The Sims PC Rival SEED Is A Groundbreaking MMO, If You Can Overlook The AI
The Sims competitor SEED aims to give gamers collective control over an entire planet, right down to its economy, laws, and built-in social media networks. This can only end well.
SEED was shown off at this year’s Summer Game Fest and it stood out as one of the most intriguing indie games in the selection.
Where The Sims sees players control a group of digital characters in a house or neighbourhood, SEED is basically an MMO that gives each player ownership of a small town, which can then be expanded into a bustling city depending on what infrastructure you’d like to add.
Here lies the most interesting aspect of the game though. You can’t just build something, because that’s not how life works.
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In the demo, I was shown one of the buildings featured was an arcade. Here residents could go, spend money and play on the selection of arcade machines on offer. However it was explained to me that you can’t just spawn in arcade machines. They need to be built and building them requires materials, some of which you can only acquire with other materials that could only be found on the other side of the world.
This is where the MMO nature of the game comes into play as while your plot of land may be void of metallic ores, there’s another player out there who’s main export is ore.
Other players may buy and convert those materials into computer parts, and when combined with plastics and other creations you eventually get the arcade machine you wanted. The whole thing is a collaborative effort spanning potentially hundreds or thousands of players.
Some Gamers Just Want To Watch The World Burn
Of course upon learning this, I immediately wanted to know what kind of chaos players can unleash upon this digital world. Basically, anything goes.
If you want to build a community led by democracy you can do so. NPCs form their own governments with laws you can influence, but while you can use your divine power for good, you can also set them down the wrong path.
You could lead a society governed by no one with no rules if you wanted to, basically turning the game into a simulated version of Grand Theft Auto. Or you can go in the complete opposite direction and turn things into a totalitarian government, where littering gets you the death penalty.
The possibilities are supposedly endless but remember it’s not just your town at play, it’s potentially hundreds of thousands and they can even interact with each other.
It’s shaping up to be a fascinating social experiment, with the only catch being that a fair bit of AI has been used to influence the behaviour of NPCs. Each character is essentially linked up to ChatGPT so you can “speak” to them and give them commands.
They’ll form their own opinions based on whatever information is in front of them, including falsified rumours you feed them about their fellow citizens. Admittedly the mere mention of AI swayed my opinion a bit.
Nevertheless, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to try SEED for myself when it releases later this year. It’ll be a fairly basic set-up at launch but the devs are planning to introduce huge, free expansions every quarter.
You won’t even need a decent PC in order to run the game either. It’ll apparently work on devices as basic as a smartphone.
SEED launches on PC in early-access on 21 July.
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