Gaming Critical Hit: Why Don't We Reuse Game Worlds?

This! Seriously, why hasn't anyone made a zombie mod!

 

I Loved driving around GTA:SA in the lorry with the trailer, just trying to not crash, and visit as much of the map as possible. Sometimes for 3-4 hours at a time, listening to the radio.
I'm going to reinstall it now

Stalker has great maps, but they were slightly different between the games.
I'm hoping the next version will have all the previous maps in one, continuously loading huge map, a la Oblivion.

Rapture would be a good place too.

Good Article, got me wanting to visit these places again
The BioShock opening scene underwater was just awesome.

 

Didn't Blizzard just do something along these lines with Cataclysm?

 

Not sure i'd want to go back to Mafia 2's Empire Bay but Lost Heaven from the first game I would. Jumping across opening bridges was lots of fun.

 

I have always thought that a Simcity game would be perfect for importing into other games.

 

Dead Island from what I understand.

 

I'd love to go back to Racoon City. It's the birthplace of the zombie horde as far as I'm concerned.
Time to play Resi 2.... again.

 

I think game developers would be wise to implement this or even open up different cities, dungeons, etc and share these openly with other developers especially when they are using the same game engine. Problems may occur when crossing over to a different engine, tho I would imagine that even different studios use many of the same tools so a unified architecture should be easy to implement and share.

 

I would like devs to focus less on cutting edge graphics and more on story, depth and gameplay.

 

Isn't this pretty much called modding?

 

I would love to see something more done with the Brink universe and not just the Ark. There is huge potential for games that create a world or story, yet only highlight a single portion of it all.

 

I was thinking the exact same thing a few months ago . . . .

Take FSX, you then add shed loads of DLC, why can't a game be the same . . a Vanilla world for all games and you buy the "Game" (Module) to play in that world. Less time to make, cheaper with more time to make others games . . . bringing in more revenue.

 

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110475-Fan-Mod-Gets-San-Andreas-in-Your-GTA-IV

 

Pretty much all Blizzard does is reuse existing game worlds. The Warcraft world has been the same from Warcraft 1 all the way to Cataclysm. Some new elements have been added, the story has progressed, but it's still the same universe/two planets. Starcraft and Diablo also reuse the same game world but don't have nearly as many iterations.

It's a strategy that works. Players enjoy the world and fantasy, they know it and are attached to it. As long the games are sufficiently interesting and unique it doesn't matter if the world they're set in is the same.

 

Interesting argument and I do agree, recycling would lower costs and shorten dev cycles, both which directly benefit gamers.

On the other hand it's a double-edged sword; you know that as soon as they start recycling people will be complaining that "it's not new", "we've already seen it", "the devs cheaped out" and so on so forth...

 

To date blizzard, valve and rockstar have mastered the re using of lore. All the worlds are linked to another game in the series. In fact valve pretty much re used quite a bit of their resources in their games.

 

I was wondering this too, i have been thinking whether Rockstar would have used any of the gta city in L.A. Noire, with a few tweaks here and there.

 

Ooh, Valve is a great example! Not only have they mastered reusing game worlds in the same series, they've gone so far as to have two separate series (Half Life and Portal) use the same game world!

Bethesda and The Elder Scrolls is another one that comes to mind. Several games which all take place in different settings of the same fantasy world. Players get to see something new with each game and enjoy a new story while still being comfortable with the lore they know and love. It's a great example of how a world can be reused without blatant copy-pasta or direct sequels.

 

To the person who said about Sim City map porting.
There was a game called simcopter and you could import your Sim City 2000 citied in it, and fly around it

Tbh I wouldn't mind to revisit 'Capital Wasteland' on an all new Fallout. Maybe double the city size too
Way better to crawl in sewers and debris than in NV.

 

This

And for that matter, why don't they make it so people playing sims can have their sims live in cities built in simcity? The fiance and I both play simcity, she plays sims, and we both think that'd be pretty cool