[pessimizer]

I've been fascinated with that idea for years - multi-layer largely independent games that affect each other. I've been playing with the idea in the board game space, for example, having a board game where the players are gods fighting each other, being played at the same time as a board game with the players as men competing against each other, with events in each game effecting the other. Does anybody know of any games (board or other) on the market that operate like this? I'd be curious to check them out.

[SimHacker]

And here is layered game, SliceCity: SimCity inside The Sims 1:

http://www.simslice.com/Slicecity.htm

Description: Slice City - "the other city that never sleeps". This city is awake and alive with hustle and bustle 24/7! Citizens use businesses, homes, parks, etc. for work and play, and these all cost you money to maintain. The happier the little people are in their habitat, the harder they will work, and the more profit you will make from them. Well-maintained cities can encourage more citizens to move in there. This will not only increase your population, but also your city size... and your profit margin. Cities that are neglected or not well-maintained will cease growing, or slowly deteriorate until they are nothing but piles of rubble. Using the various "disasters" (including a tornado option) can do that in much less time. ;) So to maximize your worker's output, keep all structures "refurbished". Your citizens may even help you do that on occasion too. And if you need more help, ask The Gardener. :)

The citizens also need power from the Power Plant to do any expanding. The Power Plant started in the "ON" position, but you can "Power it down" (by clicking on it) to stop your city from growing any further, and to keep your daily profits/costs stabilized (good for those that like the small town feel). "Power it up" again to allow for potential growth to resume (good for those that like the larger city life). City costs, profits and growth (if any) are calculated each midnight (between 11:55pm and 12:05am).

Lastly, click here for a few Slice City Gameplay Tips. If you come up with a good one, let us know and we can add to the list. We also have extra addon objects for you on our Slice City Addons Page. We sincerely hope you enjoy this, and if you have any questions or comments, please contact us :)

It even has its own add-ons:

http://www.simslice.com/Slicecityaddons.htm

[SimHacker]

Well, Spore is a multi layer game, but it's "Massively single player", and it didn't manage to couple the layers as well as was originally hoped.

One problem is that the different layers want to run at different time scales, so you have to decouple the flow of time of each layer, and somehow reconcile things when you move up and down between them. And of course a multi player game can't have the same clock for everybody, so players will get out of synch with each other. Spore avoids that problem by not synchronizing player time, just sharing user created content asynchronously.

[pessimizer]

Wow, time would be a big problem when designing something like that. You'd either have to decouple or market the different games to different types of players - for example a slow 20 minute a day empire-building game layered on top of an addictive grinding World of Warcrack type thing. Something to think about.

Thanks for the slicecity link.