Project Lucid - Would you play this game?

Hey guys! I'm doing a bit of market research here. I wanted to ask the lucid dreaming community (but specifically you guys):
Would you want to play a multiplayer game set inside a dream-world where you could eventually control everything and create anything?

That's the question I need answers to. But first, let me explain.

Project Lucid is a massively multiplayer online sandbox-style PC game, by MaDE Studios, which attempts to mimic the feeling of being in a lucid dream. The biggest challenge in development will be honing the user interface to a point where it is extremely easy to create what you see in your head.
The game will be playable with or without a Virtual Reality headset and other cool technologies will get involved too eventually.

The thing about this project is, I can't actually tell you too much about the game because it will take a life of it's own. I have the general idea of what the game is and what it means, but it will be highly community involved. When alpha testing begins, I will get you guys in on the action, then it will be open to the gaming community too for beta testing. But you guys are the most important part! It really needs to represent lucid dreaming like no other game has.

You may also be interested to know that it is heavily inspired by Minecraft and Garry's Mod. The idea that the player can choose their own style of playing is great. Project Lucid takes it to a whole other level though by having this very interesting challenge system I was thinking about, but more on that another time. Big parts of what a player might play will be created by other players or even by the game itself (procedural generation of all sorts of things). In theory, the player could actually chose whether to let the dream control itself and take whatever challenge comes, or to take full control and be the one making the challenges, or anything in between. But note the player must get their lucidity level up. But more on that one another time too.


Development has not really started yet. I am at the market research stage so that I can include some figures in my business start-up loan application. Also so that I can get a general idea of what you guys think. But please do let me know any thoughts you have or first impressions, it's much appreciated. Remember to vote in the poll!

Also, to anyone that remembers me: HIIII! This was my first post in like 3 years. Missed you all.

So yeah, I'm like, starting a business and stuff.

I could totally see this as like a second life/IMVU type game. Go for it! It is something that could work, but is going to be very challenging, particularly of getting over that first 'development hump' of getting the initial release out there.

The features that would be most important in my opinion are:

Character Customization. Just like in dream life, I think it would be cool to be able to customize your appearance. Bonus points if I can do something as in-depth as add my RC wristbands to my ingame character. I have some furry friends who are also LDers who might want to play as their Fursonas, things like that.

Flying. This is kind of a no-brainer, but a flight mechanic is a must for any Lucid Dreaming themed game.

Integration to real life lucid dreaming practice. Somehow link game mechanics to becoming lucid in dreams. Perhaps being able to import and tag certain items and locations that are your dream signs and having them appear in the game world.

Probably the biggest deal-breaker is a monthly subscription fee. I will play any game if it is one up front payment, but I cannot stand monthly sub fees for games because I'm a poor college student.

I would big time play it. Two of my hobbies clashing is always good. :)

Thanks!I would love to play :) it sounds like an amazing project with massive scope for fun and learning!

Oh yeah Slash112 this gives me an opportunity to say thanks for doing your videos - they helped and I enjoyed them a lot when I was first coming to DreamViews :goodjob2:

Frst reaction:

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Originally Posted by slash112;2189945
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Would you want to play a multiplayer game set inside a dream-world where you could eventually control everything and create anything?[/B]

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Isn't that sort of what we do every time we LD? Some would argue that the multiplayer mode already exists, or is available. Just sayin,' but I think the real thing might surpass the game every time in this case. Still...

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...The biggest challenge in development will be honing the user interface to a point where it is extremely easy to create what you see in your head.

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If you can actually create a program that makes it easy for me to create what I see in my head, I'm definitely interested. I'm not sure how you can do this without the user doing their own programming, since otherwise all image selection would need to come from a base ultimately established by the program. Since the bounds of what we imagine and create in our dreams are pretty much limitless, it seems that gathering, storing, and accessing a repository of imagery that will easily create what you see in your head is a daunting task at best. Still, if you can manage it -- or manage a way to fool the player into thinking he's getting what he imagined -- then you will have a very excellent product (one that might even cause me to go out and buy a new game system). And...

