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To solve this you’ll need to collaborate among a group of dozens of players (and eventually hundreds or thousands of people as we grow the game). Thus you’re facing two existential crises simultaneously: an external threat that you must avert, and the threat of causing your own destruction. This ecosystem is your only lifeline in a race against time, your source of resources that will either prevent humanity’s destruction, or become the source of its destruction when the group squanders its resources. Pollute a section of land with mining runoffs? Your crops are poisoned. Hunt every elk for food? They’re now extinct. Chop down every tree and fail to plant more? They won’t be growing back. Together they form an ecosystem rich with resources, resources that you must use to survive and develop a civilization. They simulate 24 hours a day, living out their lives with or without human interaction, growing, feeding and reproducing. Besides the other players, you’ll be sharing the world with a detailed wilderness simulation full of plants and animals.
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In order to prevent that catastrophe from happening, you need to build a civilization and advance technology and resources to the point that the crisis can be averted. There’s a world-destroying cataclysm looming, like a drought or a flood or a meteor heading for the Earth, several real-time weeks away. It works like this: a new server is started, and players enter at the beginnings of civilization. “This ecosystem is your only lifeline in a race against time.” It’s not that different from our own world in that way. What’s more, the reason it’s destroyed would be the players’ own fault. What does that mean exactly? It means you play in a multiplayer world that has the possibility of being permanently destroyed, resulting in server-wide perma death. Our next project is called Eco, and it’s a game in a new genre we’re calling a Global Survival Game.
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