Real Time Events and Creating a Fun World

One of my fondest games from my childhood was The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask, I was occupied for hours trying to work out the patterns and behaviours of the side characters at certain times of the day and what happens when you disrupted this process. For instance a Goron by the name of Link checks into a hotel on the first night, but in order to gain a special mask you need to get into the hotel after hours, so you have to figure out where the goron is before he checks in and take his reservation. Once you have done this it sets of a chain of events that the player has to navigate to gain the special mask.

Link with Link the Goron, who is sleeping outside the hotel after you steal his reservation

Another game that implemented Real-time events was GTA: San Andreas. One example is the easter egg featured named the ‘suicidal Photographer’, the player would find him in a certain area of the map at 17:32 each day, he would proceed to take your picture and then jump in the sea thus drowning. It definitely prolonged the games life for me as I spent hours seeking these secret events out. 

shortly after this photo was taken, Jimmy killed himself. Our thoughts go out to his virtual family.

While I don’t want to mimic this per say I do want to take inspiration from it, the reason it worked in Majoras Mask was that you played the same 3 days over and over therefore the characters patterns could be noted, since I don’t plan on including time travel in my game this would not work. That being said, certain events such as the postman arriving in certain areas at certain times can be implemented, it gives the player a sense of a working world and makes the experience more immersive.

People do tend to stick to schedules in real life as well such as leaving the house to get to work each day. One example of this is at NUCA itself, when I arrive at the University in the mornings I usually have to wait a while for certain friends to arrive so I wait in a nearby park. I have noticed that at around 9:00 am every day an elderly man comes by and feeds the pigeons with breadcrumbs, sits down for a few minutes and moves on. This kind of event would be amazing to replicate in a game, what if your player came across him and if engaged in conversation he offered some wise advice and gave the player a special item? It would definitely make the game richer and it creates a more in depth and immersive world to explore.

These events would also back up the idea of a Community for the players to interact with, if a player was to come across such an event he/she could post there findings on the games website and allow other players to follow there steps.

San andreas screen - http://quizilla.teennick.com/stories/17896590/grand-theft-auto-san-andreas-myth-list-2

Goron link screen - http://www.zeldawiki.org/Link_(Goron)