From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2008-03-28T22:40:27+09:00
Subject: Re: Web-based games?

Hal Fulton wrote:
> Who's interested in developing a few web-based games?
> 
> I'll try to follow this thread, but please feel free
> to email me...  rubyhacker@gmail.com
> 
> There are several kinds of games, of course...
> 
> 1. Solo -- cards (solitaire), puzzles, Sudoku, etc.
> 
> 2. One on one, realtime or not -- cards, chess, checkers,
>    Hnefltafl, Othello, and so on. (Some of these would
>    be deadly dull in non-realtime.)
> 
> 3. One against many -- trivia, etc.
> 
> 4. I'll probably avoid MMORPG and such for now.
> 
> 5. I also have a cool three-player game in mind -- a chess
>    variant that I (thought I) made up (though someone else
>    created something virtually identical ten years earlier).
> 
> 
> Let's talk...
> 
> Cheers,
> Hal
> 
> 

1. I've just started playing a web-based MMORPG called Ikariam ... it's 
sort of a "Second Life" set in the ancient world. It's written in PHP, 
though. I think something like that is a natural for a Rails app.

2. Be careful about intellectual property, especially trademarks, 
branding, etc. You'd be surprised how many ways you can get someone to 
hire an attorney and sue you. :)

I'm buried in a bunch of other projects at the moment, but since I 
discovered Ikariam I've been toying with the idea of doing a space-based 
MMORPG in Rails. Another thing I've looked at is a "management 
simulation" game, where you get to build big multinational corporations 
and compete with each other. That's somewhat like Ikariam, actually.