Identity RPG (Your thoughts)

[Adrionis]

Identity RPG's (by the creators of Altis Life) first module (supposedly) releases today! It should be very exciting! What are your thoughts on this, people of NationStates?

The game - https://store.steampowered.com/app/792990/Identity/

[Wawakanatote]

I've never even heard of this until now.

[Cannot think of a name]

You getting a commission?

[Holy Marsh]

An OP needs to do more than this. What are your thoughts? Why should we care?

[Ostroeuropa]

Regardless of how they try to make the game feel real or align with reality, it will inevitably factionalize along the metagame discovered by people and different gameplay styles. Balance will either be impossible, unrealistic, or wildly alter the game with each patch leading to complaints and quitting (Unless players go into the game understanding it as a society metagame where sudden drastic societal collapse from changing metagame is a part of the fun, as is rediscovering the new metagame and attempting to establish dominance anew each patch by trying a bunch of different shit and seeing what works, it could be that in the early months of patch B everyone is convinced the car mechanics have it cornered, until someone discovers an exploit by the teachers and challenges their assumed hegemony, and this cycle repeats up until the bus drivers end up on top for ages and the metagame is fully understood.)

It will not represent an online society, and will instead be a bizarro world where, for instance, hair dressing is for some reason insanely profitable and gangs of hairdressers use their funds to bribe cops to ignore crimes against people by the violent anarchy faction who don't pay the hair dressers protection money thereby perpetuating their power.

The violent anarchy faction will be underpowered in terms of anything but griefing.

Etc.

It's interesting purely to see how the metagame develops and what kind of society their mechanics, balance, and coding will inevitably produce. Society is not just a product of human behavior, but our environment and what is beneficial behavior for that environment. Perfectly replicating a realistic environment in a game is impossible, and so the society it produces will be wildly different dependent on the environment the code produces.

It's interesting for metagaming and sociology studies. Not much else.

The existence of crime, exchangeable cash, and player-led policing mean that it will be a social warfare simulator, not a reality simulator.

It's possible if they manage to make the code more subtle and less dramatic you might end up with something like reality and some MUDs, with early players accumulating enough capital to simply corner the market and buy up the property and become the upper class and so on, practically immovable. This might also provide some interesting insights into oppression and so on if some servers decide to RP as racist or whatever, or some other arbitrary shit.

It's possible the designers know all this if they know about gaming theory. Or they could be cluelessly trying to make a reality simulator and not understand what they're actually creating.

It's also possible we might drift into EVE-Online territory, where the real life monetary value aspect tied to the virtual goods begins to drastically alter behavior. (Eve-online, wars between huge guilds almost never happen because it would lose them hundreds of thousands of USD, see the bloodbath at B-R5RB, which cost the organizations involved 300,000 USD IRL.)

This would also substantially alter the nature of the game, and likely mean that crime becomes virtually non-existent in some neighborhoods due to massive drives to recruit police (As happened in EVE) and people get paid to protect virtual capital by the wealthy. Criminals would be solo and unable to do anything meaningful against the wealthy, but could successfully fuck over new players and prevent competition arising (see EVE.)

[The New California Republic]

Regardless of how they try to make the game feel real or align with reality, it will inevitably factionalize along the metagame discovered by people and different gameplay styles. Balance will either be impossible, unrealistic, or wildly alter the game with each patch.

It will not represent an online society, and will instead be a bizarro world where, for instance, hair dressing is for some reason insanely profitable and gangs of hairdressers use their funds to bribe cops to ignore crimes against people by the violent anarchy faction who don't pay the hair dressers protection money thereby perpetuating their power.

The violent anarchy faction will be underpowered in terms of anything but griefing.

Etc.

It's interesting purely to see how the metagame develops and what kind of society their mechanics, balance, and coding will inevitably produce. Society is not just a product of human behavior, but our environment and what is beneficial behavior for that environment. Perfectly replicating a realistic environment in a game is impossible, and so the society it produces will be wildly different dependent on the environment the code produces.

It's interesting for metagaming and sociology studies. Not much else.

It'll be less than 5 minutes before people start trolling by creating things shaped like genitalia and putting them in clear view of everyone else, or griefing by exploiting and misusing some poorly-implemented game mechanic to make life difficult for other players.

[Ostroeuropa]

Regardless of how they try to make the game feel real or align with reality, it will inevitably factionalize along the metagame discovered by people and different gameplay styles. Balance will either be impossible, unrealistic, or wildly alter the game with each patch.

