A Game To End All Games

Simulation games have always appealed to me, but I dream of seeing them go so much further in the ultimate gaming mash up someday.

Imagine a platform similar to Second Life, or The Sims. The foundation of it is controlling your avatar/character, inhabiting your own little world, or if connected online, a chain of worlds where you could interact with many other players.

This exists today, of course, but each platform has its limitations.

So suspend your disbelief, step on the gas, and incorporate all kinds of other games you enjoy playing into one giant gaming experience.

No longer would you have to sign off from The Sims on your pc and boot up Grand Theft Auto on your console to go cause a little chaos or complete a mission. You wouldn’t need 3 different pieces of hardware to play all the different titles you love. There would just be a giant metaverse, where you could do and see everything you ever wanted to, right there.

It would be the greatest hardware and software merger ever.

One minute your character could be rushing to the bathroom so it doesn’t pee all over itself, and the next minute spot a Carl Johnson clone on your property, as John278 from Ohio tries to carjack that nicely rendered Ferrari you uploaded last week to your estate.

You pick up the virtual phone, dial 911, and within minutes a Rainbox Six clan from California hits your neighborhood with tactical gear to take out John278 and secure your 3 bedroom 2 bathroom home.

Maybe when you’re not at home uploading pictures to decorate your villa with, you lead a life as an elusive serial killer. You hunt from the shadows, Manhunt style, and take out that newb from Texas that just joined, snuffing his life out and dragging the body to hide in a dumpster before he respawns and wonders why he died checking out the real estate in your area.

And when you’re done with your murderous rampage, you head back to your virtual home, feed the AI dog, and sit in front of that big screen tv you just bought and downloaded off the internet last night, and pop in a ROM of Mortal Kombat, connect to your buddy who’s down the virtual block in his own house, and play a few rounds head to head.

To its credit, Second Life does try to emulate this to a degree with internal games. But if you’ve ever played any of the games within their world (first player shooting type stuff, for example), it has quite a ways to go before the it’s anywhere near what I’m thinking of here, and I’ve been keeping track of it for advancements since early ‘04.

Will this ever be possible? I don’t really know. It would be difficult (and expensive) to get all the different game makers to license their products or pitch in directly on “The Game to End all Games,” and I can’t even begin to imagine how complicated it would be to incorporate all that different code… but it’s fun to imagine.

And If this ever did happen, I already know what kind of virtual neighbors I’d have.

To my left, an Orc who likes to head off to Gruul’s Lair nightly and returns home with a rowdy bunch of Tauren and Trolls, grunting and spamming local chat about the loot they’re carrying. To my right, a quiet type who leaves the virtual house in the early A.M. and heads to the air traffic control tower to keep the runways clear for his Microsoft Flight Simulator buddies. And down the street, KellyCEO from Florida who is either at home entertaining friends from Facebook with her own DJ club music, or heading off to her amusement park where she’s known as quite the tycoon.

What a (virtual) world it could be!