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...I have the general idea of what the game is and what it means, but it will be highly community involved. When alpha testing begins, I will get you guys in on the action, then it will be open to the gaming community too for beta testing. But you guys are the most important part! It really needs to represent lucid dreaming like no other game has.

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Well, this is definitely the right community!

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Big parts of what a player might play will be created by other players or even by the game itself (procedural generation of all sorts of things). In theory, the player could actually chose whether to let the dream control itself and take whatever challenge comes, or to take full control and be the one making the challenges, or anything in between. But note the player must get their lucidity level up. But more on that one another time too.

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Lucidity (and dreaming in general) is a uniquely personal event. To have dreams or adventures be created by other players or the game itself might separate the player from the definitive lucid feeling that "this is all me" and might risk the game simply becoming an interesting game with an odd format. That isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, but the game could have the (unwanted, I assume) effect of drawing a person away from the sense of lucidity and LD'ing, and toward the kind of presence a gamer feels (whatever that is).

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Development has not really started yet. I am at the market research stage so that I can include some figures in my business start-up loan application.

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Now there's the really tough part: The LD'ing community is an incredibly small market niche; proving to investors that you will reach beyond we few dreamers to sell enough product to make it viable (and truly fun, I suppose) might be problematic.

All that said: this seems an excellent idea, Slash. If you can pull off the remarkably complex programming, staging, and interface challenges that I (personally) imagine are involved, you might have a real gem on your hands... a gem, ironically, that might do a truly great thing by inspiring more people to "replicate" the game in their own dreams by turning off their consoles and developing their own lucid worlds with the unwired and boundless imagination/adventure engines that are their own dreams.

...I voted yes, BTW, in spite of all my seemingly contrary comments: I truly wish you the best of luck!

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Originally Posted by JadeGreen

Character Customization. Just like in dream life, I think it would be cool to be able to customize your appearance. Bonus points if I can do something as in-depth as add my RC wristbands to my ingame character. I have some furry friends who are also LDers who might want to play as their Fursonas, things like that.

Flying. This is kind of a no-brainer, but a flight mechanic is a must for any Lucid Dreaming themed game.

Integration to real life lucid dreaming practice. Somehow link game mechanics to becoming lucid in dreams. Perhaps being able to import and tag certain items and locations that are your dream signs and having them appear in the game world.

Probably the biggest deal-breaker is a monthly subscription fee. I will play any game if it is one up front payment, but I cannot stand monthly sub fees for games because I'm a poor college student.

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All great points. Character customization will indeed be important in this game. And of course flying and other methods of getting around.
And yup, I've got plenty of ideas for bringing some realistic lucid dreaming references, and I'm sure I'll hear plenty more from you guys!

As for pricing, the plan is to go down the Minecraft route, $20 or something on full release, but discounted during alpha and beta testing. It'll be an expensive game to make so it would be ideal. And I definitely don't want to make this a monthly sub thing.

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Originally Posted by Sensei

I would big time play it. Two of my hobbies clashing is always good. :)

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Yeah when I decided to start a business, I knew it would include my gaming hobby, but then I was like "fuck it, what about my lucid dreaming hobby!" :D

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Originally Posted by Patience108

Thanks!I would love to play :) it sounds like an amazing project with massive scope for fun and learning!

Oh yeah Slash112 this gives me an opportunity to say thanks for doing your videos - they helped and I enjoyed them a lot when I was first coming to DreamViews :goodjob2:

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Ah that's great to know! Wasn't sure if folks still watch them :D

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Originally Posted by Sageous

Isn't that sort of what we do every time we LD? Some would argue that the multiplayer mode already exists, or is available. Just sayin,' but I think the real thing might surpass the game every time in this case. Still...

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Of course I agree the real thing beats any game, and I in fact hope to use the game to raise awareness of lucid dreaming (and potentially the spiritual stuff too, should people chose to go down that route).
In any case, people still love a good game, and so do I :)

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Originally Posted by Sageous

If you can actually create a program that makes it easy for me to create what I see in my head, I'm definitely interested. I'm not sure how you can do this without the user doing their own programming, since otherwise all image selection would need to come from a base ultimately established by the program. Since the bounds of what we imagine and create in our dreams are pretty much limitless, it seems that gathering, storing, and accessing a repository of imagery that will easily create what you see in your head is a daunting task at best. Still, if you can manage it -- or manage a way to fool the player into thinking he's getting what he imagined -- then you will have a very excellent product (one that might even cause me to go out and buy a new game system). And...

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Actually, I forgot to mention a key point. Scripting will be possible, to enhance a player's creative capabilities. Just like Garry's Mod has E2 scripting, or Roblox has Lue scripting. The player could chose to learn to script their own stuff, or to use the game's own UI.

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Originally Posted by Sageous

Lucidity (and dreaming in general) is a uniquely personal event. To have dreams or adventures be created by other players or the game itself might separate the player from the definitive lucid feeling that "this is all me" and might risk the game simply becoming an interesting game with an odd format. That isn't necessarily a bad thing at all, but the game could have the (unwanted, I assume) effect of drawing a person away from the sense of lucidity and LD'ing, and toward the kind of presence a gamer feels (whatever that is).

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A very good point. My original idea was for every player to have free reign all the time. Then I realized there is no game balance at all there, which can be detrimental to a game. So it's a tough one.

I do like the idea that you have to work for lucidity though, just like you do in real life. If you think about it, there's a lot of benefits to having a lucidity level.

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Originally Posted by Sageous

Now there's the really tough part: The LD'ing community is an incredibly small market niche; proving to investors that you will reach beyond we few dreamers to sell enough product to make it viable (and truly fun, I suppose) might be problematic.

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It is indeed, but my business extends far beyond lucid dreaming. This is but one single project within MaDE Studios. I actually can't get fully started on this until the business pulls in money from one of the other projects first.
I have actually started development, but there is nothing exciting to show yet.

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Originally Posted by Sageous

All that said: this seems an excellent idea, Slash. If you can pull off the remarkably complex programming, staging, and interface challenges that I (personally) imagine are involved, you might have a real gem on your hands... a gem, ironically, that might do a truly great thing by inspiring more people to "replicate" the game in their own dreams by turning off their consoles and developing their own lucid worlds with the unwired and boundless imagination/adventure engines that are their own dreams.

...I voted yes, BTW, in spite of all my seemingly contrary comments: I truly wish you the best of luck!

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Thanks muchly. Indeed I would love this game to raise awareness of lucid dreaming. Inception almost did it, but this will hit the nail in the head.


I have so much to say about this project that I haven't already said. I will start another thread with far better details very soon.

I appreciate everyone's feedback, keep it coming guys!

Well, I don't think I'll be interested. Not that I think the idea is bad, just that open-ended sandbox games, especially multiplayer ones, aren't usually my cup-o-tea.

I might play something like that, depending on how it turns out and what its features are. After all, my favorite part of playing Grand Theft Auto is just exploring. And I like sim-like games where you are in control and there are a lot of possibilities. Also, this game might really help people with lucid dreaming. Any time I play video games during the day I will dream about them at night. So if the goal of the game is "lucidity" or if the game encourages lucid exploration and contemplation, that could really set people up for the real thing.
I recommend getting the book The Lean Startup by Eric Reis. The book is literally about how to effectively and efficiently create, test, and market new video games and apps. It sounds like you're off to a good start, though!

Oh one other thing. I'd like for the game to help lucid dreamers work on their awareness. It obviously can't just induce lucid dreams for you, but I'd like it to do more good than bad. So this will be considered throughout development.

I'll give you some details about the game to explain, as an example. The "main menu" is your character's bedroom. To "play game" you go to your bed.

Now, one idea I had to give you these lucid dreaming benefits I'm talking about is: When you enter a game/dream, there is a random chance you will just be back at your bedroom/main menu. Sometimes it will be the real main menu and you actually have just had "trouble getting to sleep" and need to just try again. But sometimes it's actually in-game, and when you try to sleep again, nothing happens. Do a reality check and spin around or something to change the dream scene. You can even do a reality check in your real bedroom, but of course it will fail. To take this a bit further, it should really be that you have to reality check before attempting to sleep, whether in a dream or not. It should be like, the only rule in the game. Or maybe include that feature in a "hardcore mode" type deal.

