Sep 17, 2020
In this episode, Joel and Tim discuss environmental multiplayer
-- the form of multiplayer that happens when a game isn't directly
about interactions with other players, but where other players are
still present in the experience.
We talk shared world states with Dark Souls' messaging
system, and Elite: Dangerous and No Man's Sky's
discovery system. We talk shared road paradigms in The
Trail, Journey, and the TruckerMP mod
for American Truck
Simulator and Eurotruck Simulator 2.
Finally, we talk neighbor mechanics and emergent market systems in
Animal Crossing, and how Sim City's
bourgeois utopic multiplayer mechanics resulted in an unintended
bourgeois hell.