Creativity, being rewarded for thinking out of the box the designers put you in. To put it simply, a game mechanic that is much more than the sum of its parts.
Fallout 3 for instance allows you to create specific weapons from parts that you find on blueprints. But that's classical linear thinking. Imagine how different the game would be if any piece of scrap you'd find could be used. Tubes. Plating. Wiring. Boards. For weapons, for utility purposes.. anything. Make a radio from scratch. A waterboiler with a hat on it. Create a god damned shower.
Garry's Mod + The Incredible Machine + Minecraft + any Open World game (I singled out Fallout because I like FWE). Add the Internet OR a mild, open story component and I might not ever want to leave.
(MAJOR edit/addition following:)
There is this Discovery TV series called The Colony, in which a group of people try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. It's both a social experiment and a test to see if what they know can help them survive for a few months. They figure out ways to purify water, preserve food, make shelter, rig up car batteries and ways to power them..and so much more. It's quite fascinating.
We could do much better than having to 'mine trees'.
Fallout 3 for instance allows you to create specific weapons from parts that you find on blueprints. But that's classical linear thinking. Imagine how different the game would be if any piece of scrap you'd find could be used. Tubes. Plating. Wiring. Boards. For weapons, for utility purposes.. anything. Make a radio from scratch. A waterboiler with a hat on it. Create a god damned shower.
Garry's Mod + The Incredible Machine + Minecraft + any Open World game (I singled out Fallout because I like FWE). Add the Internet OR a mild, open story component and I might not ever want to leave.
(MAJOR edit/addition following:)
There is this Discovery TV series called The Colony, in which a group of people try to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. It's both a social experiment and a test to see if what they know can help them survive for a few months. They figure out ways to purify water, preserve food, make shelter, rig up car batteries and ways to power them..and so much more. It's quite fascinating.
We could do much better than having to 'mine trees'.
Last edited by a moderator: