Synergy: A world economic relationship generation matrix and a game programer

My friend is what they call a "hybrid" a network and a programmer. He's self taught in graphics programming and a strong open source advocate. Tools we have in common is a working knowledge of Blender.

Since this is a blog I get to post my daydreams and my hopes, without having to put so many of the realistic and pessimistic qualifiers I'd have to in "the real world". So...

Currently we are doing some work together as our company has finally begun moving towards open source and GPL toolset. Economic considerations is a very good motivator to go Open Source, because most of the market selling Licenses here sell it at outrageous prices and the growing trend of Open Source Self sufficiency is growing.

So we were always in talks together of helping each other making a game. He's got the graphics and game engine working mostly already. The problem is mostly the lack of people as skilled as he is in doing the programming.

Where we make a good synergy is that I'm crazy about world building and an economically interwoven world. The obsession with the economics is with making a world where ever single part generated in not out of a vacuum. There are many interlinking and layered sets of relationships: in the economic, social, and political levels. Thats why I'm trying to figure out how to generate towns with detailed income statements and, if possible: balance sheets, that show economic relationship.

A world where you can't just kill a lot of people, steal a lot of stuff, or move things around without messing up the equilibrium and starting over again.

The cool thing I find about how realistic this system can be is because, in itself there is a story. There is no Deus-Ex-Machina or no GM conspiring to make things work against your or work for you. there is that indifference that makes what the PC's achieve their own and to no one else's credit.

A game where the player gets to choose who he can be but lets the roll of the die place him in a circumstance without conspiracy of a "greater" meta power or being. he/she will have either fortune or misery and can play the game making the best of what they have, with the possibility of exceeding expectations given the station they begin with.

The awesome thing of a World building matrix is that you can keep building a world that makes sense, or be suddenly come to posses a Character randomly with a new set of goals motives and dreams and try to figure out how best to achieve these.

Weird, this sounds like an extreme exercise in empathy... phftt!

 Anyway, I'm surprised that there is a usefulness to the economic engine I want to create, that is not only for myself. that someday there may be a game out there which can create detailed worlds with people which feel more real because of how its bound to the different kinds of relationships and that there is a world that interacts with the player, not just physically but socially.