I'm perhaps not explaining myself very well, but I thought it was a cool idea to subtly teach the player awareness habits, which can either be ignored or taken advantage of.


EDIT:

FireFlyMan, I get ya. I went through a phase of finding these types of games boring, so I know what you mean. To be honest I can't really play Minecraft or GMod anymore for any extended period of time. But I'm gunna use that to my advantage so I can really critically look at the game as a whole.

lunagoddess, funnily enough, my answer to what you're saying is in this post. Again, loving this feedback, it looks like I'm going in the right direction. And thanks for that book suggestion, that would certainly be of interest to me right now! :D

If you can pull this off I can't see why it wouldn't take off. People play video games as an escape, or to exercise creativity or even just to express themselves and how they are feeling. Attaining lucidity allows a person to do this within a dream in any way they like and a video game that allows a player to do, right now, whatever they feel like could become a big thing.

I will say however that I am glad it's not me attempting this. :3

Also, I can't find a link for MaDE studios, can you link me to them?

BadAssLongCoat: Yeah, that's kinda my thinking too!

Sensei: I am currently in the process of applying for a business startup loan. MaDE Studios only becomes a reality once it is funded.
Well, it is very real already, it just can't do much without money D:

I don't even have a website up and running yet. I'm just giving you guys all this early info about Project Lucid because really it's for you guys. All over DV, we used to always talk about how cool it would be to have a lucid dreaming game. Many games had even been planned by different teams of DV members, started a tiny bit of development then failed. I just want to provide the thing we all have wanted the industry to provide.

I would be all over something like this, if you managed to get it off the ground. Some of my favorite experiences with friends have been sandboxes such as Garry's Mod and Minecraft, the exact ones you cited, so if that's where you draw inspiration from then I am certain you've got a great idea on your hands.

well if it released on like holo-lens then maybe I'd be interested

but lets face it to be realistic
it would have to have quite a few restrictions

first I would only be allowed to attempt to log on 4 - 6 times per day
second I would have to wait at least 15-80 minutes to log on
third the game would randomly disconnect me after a minimum of 1 second and a maximum of 45 minutes
fourth even tho it would claim it was MMO, in order to realistically simulate shared dreaming, it would merely deceive me into thinking I wasn't playing in my own instance but really the other supposed players would all be NPC-DC
additional elements would be random loss of visuals (A standard feature in many computer game these days)
imagery that often became dim, blurry or both
an uncooperative simulated dreamscape
DC's with seemingly gibberish dialogue
nonsensical plots

I'm sure if you could pull all of this off, I could overlook the inherent weaknesses of the platform, such as tactition, olfaction, and gustation.

also I'm pretty sure you won't get Candice to sign a consent waver to include her in the game, but if you can get her to sign I'll definitely buy

I was thinking, to extend on what I was saying about sometimes you'll have a false awakening when you play game. Perhaps many things have random chances of trying to deceive/trick you or just messing up in some way. The chance of something being "false" would be higher the lower your lucidity level.
Also, the lower your lucidity level, the more the dream will distort itself randomly in various possible ways. i.e. vision goes blurry, things disappear and reappear, things move that shouldn't move, etc.
This plays nicely with what you're saying there cooleymd. Although I think Candice is a bit out of my price range on this one rofl.

And of course there is the issue that there can only be so much immersion in a game. However, Project Lucid will be a testing grounds for many cool bits of tech, some of which will combat the immersion problem. Virtual Reality being the first and most obvious. Augmented reality like Holo-lens being another, but work on that may not start until next year. Plus more but I'll not talk too much about that right now.
Anyways, I don't want to put this game out there as if it's gunna be "just as cool as lucid dreaming", because I know it cannot compare. This is a video game and should be viewed as such. Nonetheless, like I said before, I want it to represent lucid dreaming to the fullest possible extent that a game can while also maintaining status as an actual good game, which is a whole other ball game. Combining the two won't necessarily be easy, but it will be a beautiful merging of perspectives.

