Hi everyone, I'm looking for anyone interested in programming this game idea (or part of it, which would be more feasible). Of course I'm not forcing anyone to dedicate their time to it, but I'd like to gauge interest and perhaps see it become a reality. I originally posted this on Kongregate, a flash game portal, and I reference certain games which may be unfamiliar, but the idea should be clear.

The goal of the game is to make as much money as possible and dominate other players to that end.

The game begins through the generation of a character, either by opting to become the child of a player looking to parent someone and being inactive in the map for a certain period of time, or generating a completely new character and hopping straight in, but losing bonuses. Your characteristics, be they generated or inherited from a parent, will affect one’s ability to perform tasks, be they race, gender, abilities (or disabilities), qualities and other such things. For example, your character’s sex may affect its earnings, mirrroring how in the real world, women in the US earn $0.76 for every $1 earned by a man. This could be effected in-game by giving female characters the ability to ‘parent’ new players for a period of time to give them bonuses, detracting from a female character’s ability to work, as well as penalties on performing work which can only be addressed with investment in certain mechanics.

There will be two main sections to the game: the button, and the map. The button will be the main source of money (though other sources may be introduced in the form of achievements, a quest system, temporary challenges, etc.) and can then be freely used by players.

The map will consist of a multitude of different tiles (each one square kilometre in area), including different biomes which produce different resources (wood from forests, land space from plains, etc.); these tiles can be of different grades depending on how many resources they produce when worked. The player travels across these at a rate determined by their characteristics, and the rate can be adjusted between walking, jogging and sprinting, and as the character exercises, their speed and stamina will increase. When the character is put into the world, they must ensure their basic needs are met, by hunting and gathering (time required to do this will depend on food levels in a tile, with forest and plains having high levels and deserts having lower levels), drinking water (depends on a tile’s freshwater levels), and either taking shelter in a cave (if a tile has one) or gathering wood from a forest and building a house in a plain.

Once a player is set up, they can start to build farms once sufficient wood and materials are gathered from tiles, which they can then hire people to work on, and sell the food to people who need it, as well as setting up lumber mills, mines, quarries and fisheries. They can also craft tools, equipment and gear from resources in order to improve farming, mining or lumbering ability, as well as weapons and armour to invade and take over the buildings and loot of others.

The tech trees for equipment and buildings could extend to casinos for betting, banks and stock exchanges for savings, loans, and investments, legislatures and courts to establish countries, sovereignty and national armies, and many more.

The crucial idea is, this is essentially an idle game (working tiles and performing labour for others will require idling which will constantly generate income) in the same vein as AdVenture Capitalist with the money making focus, but with a few super important ideas:

• Randomly generated characters, which make you better or worse at certain tasks naturally

• No single experience bar like Anti-Idle: The Game, but a variety of different skills to level up

• Social inequality. Being a woman or black makes you less income than being male or white, reflective of the inequalities and injustices which exist in the real world.

• A map with resources to actually obtain, as opposed to more basic games where the only resources are cash and XP.

• You can’t just build farms and stuff in thin air, you need to find space.

• The multiplayer element. The only non-player method of making money will be the Button and achievements; everything else will require you to interact with other players.

• Raiding other players’ hard earned resources by military means.

• Countries and sovereignty. Who knows what might emerge?

Anyone interested?