So I’m playing Supermarket simulator. And if you notice TCG Simulator looks VERY similar. That’s because it uses the same assets. It looks like it’s actually the same shop location, on the same street. But in one game, it’s a supermarket, and in another game, it’s a card game similator.
But if you look, the neighborhood outside of your walls of your shop all looks very dead. Like you’re in a movie set, where the rest of the town is actually just wooden building backdrops.
So I figure, what if each “shop” could be a real shop? You play online, and when you log on, your shop has an individual save data. It gets played on a server, and each server has a different set of shops.
So if you’re a retro game shop, you’re playing in the lot of land number 14. So when you log on, you’re looking for a server that doesn’t have anyone playing on land lot 14. That’s the retro game shop.
When you log on, you can’t have infinate time, since time needs to always be moving for everybody else at the same pace…but time also doesn’t stop at 9pm, and the deliveries don’t stop either. So at 9pm-8am, you restock your shelves. You order backstock for your storage room.
And the shop right next to your retro games shop? Maybe that’s the supermarket. That’s land plot 13. And you can go into the supermarket, and you can buy things. Just like real life people can come into your retro games shop and buy things.
There’s also NPCs obviously, who would be the bulk of the customers.
But the neighborhood would actually look busy, and alive rather than one guy hanging out on a movie set.
And so, you could play supermarket simulator, and someone else could play TCG simulator, and someone else could play gas station simulator, and someone else could play retro games shop simulator, and when you you play online, you’re all on the same server, on the same street, and there could be an actual economy. Customers come in, spend their money on you, you spend some of your money at the gas station. There could be a wholesale simulator, where you play the shop the other shops are ordering from on the market. So like when you order furnature, or things to stock your shop, they have to be in stock at the wholesale simulator. Which means the guy who plays that role, affects ALL the stores on the server. Because if he just lets shit go out of stock, you use the competitor, which is automated, and always in stock, but at higher prices.
This was Second Life around 20 years ago.
Man, I managed to completely forget about that. My dad was really, really into that game. Like, that’s about all he did for most of 4 years and ended up leaving my mom for someone he met in game.
I guess SL wasn’t really any worse about that than any other game, plenty of people meet and get married in MMOs, but I think the raging custom-content sex parties in SL probably didn’t help matters at the time.
Wonder how that game is doing these days. Cursory web search says it’s still alive. I probably would have found it to be pretty interesting if I wasn’t so turned away from it by my family experience.
Pretty sure we’re in that
I think you just invented the Metaverse.
“invented”
Let’s see how the metaverse is doing now…oh…
Second Life.
Yeah but good this time. Build it from a gamers perspective.
Can we get The Black Sun while we’re at it?
Nice idea but unfortunately good luck convincing everyone to collaborate into single super-game and integrate each “X simulator” as DLC assuming everyone also adhere guideline and consistent
All these bargain bin simulators are just flipping the same template anyway so it probably wouldn’t be so hard to actually do
And all of those shops are in a SimCity
That city is one of many in civilisation 6.
That is on only one Earthlike planet in the Elite Dangerous Milky Way galaxy.
Then you zoom further out to find that the Blokkats have moved into the star system next door, and are eyeing Sol hungrily.
I hate when my card shop gets nuked.
Stop! Please! I can only get SO erect!
This is only loosely related to your post but I just came across this project:
This is a cross-game modification system which randomizes different games, then uses the result to build a single unified multi-player game. Items from one game may be present in another, and you will need your fellow players to find items you need in their games to help you complete your own.
It supports a whole shitload of games: https://archipelago.gg/games
I only just started reading about it. So far it seems like insanity.
Ive played in a few of these. It’s an absolute blast once you get your settings dialed in and balanced to everyone else. If they’re not, then the player in the smallest game tends to have a lot of downtime.
The only downside is that the participants need to be familiar enough with their chosen game to do a randomizer which means roping in casual players is difficult.
Also, there are a massive number of unsupported games that you can play like this that are not part of the main website. https://multiworld.news/apworlds.html
Let’s add powerwash simulator to the mix 🤔
Sounds like the metaverse, neat concept!
Add in Thief Simulator and you’ve got the ultimate game
steals your game save
Oh, irony!
Please add Fishing Barents sea to your megasim please. My Sjarken needs to sell its pollock in your fish market simulator
I was playing the demo of TCG sim today and was just thinking that myself. In fact, I’m pretty sure I watched a YouTuber play a sort of life sim game where you could do just about anything but it had full 3D graphics and an isometric view. I wish I could remember the name, because from what I remember you could start a business or be a criminal, or work your way up to CEO or even mayor.
Sounds like it was Big Ambitions
That was it
Next best thing is Steam
Steam just apperently cut off support for windows 7. I better still be able to launch the games I paid for. At least offline. I haven’t tried yet. I only bought a few games.
MICROSOFT cut off support for windows 7. Is steam supposed to continue support for the entire OS?
It could still let me launch programs I already paid for. I bought Warcraft 2 from Epic Games. I can still launch it.
There’s zero reason why I shouldn’t be able to launch a game to play offline.
They did. Support was discontinued from the start of 2024. That you’ve been using it up to now without any problems is literally because they didn’t break anything on purpose. As long as none of the software changes it will continue to work.
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/4784-4F2B-1321-800A