It will not represent an online society, and will instead be a bizarro world where, for instance, hair dressing is for some reason insanely profitable and gangs of hairdressers use their funds to bribe cops to ignore crimes against people by the violent anarchy faction who don't pay the hair dressers protection money thereby perpetuating their power.

The violent anarchy faction will be underpowered in terms of anything but griefing.

Etc.

It's interesting purely to see how the metagame develops and what kind of society their mechanics, balance, and coding will inevitably produce. Society is not just a product of human behavior, but our environment and what is beneficial behavior for that environment. Perfectly replicating a realistic environment in a game is impossible, and so the society it produces will be wildly different dependent on the environment the code produces.

It's interesting for metagaming and sociology studies. Not much else.

It'll be less than 5 minutes before people start trolling by creating things shaped like genitalia and putting them in clear view of everyone else, or griefing by exploiting and misusing some poorly-implemented game mechanic to make life difficult for other players.

Drawing dicks isn't trolling. It's a form of empty yet transgressive rebellion that doesn't actually carry any weight behind it or political meaning and may serve an important social function (harmless social rebellion). Admittedly when it gets out of control and everyone starts doing it, that's a problem. This may in fact be why we crack down on dick drawers, because otherwise the meme would spread IRL too as everyone just starts turning everything into dicks, as everyone just gets caught up in it and soon everything is dicks, done specifically because huehuehue, but then its not rebelling anymore, your society is just like that now. Gz. its not funny anymore and everything is a penis, and you've got to clean it up or live with it. Virtual spaces eliminate this problem by letting people just quit after doing it.

I theorize that cracking down on dick drawing may be a meme almost as old as humanity, as our first tribes all learned this lesson independently.

[Klorgia1]

Life simulators just went to a whole new level.

[Hammer Britannia]

How much money were you paid to sponsor this?

Also, this is literally just a heavily remodelled Gmod Roleplay

[Valehart]

This is pretty barebones - it looks pretty, but it'll probably flop harder than my SAT scores.

[The New California Republic]

this is literally just a heavily remodelled Gmod Roleplay

Yup, I used to play that, the one where you could set up your own cannabis farm in an apartment, or play as police to conduct raids on said apartments. I remember being corrupt as fuck when playing as a cop; the cannabis would inexplicably find its way into my pockets during raids...

[Adrionis]

How much money were you paid to sponsor this?

Also, this is literally just a heavily remodelled Gmod Roleplay

I wasn't paid any money. I was simply wondering what the community's thoughts were.

[Adrionis]

Interesting replies!

[Chernoslavia]

I used to fuck with people so much in these type of games, make grown ass fucking men rage so loud. Ah good times.

[Chernoslavia]

Regardless of how they try to make the game feel real or align with reality, it will inevitably factionalize along the metagame discovered by people and different gameplay styles. Balance will either be impossible, unrealistic, or wildly alter the game with each patch.

It will not represent an online society, and will instead be a bizarro world where, for instance, hair dressing is for some reason insanely profitable and gangs of hairdressers use their funds to bribe cops to ignore crimes against people by the violent anarchy faction who don't pay the hair dressers protection money thereby perpetuating their power.

The violent anarchy faction will be underpowered in terms of anything but griefing.

Etc.

It's interesting purely to see how the metagame develops and what kind of society their mechanics, balance, and coding will inevitably produce. Society is not just a product of human behavior, but our environment and what is beneficial behavior for that environment. Perfectly replicating a realistic environment in a game is impossible, and so the society it produces will be wildly different dependent on the environment the code produces.

It's interesting for metagaming and sociology studies. Not much else.

It'll be less than 5 minutes before people start trolling by creating things shaped like genitalia and putting them in clear view of everyone else, or griefing by exploiting and misusing some poorly-implemented game mechanic to make life difficult for other players.

I dunno much about the latter part, but Yeah, that’s what it’s all about man. “Accidentally” running into people’s cars they just got out the dealership, then just casually go away as they shout some racist words at you is priceless. Yelling “you friendly?” At squeakers in Rust then just cap their asses and take all their shit as they shout “I fucking said I was friendly, asshole!”. Then they stupidly come back a naked demanding you give back their shit to them, but you just kill them over and over again as they screech into their mics? Funny as hell. You should try it some time.