Image
credit: Strange Loop Games
Eco is an
online game where players must collaborate to build a civilization in a world
where everything they do affects the environment. All resources come from a
simulated ecosystem, with thousands of plants and animals simulating 24/7.
In the game, you live on a planet with other real players. Your goal is
to go from having nothing to having enough technology to destroy a meteor. Through
the player-run government and economy, you work together to build the
technology to stop a meteor on a collision course with the planet, without
polluting the world and killing it off in the process before that even happens.
In 30 days, it will destroy everything — unless you work together to stop it.
“Eco is a revelation,” says Jeff. “The reductive way to describe it is
“Minecraft with more systems. It’s also an educational game about simulating
the effect humans can have on the environment. The Eco name comes from
ecology and economics. And it’s that last part that made this game resonate so
deeply with me.”
"Strange Loop Games takes
things way further by enabling players to run their own legislation system," he proceeds. "In Eco,
any player can propose any law they want. Strange Loop built a webtool that
enables you to use if/then commands to create districts, limit when people can
play, or prohibit players from hunting an endangered species. When you propose
a law, it goes to a vote. And if it passes, it turns into a new game rule. And
if the law has unforeseen consequences, you have to deal with those until the
law expires or the players vote to repeal it.”
Upcoming Release 8.0
With the 8.0 release just around the corner, here’s an introduction to
what Strange Loop Games team has been working on for the latest update to Eco.
Image
credit: Strange Loop Games
In Eco the natural world is separated into biomes, and developers
have completely redone how these biomes are generated and structured when a new
world is created. They needed to change world generation massively in order to
increase control over the balance of biomes, species, and earth resources in
each freshly produced world. This control is important because all the natural
resources in Eco are meant to have a reliable place in the ecosystem,
and provide a consistent set of decisions for players figuring out how to make
the best use of those resources.
Image credit:
Strange Loop Games
Another big goal with biomes is to inspire players to care about their
world more by making it a more compelling place, or home. Developers wanted the
biomes to reflect the diversity, interconnectedness, and richness of real
biomes on Earth. To this end they are adding content to existing biomes and
introducing an entirely new biome: tropical rainforests. They have also
continued to update previous art and lighting to increase the overall standard
of fidelity and richness they are discovering it is possible to have in Eco.
Image
credit: Strange Loop Games
As Strange Loop Games continue developing biomes they will aim to
create basic food webs unique to each biome in the ecosystem simulation. They intend
to ensure that players are presented with a large variety of ways to use what
the world has to offer, and ways to protect it from overuse.
One of the more dramatic additions in 8.0 is the Redwood tree, inspired
by the real life Coast Redwood species, Sequoia Sempervirens. Redwoods are
trees you can harvest and grow, but in Eco there will also be a
population of old growth redwoods in each newly generated world that are
effectively non-renewable for the sake of the forestry industry. Once you cut
them down, you cannot simply re-grow them like other trees. Old growth redwoods
in Eco represent old growth forests in general-- an ecosystem which
humans have the power and knowledge to conserve, but not really to recreate--
at least not on practical timescales or from scratch. In a default game of Eco,
with the meteor looming, industrialization is an inevitability. Similar to
other resources that are not renewable like ore and fossil fuels, the player
must choose what to do with them, and those choices are not reversible. Unlike
most earth resources however, the depletion or destruction of old growth
forests is a much more immediate possibility.
Image
credit: Strange Loop Games
Earth resources and geology is the other big category of content and
features Strange Loop Games is beginning to massively update in the 8.0 update. They have
begun by splitting ‘stone’ up into actual rock types that each will be host to
unique earth resources, or at least will be their own resource. New to the game
are the sedimentary rocks Limestone, Sandstone, and Shale, each of which will
have unique applications in industry. Also new is Granite, host to small gold
deposits and large copper deposits. Basalt is now the bedrock of all the oceans
in Eco, and Gneiss will become is first metamorphic rock type.
Image
credit: Strange Loop Games
There is no simple way to correlate rock types with biomes in reality--
geology is often the history of radically different environments following
each-other and creating new layers over the same bedrock-- so in Eco developers
have to abstract and simplify things. Ultimately, having a rich variety of
resources to locate in specific biomes will allow them to balance the game to
ensure that players must create transport networks between different areas with
different resources that they need. It will also greatly improve the character
of biomes visually and spatially, as they add structure to how rock and
resource blocks are generated.
Image
credit: Strange Loop Games
Strange Loop Games say they are excited to take strides with developing
Eco’s natural world because it is both the context for ecology in the game, and
the source of all materials for the player created economy.
As they add content and depth, they hope it will increase the many ways
in which players are tied to their world.
Image
credit: Strange Loop Games
About Strange Loop
Games
Based in Seattle, Strange Loop Games was
founded by a group of developers from the console games industry (Electronic
Arts) with the mission of expanding what is possible in gameplay using state of
the art computing and consoles. They spent the first 3 years developing
'Vessel', self-funded. After getting industry attention, they were able to
secure funding and bring the game to Steam and PlayStation 3.
Following the release of Vessel, they were invited by Amplify Education
to assist in creating their suite of educational games. This opportunity
presented them the ability to explore new principles in educational games,
taking them in new directions with a lot of freedom, and they aimed to focus
the studio on creating games that were for “more than just entertainment”,
giving something of value to players while still matching the quality and fun
of any game on Steam or the App Store. They created two games with Amplify: a
cell biology exploration game called SimCell, and a
multiplayer heist/level creation algebra game called Codebreakers.
After creating successful titles for Amplify's game suite, they
partnered with the University of Illinois to propose a game for grant funding
to the department of Education, and with its acceptance their title Eco
was born.
John Krajewski is founder and CEO of Strange Loop Games. He is the
designer of the ecology game Eco. His background is the console games
industry. He was Lead AI Programmer at Electronic Arts Australia, designing and
developing AI systems for open world games. His portfolio of games includes
'Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring', 'The Suffering', and 'Destroy All
Humans'.