Imagine if we made a free-to-play MMO game with the collective efforts from developers around the world. What would that game look like? And how would we all interact with each other to get it done?

The purpose of this blog is to visualize a unique social game.

THE CONCEPT:

Using Google Earth as our playing field, simplistic characters (Minecraft models used for this example) attempt to control the area around them. Using your computer's location as HQ, you traverse your local area to control the region.

The goal is to collect resources from property, which is done by simply existing within the game. By traveling, you expand your properties & by entering an enemy's territory, you begin capturing his/her region. The exact purpose of resources is not conclusive outside a ranking system amongst in-game players.

You can discover new regions by placing "Nodes" with your GPS-enabled phone. These "Nodes" are used as temporary spawn points for your in-game character. Plan invasions of out-of-reach territories during the family vacation. Other, undetermined, items can also be spawned to assist you & your friends.

If you encounter an enemy, you can kill it with a small variety of weapons. Specifically: Machine Gun, or Rocket Launcher. When you've eliminated your enemy, he/she spawns back at their Node or HQ. Destroying the Node forces the player to spawn at HQ or another Node.

Creating a group or guild with your friends includes your region amongst your members, allowing for larger raids, shared spawn points & better protection from neighboring enemies.

We shouldn't limit ourselves to just violence & running so other normally Google Maps only features are available as well including: wikipedia, photos & youtube.

The implementation of this kind of game isn't easy. There are hurdles including game engine, design, servers & a lot more. Some key issues I can already predict are:

• What engine will this game require? It's hard to imagine running this entirely off Google Earth engine so the first real test of this game is to recreate a city within Google Earth within a popular game engine like Unreal. Whatever can handle streaming geodata, building models/textures & a large quantity of in-game players. This will also allow our playing fields to be much more vast.
• Who'll pay for it? Even if we all decided to work without pay on a collective goal, there will always be costs like running servers. If interest does build for this project, a KickStarter account maybe started to create funds for the developers & system costs.

This maybe just another blog with another game concept that'll never be made but I honestly hope to see this come to fruition some day. Not only because it's a fun idea, but because I know we are capable of accomplishing

it.