Go forward to The Beginning...
Hello. Nice to see you're here. To directly quote a very good webcomic's first page ever: "If you're here on the day it's put out, I'm glad you could be here for this." I'm Dr. Hervis Jasper (not a real doctor, it's just my nom de internet), and you... have just stumbled on to my little Civilization game. It's a game where a bacteria arises from the depths to become first an animal, then a somewhat-intelligent animal, then an intelligent creature, onward and upward from a prehistoric group to a tribal (or not so tribal?) creature, and so on and so forth until you reach space... to infinity and beyond! Or something, at any rate. Here's how we'll play this. Every day, a new text page (because I can't draw worth beans) will be posted here at 1s0s&2s.
For the first week and few days, you will be prompted to tweet suggestions for evolutions to the bacterium. Things such as color, how it moves, how it eats, what it eats, ANYTHING that you can think of that would make it beneficial. Feel free to suggest prey species, predators, anything to enrich this bacterium's environment.
Each day's post will equate to a 100 Million Year jump. Please keep your ideas to a maximum of -one- tweet. You only have 140 characters, so make them count!
When we hit 1 Billion Years, options will open up as to what the organism will focus on specifically. I'll present three possible paths, you will all vote and the one with the highest votes goes through. Evolutions will still occur and suggestions by you will still be made alongside these paths. At 2 Billion Years, the "paths" available will increase to five; you vote for two. At this point, evolutions will solely be based on the choices the paths take you and suggestions about evolution will end; you'll be locked in. When we hit 3 Billion Years or so, we'll decide if we're to become a land based creature (or perhaps an avian race?)... or remain a society in the deeps. The number of paths will increase from 5 to 7 and you pick 3 (and it will remain like that for the rest of the game).
Once we've made that decision, you'll advance to hunter-gatherer prehistory... eventually to tribal, to ancient times, to modern, to ultra modern, etc etc etc and so on and so forth. Colorful characters will develop, How far will you get?
I... don't have an answer for that.
I've done this game in a webforum before under a different name, and usually stopped around medieval times (somewhere around 60-ish to 100 pages worth of forum posts). I plan to go farther with this one. I want to see what the internet is capable of! When voting on the choices present, tweet your choice to @DrHervisJasper and your votes will be tallied until I tweet that voting has ENDED for that day. Then sometime around between 10 PM and 1 AM (well, that's what's planned), a new page will go up with a continuation of the story. We will continue the story for as long as I can. The goal is one page per day for at least one year, of the life story of a society invented by the internet... with all its quirks, problems, idiosyncrazies and other things. These words written in stupid-o-text. Ignore them. Will it be steampunk? Natural-materials only? Medieval taken to the 21st century and onward? Ancient Egypt? A tale of a desert species living under the moon because the sun burns them all to death? Robots? Tree-root beings? An elemental race? Reptilian? Anthropomorphic? That's for the internet to decide... and for me to find out! That... is enough out of me. It's time to get this Civilization underway... starting with the crash of the meteor that brings our bacteria, X. Neutralis Thromalius, to the planet itself. The first post of the game will happen on January 4, 2016 and I hope that you will stick around to watch the Rise Of An Internet Civilization, and take part in shaping it. Whether you read for the story or actively take part in the tweet-voting to influence the incoming civilization, may you Enjoy Your Stay.
I know I will. >:D
--- Dr. Hervis