Concept:

Game Theory is a massively multiplayer hub capable of tying games from different genres and different platforms together into a shared, evolving universe. It is meant to act as a sandbox for game designers to experiment with ideas about how different genres of game can interact in an engaging and coherent way.

One player may play a real-time strategy (RTS) game, another might play a city-builder, another might play a puzzle game, and still another might play a crafting game. At the most basic level, each sub-game effects the Game Theory over-world through an abstract economy of resources, though; the goal of the project is to facilitate even deeper interaction wherever possible.

The materials economy works by making the act of playing a specific sub-game consume resources (that can be acquired in the over-world) and produce different resources (that can be sold or traded in the over world for a profit). By working cooperatively, players can make more efficient use of each others' resources and advance at a faster pace.

Examples:

• A puzzle game might consume iron when played, but points earned while playing the game represent the production of steel.
• A crafting game might consume steel when played and yield crafted goods like swords or robots.
• An RTS game might consume swords or robots, but when you win matches, you claim acres of land.
• A city building game might consume acres of land, but produce iron. etc.

Game designers might push the system further by making the RTS not just yield some abstract notion of acres of land, but actually yield acres of contiguous land from the over-world. Perhaps the city builder doesn't just build a city in some isolated instanced world, but a city that takes up physical space in the Game Theory over-world. It might also be possible to build city walls and station RTS units in a city and attack and defend cities in the RTS game. Such mechanics would make the RTS and city building game interact in a much more meaningful way, but raise all sorts of game design issues. The beauty is that Game Theory, being designed from the outset as a modular design sandbox, allows designers to experiment with many different solutions to such issues.

Asset creation:

Game Theory draws a heavy influence from Limit Theory, an indie title currently under production based on the idea of nearly total procedural generation of content. This is important to allowing designers to rapidly iterate on different ideas about game mechanics, because it allows them to focus on mechanics and not asset creation.

Procedurally generated assets might not be sufficient in all situations, but if the library of procedural generators is powerful enough it can still greatly ease the creation of content allowing for partially defined assets. An artist might make a model of a creature and let the procedural library do the work of texturing, animation, and sound design.

Game Theory will also encourage contributions on three different levels:

1. Being open source means others can contribute to the source code of Game Theory.
2. Being mod-oriented means others can contribute mods to Game Theory.
3. Some sub-games may allow players to generate content directly in-game.

Hopefully this will result in a rich and growing pool of content that designers can use.