Game Classification

StarPeace Oceanus Communications, Monte Cristo Multimedia, 2000  

Informations Analyses Serious Gaming
 

Classification

VIDEO GAME

Keywords

Market

This title is used by the following domains:
  • Entertainment

Audience

This title targets the following audience:
Age : 12 to 16 years old / 17 to 25 years old
General Public

Gameplay

The gameplay of this title is Game-based
(designed with stated goals)

The core of gameplay is defined by the rules below:

Similar games


StarPeace is a MMORTS in which players manage economic empires. Each player builds facilities (factories, shops, dwellings), à la Sim City, which interact with each other. For instance: a player can own a farm that will sell wheat to a food processing plant owned by another player, which could in turn sell the food to a store, which would then sell to the general public - whether there will be demand or not depends on many factors, such as location, price, etc.

There are approximately 30 industries in the game ranging from raw material (e.g. agriculture, mines...) to complex manufactured product (computers, cars...) and services (television, movies...), and anything in between (plastics, electronics...). Raw materials and semi-processed goods are required by more than one industry, which allows complex interaction between players.

These interactions take place at the building level: one given plant or shop buys and/or sells goods from another plant or shop, which can belong to the same player or to another one. As it is difficult to manage all of these relationships (one player can potentially manage thousands of buildings), players can set up high-level rules: a plant can try to get raw material from "allied players", for a price not higher than a given amount. This allows the economy to keep functioning even when players are offline.

Workers also have to live somewhere: this is why players can also build dwellings and set rent levels, just like they can define the wages they pay in their factory. This has a direct influence on their behavior as consumers.

Players must take the market into account: if all of them are manufacturing clothes, for instance, the equilibrium price will fall drastically, and only the most efficient cloth makers will be able to turn a profit. Likewise, the first player to master the technology necessary to manufacture advanced products such as cars has basically a license to print money.

Planets, initially, look like huge playing fields but are limited in space. Each facility occupies one or more tiles. While planets are a few million tiles wide, the available space shrinks rapidly as the game progresses. That can be regulated by "mayors", players which are elected by their peers with special powers. While players can only destroy their own buildings, mayors can bypass that limitation (but must refund the offended players out of the city's budget) and can apply "zoning". [source:mobygames]

Distribution : Retail - Commercial
Platform(s) : PC (Windows)

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