide the design and development of the game. These are things that go way back to the beginning ideas of what Eco would be, and are used to this day to determine what we choose to bring next in the game.
Game Mission
Ecos design mission is to have players Solve the Tragedy of the Commons, taking place among real people. That means creating conflicts among people with the same end goals, where a collection of self-interests is not enough to succeed, you need some representation of collective interest. To implement that, the game exists within the intersection of the game's design pillars: Economy, Ecology and Government.
The role of these pillars in the game is as follows:
Economy
Encompasses the efforts and progress of humans. Manufacturing, creating infrastructure, building, harvesting, performing research, specialization, trade. Collaboration and competition is a big goal of this pillar, to connect players together in productive (as well as adversarial) creation. The features of the economy should be grown to support these features, as well as influences from the other two pillars. Key goals of this pillar are: [olist]
Ecology
The substrate of the player experience, this is the reality that they are forced to contend with. It is both the source of their solutions and problems. Our emphasis when building the Ecology simulation is a feature-set that both affects and is affected by human actions. That is, resources that are useful to the economy, and systems that are vulnerable to pollution and over-harvesting. Beyond that, the ecology is a goal in itself, and the beauty of the ecosystem has natural value in the game outside of any human purpose. Key goals of this pillar are: [olist]
Government
Government in Eco serves as a tool to manage and dictate the relationship between players in the economy, and between the economy and the environment. It needs to be powerful and flexible enough to express a rich variety of governmental structures, and still easy and fun to understand and build (I see these two goals as supportive of each other rather than opposites). Government must be necessary to win the game, allowing players to dictate the interactions that happen with the environment. Key goals of this pillar are: [olist]
Community
The second mission of Eco is to build meaningful community, and some features may apply to this even if they dont directly promote the Tragedy of the Commons goal. Examples of such features include:
- Meta-features for finding, hosting, and joining servers.
- Organization of server works among players
- Avatar creation and customization of appearance, custom animations for interactions
- Decorations and cosmetic buildings and clothes.
Eco
Strange Loop Games
Strange Loop Games
2018-02-06
Indie Simulation Multiplayer Coop
Game News Posts 189
🎹🖱️Keyboard + Mouse
Very Positive
(10235 reviews)
https://www.play.eco
https://store.steampowered.com/app/382310
The Game includes VR Support
Enter the world of Eco, where you must team-up to build civilization and prevent a disaster, using resources from a fully simulated ecosystem, where your every action affects the lives of countless species.
Will you and your fellow builders collaborate successfully, creating laws to guide player actions, finding a balance that takes from the ecosystem without damaging it? Or will the world be destroyed by short-sighted choices that pollute the environment in exchange for immediate resource gains? Or, do players act too slowly, and the world is consumed by a disaster that could have been avoided if you developed the right technology? In Eco, you must find a balance as a group if the world is to survive.
Enter humans into this equation, and things get complicated. It is the role of players to thrive in this environment by using resources from the world to eat, build, discover, learn and invent. However, every resource they take affects the environment it is taken from, and without careful planning and understanding of the ecosystem, lands can become deforested and polluted, habitats destroyed, and species left extinct.
In the extreme, the food supply of the ecosystem can be destroyed, along with all human life on it, resulting in server-wide perma-death. Eco is a game where the player’s actions have meaningful consequences.
Will you and your fellow builders collaborate successfully, creating laws to guide player actions, finding a balance that takes from the ecosystem without damaging it? Or will the world be destroyed by short-sighted choices that pollute the environment in exchange for immediate resource gains? Or, do players act too slowly, and the world is consumed by a disaster that could have been avoided if you developed the right technology? In Eco, you must find a balance as a group if the world is to survive.
A world-survival game
Eco is a survival game in a global sense, where it is not just the individual or group who is threatened, but the world itself. The world of Eco will be home to a population of thousands of simulated plants and animals of dozens of species, each living out their lives on a server running 24 hours a day, growing, feeding and reproducing, with their existence highly dependent on other species.Enter humans into this equation, and things get complicated. It is the role of players to thrive in this environment by using resources from the world to eat, build, discover, learn and invent. However, every resource they take affects the environment it is taken from, and without careful planning and understanding of the ecosystem, lands can become deforested and polluted, habitats destroyed, and species left extinct.
In the extreme, the food supply of the ecosystem can be destroyed, along with all human life on it, resulting in server-wide perma-death. Eco is a game where the player’s actions have meaningful consequences.
- Everything you do affects the ecosystem, and players can destroy their food supply and world (server-wide permadeath)
- Create a player-run government to make decisions as a group, proposing and voting on laws
- Use data gathered from the world to propose and vote on laws as a group. Debate with scientific argumentation.
- Create a player-run economy that allows you to sell not only good but services in the form of server-enforced contracts (simulating a player driven quest system).
- Your food level determines your skill-increase rate, making food very important and tying players directly to the ecosystem from which it comes.
- A game with goals higher than entertainment. We plan to build it for schools as an augmented classroom world students share.
MINIMAL SETUP
- Processor: Intel Dual-Core 2.4 GHz or AMD Dual-Core Athlon 2.5 GHzMemory: 2 GB RAM
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GT 440 or AMD Radeon HD 5850 or Intel HD Graphics 4000 with 512 MBNetwork: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 2 GB available space
- Processor: Intel Core i5-2300 or AMD Phenom II X4 940 or betterMemory: 4 GB RAM
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 570 or AMD Radeon HD 7750 with 1 GB VRAM or betterNetwork: Broadband Internet connection
- Storage: 2 GB available space
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