Awesome idea. Microcurrencies are a great way to lower the barriers to entry for a game, and give the user a genuine value proposition that's easy for them to measure.

I'm sure I would play it. :)

"simple top-down video game" Its nice that you did not say 3d massive multiplayer world.

Design document? Paper prototype?

Design document is in early stages, budget and initial bizdev is done, no concpet art or prototyping done yet.

I'm more interested in feedback on the general idea right now, after which I will go through a refinement process based on feedback... since the feedback is so light, it probably means I need to either add in more details for people to look at, or open up the concept and get people participating in the build process.

I'll wait to see what happens in voting. :)

And yes, everyone and their dog is trying to build a 3D MMO... been there, seen the budget...not this time.

Not a gamer, don't understand the culture, not qualified to comment. Sounds workable, though.

could be a nice open source project...

maybe allow for micro donations --- to open source projects

I'm just not a big fan of proprietary..

People who say things like, "I'm just not a big fan of proprietary." are generally also not fans of making buckets of money... which is cool and respectable. Open source and proprietary have their places. I bet you you're using a proprietary implementation of a CPU to read/write this message, and you are a fan of computers as a communications tool. I'm not saying that means anything, just that it's interesting to note that proprietary is a necessary evil, just like copyright and the GPL is a necessary evil. Dismissing it despite the fact it's a proven viable model because your not a fan of it is business suicide in a highly competitive landscape.

Of course I'm a huge fan of the open source model, and am a committer on several well known open source projects. I also have to pay the bills, and that means being a fan of what puts the bacon on the table. It could be a great hobby for sure, and you could open up the code base and assets under an open source licenses and give the developers who are improving the game the money. But what's to be gained if anyone can just take your assets and set up their own variation and steal your user base and revenue? In this case I'd argue that open source is a poor model for this application, with little to be gained in terms of community contribution and a lot to be lost.

I agree that 'steampunk' might be a good new angle for a game, but you will need more than that alone to create a deep and believable fantasy world. I'd therefore change the title, because at the moment this one says to me, "Hey, isn't steampunk fashionable these days? Here's a game that might not be any good... but at least it's steampunk! Right?"

i don't expect you'll be able to get any traction going by simply pitching a derivative game concept, since i believe its always devil-in-the-details with games. but i can suggest maybe the easiest way to implement (no matter how big the team is) might be finding an open source trading game and re-skinning it. or even a gaming construction set. since it doesn't sound like there's anything new here that can't be dropped on an already existing gaming model.

Kevlar: I don't know if this is a direct call for open source gaming. It is more a call to a community of people to give feedback on an IP concept that is partially formed, and a game concept that may/may not testbed well. This is more an attempt to do Project Top Secret in a more guided manner, rather than letting the entire thing be community generated. Perhaps that is what the idea and pitch should be, rather than an approach on the IP/Loose game concept.

PhilipH: It's a working title, and I agree, it is absolutely putrid.

Gordon: Yeah, it's tricky to figure out how to pitch an IP concept to a crowdsourcing community. That is largely what this is about, rather than looking for technical solutions and feedback. The technology side of this is pretty straight forward, nothing new here. The devil is truly in the details, and I'm still not sure how to bring that out in 1000 characters or less. :)

Anyone have any suggestions on a way to make this particular pitch better? Is Cambrian House just the wrong venue for pitching IP concepts? Am I on crack?

I am not that up-to-date on gaming industry and not much aware of the games and concept already present. However, the concept of a game involving trading,combat, politics and exploration seems interesting. The idea of micro-currency also sounds good and I think will provide an opportunity for community building for the game as it involves trading, politics etc.

I am little bit curious what will be the start and finish in this game so the players can finally see their achievements. I would think the trading part would be something like the monopoly game. Btw, people who like playing monopoly would be interested to play game like "Steampunk" (I would think a name more resembling trading/politics/combat will be nice) on computer and in collaborative mode within a community.

More description on the concept of the game and a prototype might help in understanding the concept and also to provide a value-added feed.

We are eager to hear more about this from you. Keep it up!!

Hello,

Sounds like a great game! I love something with some real life complexity. Will you be using some type of AI ? Are there decent third party gaming engines for that? or will you be writing your own?

I'm not really familiar with this genre but I checked into it and it looks pretty cool.

Please keep us posted

BlueStorm: there are a number of AI middleware solutions, this particular game will need a more complex commodities and economy manager, the AI can be relatively simple. I am thinking of using Unity3D as the game development platform, it allows for windows/mac/web browser players. It's cheap too.

There is a game called Infantry Online that was developed by Harmless Games in 1998 and sold to Sony Online Entertainment in 2001. The story of the evolution of the game is an interesting one that you may wish to peruse, since it uses an isometric engine (top-down, real-time) and was acquired by a huge corporation. Its playerbase has since gone downhill, but the game itself is now free and is still fairly active at [url=http://www.station.sony.com/casualProduct.vm?Id=039]its Sony homepage[/url] as well as with player-driven communities that are using their own server software (such as [url=http://www.freeinfantry.net/]Free Infantry[/url]).

I've been addicted to games like this for a good while, so I thought you might enjoy a little bit of a research into a similar game that has already had its day but still enjoys cult status. You'll probably find some very helpful information.

You really do have a tough battle ahead of you. Some people here may already be aware of my previous involvement in the gaming industry writing for various game mags, doing segments at E3 for G4 and others.

Prepare to enter a cut-throat industry.

I think with some more thinking and fleshing this out you may have something though.

rayrayangel: Yeah, I know how harsh the games industry is. I just left a startup game company that bit the dust. One of the reasons I brought up a game concept here on CH is that I'm looking at a different approach to building a game. Project Top Secret with a bit more direction...so, like, it isn't Chocobo Racer. :)