Gameplay.

In Daedalus’ End, development projects represent the "mission structure" of the game. Each development project consists at heart of a series of critical decisions about the technical specifications and scale of a project. For instance, how much land a dam should flood? How polluting a power plant to build? Several may be occurring simultaneously at different individual stages of progress, with interlinked and overlapping impacts and effects on the ecology, economy, and politics.

Projects are preset in their initial configurations to favor the agendas of certain (but not all) powerful factions. Players must work in the game to either defend their preferred configuration or to influence a configuration more favorable to them. These goals will require data-gathering and negotiation. Players affiliated with weaker faction may start off with a better position for data-gathering or access to local social networks.

In Daedalus' End, players choose from a range of faction affiliations. These affiliations may include international development agencies, regional governments, multination corporations, and environmental activists. Many factions will be roleplayed by players based anywhere with a connection to the Daedalus' online servers. Some factions may be played by computer AI, depending on player configuration and preference (for instance, in one game, all the most powerful factions could be AI-controlled, to give all human players an experience at playing the underdog.

Copyright 2002, MIT.