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Originally Posted by slash112

...Augmented reality like Holo-lens being another...

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I view the lucid dreaming portion of dreams as a usurpation of the Threat Simulator role of dreams (to F' with the memory consolidation functions, If I wake with something less than 'total recall' and in false memory fashion think 'I've really been to Mars', oh well!)

So I feel that the holo-lens will be a great simulator of simulated reality that will truly help practice lucid skills, and as Sageous points out may allow individuals to select a bit more of their content than any pre-made game could. So that rather than choose one of the umpteen virtual pole dancer games that will doubtless be available at holo-lens release, one could if their penchant is furry anime cat people, program them up to simply be everywhere in their combined real/virtual world but with a twist like they can't speak and are programmed to only bark or do sign language, that way when one began to dream of cat people nightly (and one would), when the cat people begin to speak or meow one would instantly be inclined towards lucidity.

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In any case being able to simulate what you want your brain to simulate, will at the very least cause your brain to emulate it, and with even decent recall, and poor triggering, I think one would be leaps and bounds closer to both desirable lucid content, as well as ultra-intention based awesome non-lucid dreams

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Originally Posted by cooleymd

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Cooleymd just won the internet.

Catgirls in dreams... is that something universal? :P

I think we need slayer in on this. Props to anyone who understands what I mean :P

Since your studio doesn’t seem to exist jet I’m assuming you don’t have much experience with game development. But the project you’re describing here is so overly ambitious, even for big, experienced game companies it would be something very challenging to make. Without experience creating anything worth calling a game is difficult. I hope you’re not naïve enough to think you could execute such a project even remotely decently if it’s your very first game.

And the way you talk about what you want to do with this project makes it sound like an accurate virtual lucid dreaming recreation, but not like an actual game. Games don’t accurately recreate reality. Neither do they accurately recreate the dream world. Games stylize them if necessary and remove the boring parts of it. Dreams are interesting because they’re very unusual experiences you make for yourself. But when they’re only witnessed through a screen they’re reduced to just surreal fiction, and there are already some excellent surreal games out there. If your project should not be outshined by these games accurately recreating dreams alone won’t be sufficient.

Well, I did 5 years of Computer Games Technology in university, gotta count for something. Indeed I have never released a product to the public, and that inexperience is slowing me down, but I am certainly not going in blind. I know what I'm up against, and I know it's extremely ambitious.

And yes, I know that there is a big difference between a "good game" and a "good lucid dream recreation", I'm not daft. And I did say that I want it to be an actual game:

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Anyways, I don't want to put this game out there as if it's gunna be "just as cool as lucid dreaming", because I know it cannot compare. This is a video game and should be viewed as such. Nonetheless, like I said before, I want it to represent lucid dreaming to the fullest possible extent that a game can while also maintaining status as an actual good game, which is a whole other ball game. Combining the two won't necessarily be easy, but it will be a beautiful merging of perspectives.

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I know I'm being very cryptic about all this and it just looks like another stupid idea on the DV forums. I've not given much information about the project, not really.
So I do understand your concerns, but there will be much clearer info coming soon. It will give a better idea of what my aims really are, how the game will actually play and feel, and how capable I am of doing it.


One thing though, it's market research here remember. I'm looking for answers to the simple question "do you like the sound of it?". Not "do you think I can do this?", I already know I can do it. lol.
Anyways I don't care, all input here has been much appreciated.

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Originally Posted by slash112

I know I'm being very cryptic about all this and it just looks like another stupid idea on the DV forums. I've not given much information about the project, not really.
So I do understand your concerns, but there will be much clearer info coming soon. It will give a better idea of what my aims really are, how the game will actually play and feel, and how capable I am of doing it.

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I’ve seen way to many game developers horribly misjudge their own skill level when they’re about to make their first game. All of them were as confident as you are. However, I’ll gladly eat my words if you prove be as professional as you claim. But until then I’ll be cautious with my expectations.

Yea of course, without any proof of concept whatsoever, you can't expect anything of me. And I need people like you. Tear this thing to shreds all you want, these criticisms are what keeps me in check :)