Passage of Time in Games - Vol 3 - Games in Realtime

Hi folks.

Today, I'll be brain-storming my experiences on games that play in real-time - meaning time on the game flows as in real life. This does not refer to Massively Multi-player Online Games, as I'm not much of an online gamer (yet). Time flowing in real-time is a very interesting idea: the concept hooked me on my first real-time game (Virtual Villagers), so I began doing some research to find out this style of gaming was more spread out than I thought.

Virtual Villagers and Real-time gaming

Real-time gaming basically means that time flows as in real life. Not necessarily on a day-by-day basis, but it means there may be no means of advancing in-game time. In some games, this molds the player to play in regular intervals more than in long shots. Some of my Final Fantasy sessions have lasted maybe 6 hours or more, but I have never played Virtual Villagers for more than 1 hour. Why is this? Because time plays an integral role on the development of the game. In virtual villagers, you are in charge of a group of people, whom you must guide to build a small village. There's distinction between male, female and kids, and each may be born with different strengths and interests. The game motivates you to assign a duty to each villager, so that there's a scientist, a builder, forager, etc.

What's the deal? These tasks take time. Each villager grows up. They gradually begin to explore more parts of the island, understand what's on it, and stuff happens. The sea got polluted once, and the villagers had to turn to planting and foraging instead of relying on fishing. Another time, I noticed there were no kids on the village, and I had to start matching adults so that they 'had' babies. Each play-through involves checking new stuff (kids, scientific advances, natural disasters), assigning some duties to villagers, and checking out the status of the island.

There are, of course, some much-needed time-related options. The passage of in-game time can be configured (paused, slow, normal, fast), which enables you to play at your own pace. Going on a trip? Set the speed to pause. Wanna play all weekend? Set it to fast. There're no dying Tamagotchis here. Farmville falls in this kind of games, too, as the time you need for your veggies to grow paces your game sessions.

Pokemon and Morning/Day/Night differences

The Pokemon series have been quite famous from their start, but they have integrated a day/night cycle since their gold/silver/crystal generation. 

The facts: Pokemon change according to what time of day it is. This gives the game a great deal of randomness, if not replayability.

Firstly, it's nice to see each place change, if only visually. Unfortunately, most people act the same no matter the day or time and have the same routines, but then again, it's old-school gaming. Secondly, apart from time-of-day-specific pokemon, there are a lot of day-specific events on these games. Bug-contests are carried out on Saturdays, strange pokemon gather in a cave on Mondays, this kind of events are great, and compliment on the day-flowing system greatly. Berries also take their time to grow, so there's always something to look forward when turning the game on. And on the other hand, never will you find you can't continue playing the game because of the time, as shops are open 24-7, and there're no story-advancing time-specific events.

Animal Crossing

This game is a one-of-a-kind. Though I haven't yet played it, the mechanism to map every single calendar day to a in-game day is wondrous. This, of course, comes with its cons. If you want to be there on New Years' Eve, you gotta play the game on New Years' eve. Want to spend Thanksgivings with your Animal friends? Gotta play the day through. Of course, playing won't demand all day, but it's still interesting to watch gamers' reactions to this mechanism.


Let's sum up. Some games are played in real-time or quasi-real-time. This means, time flows as it flows on the real world, meaning you can't advance time in the game whenever you want. Games like Virtual Villagers have explored relating the in-game clock to the real-world one, letting you configure how fast time passes in-game. You are motivated to play the game in small sessions, as the most important stuff generally happens when you're not looking. Farmville plays similar to this, having you wait till your crops are fully grown in order to harvest them and plant some more. Pokemon series make use of real-time day/night cycles in order to give the game variety and color, apart from defining a day-of-week system, where day-specific events happen and motivate you to play the game on different days "just to see what happens". Animal Crossing maps real-world events to in-game festivals, having the player play through them, being quite interesting to see how the game unfolds.

I hope I can use these ideas in my own game someday, but for now, I'll be taking note of them and learning from upcoming games.

EDIT: Sorry to have forgotten, but the Laura Bow Point and Click Adventure Game Series is also time-based, though time flows according to the game's clock. Different events happen at different times, so I had fun exploring each location at each time.