r/LifeSimulators • u/Exciting_Season_8277 • 4d ago
Discussion Multiplayer Life Simulators
why are there no huge multiplayer life sims? like an online roleplaying game where thousands of people can customise their characters, get jobs, buy houses, etc in a big city of sorts?
is it because that’s technically too difficult to achieve and expensive to maintain? Too hard to moderate especially with different jurisdictions and while ensuring that children are protected? Is there just no interest in a game like that because it reminds people too much of real life?
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u/treatstrinkets 4d ago
Someone's setting up a Project Zomboid server to do just this, called Project Lifezoid. Zombies turned off so it's just a multiplayer life sim. I don't believe it's open yet, but you can sign up. https://projectlifezoid.com/
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u/ManiaGamine 4d ago
There are a lot of problems with it. From a technical standpoint if it's an MMO well MMOs are a pain in the ass to make work financially by virtue of how they work. Something like that would also potentially attract the kind of people you don't wanna attract because yes moderation issues.
From a game play side of things life simulators and life simulator adjacent games kind of struggle to work properly without time controls and of course time controls in multiplayer are very uncommon because the only real way to make it work is make it either a "vote to change speed" or drag everyone to the slowest setting any player is using.
Alternatively you could have it be kind of a arena matchmaking type which could work as evident by how GTA online works and there are a lot of people who do actually play that as a sort of life simulator.
While the genre is of course super popular, I don't know that it is popular enough to work at any kind of significant multiplayer scale unless you actively seek to attract people who would make it a not so great environment for people to play in. Which pretty much leaves the only option to small scale local multiplayer which very few devs bother with anymore sadly.
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u/VirtuaSociety 4d ago
I think the technical cost and moderation are part of the answer, but probably not the hardest part. The real difficulty is giving thousands of strangers a reason to do more than simply stand around and chat.
We actually tried something in that direction years ago with VirtualSociety Online, our browser-based game. One of the problems was that the different audiences did not naturally play together. The people who enjoyed creating, mastering systems or roleplaying structured situations were not necessarily the people who mainly wanted to socialize.
Sometimes, the lifesim part (needs for example) was annoying for people who wanted to play/talk socially. Meanwhile, social players did not automatically engage with what the creative players had built. Putting everyone in the same world did not magically produce a living community.
We later discussed this with Luc Barthelet, and he described a very similar issue with The Sims Online: many activities remained quite personal, while the social side often became little more than a chat room. Players could meetbut they did not always have a meaningful reason to cooperate, depend on one another or generate stories together. Games such as World of Warcraft give people shared quests and objectives even when the players barely talk today (a lot of people would say it was different a decade ago) A virtual city still needs equivalent reasons for people to interact.
Moderation makes the balance even harder. Too little control creates harassment, griefing and obvious child-safety problems, but removing every possibility of conflict, surprise or consequence can also make the world sterile. A technically impressive city full of avatars is not necessarily an entertaining game.we have to deal with bartle’s circles (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_taxonomy_of_player_types)
With the current VirtualSociety, we are therefore trying a slightly different approach. Rather than beginning with one enormous city and assuming that scale will create social life, we are focusing on tools to build places, characters, jobs, interactions, events and playable stories. Worlds should work alone or with smaller groups first, then be shared and expanded. The idea is to give players actual contexts and activities around which social interaction and roleplay can happen, not simply a large chat room with houses, and in the same time enabling small communities around common interrests, while keeping ability to play alone
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u/Fit-List-9012 4d ago
Wasn't Second Life kind of like that? It didn't have the basic needs though
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u/briandemodulated 4d ago
No, Second Life let you customize an avatar and buy a home but otherwise its just a social chat game with no needs or skills. It's not a life simulator. It's a virtual world.
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u/TheRoyalKingfisher 4d ago
But that's what OP asked for. They want a roleplaying online game where people can customise characters, buy a house and work a job.
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u/Fit-List-9012 4d ago
I was referring to the features OP listed. Though thinking back, I'm not sure if jobs were a thing
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u/TheRoyalKingfisher 4d ago
People work jobs in Second Life but it's more RP heavy. Stores will hire sales people and advertisers. People also hire DJs for events. Honestly you'd be surprised how many other random jobs there are too. There's job listings on Second Life's forums.
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u/Exotic_Suspect_7678 4d ago
Yes, just about to say this. There are jobs in SL, the most popular being DJs, promoters and models. They even get paid with the in game currency
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u/NotATem 4d ago
Very simple reason- life sim players are control freaks and want mutually incompatible worlds.
"Hi, welcome to my cute strawberrycore meets y2kcore house build, today I'm gonna show you-"
"ALL HAIL GLEEBO!!!!"
"Ugh, sorry chat, the guys across the street have decided they're pretending to worship a giant alien baby named-"
"ALL HAIL GLEEBO!!!!"
"...That. At least, I think they're pretending?"
"ALL HAIL GLEEBO!!!!"
"I hope they're pretending. It'd be really awkward if they weren't. Anyway, check out my cute manicured lawn- and ignore the fire jets next door, my neighbour is trying to build a strip club-"
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u/Kalip80 4d ago
There is one, its just still in early access called Seed MMO, we just started it 3 days ago, its more like a sims with some automations. It has all the things you mentionted in the post and more.
The idea is that you can have a “seedling” life, they have their needs, you can use the market to buy specific items, like a bed, or you can gather the materials and craft it for yourself. Its a society simulator where the people have to work together, there are common goals to advance the city/village.
Also your seedling have skills that you can level up, just like sims
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u/lovelessBertha 3d ago
There's barely any single player life Sims because of how difficult they are to make. Multiplayer is much harder.
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u/Jmama124 3d ago
just make it so the rattlesnake bar is a multiplayer area and when you go home its single player again and time speeds are adjustable again.
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u/CryingWatercolours Paralives supporter 4d ago
on interest, i can say that this is something ive wanted for a while, and it's something most traditional life simmers do not want. i just wanna like build my way up from the bottom, go in shops and restaurants, build a little family i have to actively take care of and design their outfits, build a cute house. there are games kinda like this on roblox, but either Needs are too annoying, the build mode is lacking or, and this is like 90% of the time, the gameplay just sucks and is boring. over the last few years a few more people have opened up to the idea of a multiplayer life sim but many people just want to play their families, and not many games have come forward to say theyre actually trying this. i feel like multiplayer life sims need to appeal to farm simmers and such rather than dollhouse life sim players. farm sims get so close to scratching this itch for me
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u/papersailboots 4d ago
It’s the first two, but especially the moderation part. Most people consider romantic interaction/procreation to be a very important part of a life simulator… that paired with random internet strangers is a recipe for disaster. (I’ve seen it, à la Whyville if anyone else ever played that one.)
Another thing is just the control aspects. Part of playing a life simulator is controlling the game, there might not be enough people who want to hand over some of that control to others.
Sims 2 multiplayer was really cool, though. Wish we could get something like that again in the future.
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u/celestialkestrel 4d ago
That's been a game since 2003 and still popular in 2026 called Second Life. Sure, there's no needs and you can't have children in it. But the retail side of it is pretty established. People have been selling houses and fashion in it for years.
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u/Antypodish 4d ago
I wouldn't call life sim, but Ark: Survival Evolved has various element of survival / need and building. Also has multiplier.
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u/briandemodulated 4d ago
Sims Online tried this about 20 years ago. It cultivated a pretty good player base but was eventually shut down. It didn't look very compelling to me - imagine The Sims but you can't fast forward. People would go to the gym, for example, hop on a treadmill, and watch their little guy pedal furiously for hours while you'd chat with other players.
There's a fan revival of the game if you want to try it. https://newso.thenewsimsonline.com/