Stitch on 17/7/2009 at 20:46
Two ideas I've had:
One is barely even a concept: the game presents a smallish world in which there are a limited number of variables that interact with each other and can be revisited and manipulated from different perspectives. A game of time travel? A city block in which you play through a small set of events as various people who all interact? I don't really know what the "game" hook would be, but I find the idea of revisiting scenes to manipulate a different outcome interesting.
My second concept has been bouncing around for a few years and is far more specific: an adventure/horror game set in a kid's summer camp environment. Gameplay would be first person and somewhat open ended, although plot events would be heavily scripted (not quite sure how that would work out, but action sequences would build off the groundwork laid by Valve).
The game would be told in three acts. The first would essentially be a virtual summer camp sim, in which you meet other campers, make friends and enemies while navigating the social dynamics of the various cabins, hear camp lore, and learn various summer camp activities like archery. The basics for summer camp life would be laid out, and normalcy established. Other than a few spooky stories around the campfire, nothing too unusual would happen and the player would be more concerned with impressing that cute girl or avoiding the cabin of bullies.
Act two is when things start going south. The cabin of older boys begin acting secretive and weird, odd occurrences start happening. Tension is slowly ratcheted up, bringing some camp friendships together while dividing others. At least one "what the fuck was that?" supernatural thing is witnessed by the player.
Act three is that inevitable point in any horror story when the threshold of normalcy is irreversibly left and all hell breaks loose. Some Lovecraftian monstrosity has been unleashed and the player must band together with friends--at least, those not possessed--and survive using the summer camp skills learned in the first two acts.
As I am a writer and not a game designer I've got a pretty clear bead on the plot, as well as various setpieces, and I've even gone so far as to figure out the layout of the campgrounds and the various kids in each cabin. For the most part, though, I've got this filed away as a project that's fun to think about when I have a little spare time, although hopefully someday I'll be in a position to develop it to some degree.
Harvester on 17/7/2009 at 21:31
That sounds like a really cool idea to me, I'd play it. I like the different gameplay elements, the fact that it's not just horror but also social interaction and such.
The only problem I'd see is that game publishers might not like the idea of kids getting killed on-screen. I believe they also toned down Irrational's idea of the little sisters in Bioshock because of that.
demagogue on 17/7/2009 at 22:23
Fuck publishers. We're now in the era where there's enough high-quality, open technology for a person or team to make a full fledged game from the ground-up. Indie games are our generations' punk music, something that can belong completely to the people that do it. Most of the ideas here aren't about tapping into a market niche, anyway, but about good game ideas...
I mean, if someone could get commercial support, more power to them, but if they can't or don't want to be restricted content-wise, that doesn't have to be the barrier it used to be.
belboz on 20/7/2009 at 04:59
This idea would probably never get made and makers would probably get locked up indefinately if it did.
You play the part of a serial bomber, you have this big city like gta, and you get points for blowing up buildings and people and other things, you can do special event type explosision where blowing up a car, would blowup all the cars along that street and you get multiple bonuses for killing x number of people with the extra explosions. Or you can use explosions to topple buildings into other buildings for extra carnage bonus. You'lled be buying you bomb making stuff from shops in the city, and do some muggings on the side for cash, and you'lled have to avoid police seeing you plant your bombs, they wouldn't know who you are because all the witnesses would be in bits.
For the multiplayer game, the game would randomly pick from the players who would be the bomber then the rest would be cops, or vililanties (vililanties get to kill cops as well and vice versa) trying to kill the bomber, although once you'led been the bomber you wouldn't get it again until everyone had been the bomber.
nicked on 20/7/2009 at 07:05
Quote Posted by belboz
You play the part of a serial bomber
Next up - Child Rape: The Game!
Koki on 20/7/2009 at 10:22
Japs already did that one. Many times.
DUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH
SubJeff on 22/7/2009 at 09:09
Actually I've thought about the terrorist game before myself. Mentioned ie here too. I was thinking more of a matrix type setup where the terrorism is justified.
I like both your concepts Stitch. With the right engine and an indie or amateur team you could do the camp one. Your first concept sounds like Primer the game which would be great.
nicked on 27/7/2009 at 17:34
I was thinking about the way games deal with death earlier and I realised it's rarely actually dealt with at all. The average FPS has you gunning down hundreds of soldiers in barely-real simulations of bullet hits, all in the name of camaraderie and hi-jinks.
I'd like to see a game, probably a first person shooter in a real-world setting like a warzone, that has a heavy emphasis on showing the horror of war and death. This would involved building on Soldier of Fortune style realistic damage, and developing much more realistic AI behaviour.
The idea would be that shooting someone would be portrayed so violently, so horrifyingly, that it would affect the combatants psychologically with realistic depictions of soldiers' morale. Shoot someone in the jaw, and they scream through gurgled blood and writhe on the floor, far from dead, just horribly incapacitated. Shoot someone in the hand and blow their fingers off, watch them fall to their knees roaring with pain. Shoot someone in the heart and watch a slowly expanding red patch appear on their shirt as they gasp and fall down slowly. Then watch as their friends react - some rush to try and help their fallen comrades, desperately trying to staunch the blood flow and getting arterial spray all over themselves. Others go berserk and rush you recklessly, insane with rage at what you've done. Others cower in terror, their training rendered useless by sheer overwhelming panic. Some stay cool and find cover to shoot back, and the soldiers' behaviour would be largely dictated by what had happened. If they're the only member of their squad left and they've just watched their friends get ripped apart by machine gun fire, they are more likely to do something stupid.
Of course, this wouldn't be one-sided either. Your squad mates would have similar reactions, and so would you. If a particularly violent death is visible onscreen, it affects you. See too many of your comrades die and there's a good chance you will suddenly lose it and cower in fear. Take too much enjoyment from blasting enemy body parts off, and there's a chance you'll go berserk, get a heady adrenaline rush and try to charge the enemy with a knife. If you recognised the emotional response early enough, you could find cover and for a brief few seconds, have to regain focus - possibly by concentrating on some reminder of home or something similar.
There are several reasons this game would never get made - 1) About 1% of game designers could do it correctly, and not turn it into a torture porn celebration of gore, and 2) It would get banned in every country everywhere.
june gloom on 27/7/2009 at 19:39
I'd play it.
As a plot device, I agree that death isn't explored too much. I can think of two games that approach death in a way other than "major character dies." Brothers in Arms is SORT of that, except you grow to appreciate certain minor characters, however little time you spend with them, and then you turn around and they're fucking dead and it tears you up inside. Kind of nullified by the fact that anybody in your squad that you're actually COMMANDING bounces back for the next stage, but still... And there's Silent Hill 2, which is one big deconstruction of the concept of death and redemption.
Sulphur on 27/7/2009 at 21:16
Far Cry 2, for all its faults, does death a little better than other games; it nowhere approaches what nicked's going for, but it's a step above what we've seen so far.
In FC2 there's the so-called 'buddy' system. In one of the missions early on you get to rescue someone who was kidnapped (who incidentally was one of the playable characters you could have chosen to play as before you started the game) who then becomes your buddy.
Buddies generally exist as a limited anti-frustration device when you're about to die in the middle of a firefight. If you've asked a buddy to cover your back, he pulls you out of the fracas just before you have to contend with a load game screen, giving you time to heal up and an additional hand to clear the area.
My buddy happened to be Josip, a large, grizzled Russian who always pulled me out in the nick of time and never asked for anything in return. Except the one time we got caught in an ambush, just after I'd tagged some gold from a king I'd assassinated for the UFLL.
After I managed to kill most everybody, I realised that they'd got Josip. He was lying on the sand nearby, wracked with pain, crying for help. This had happened plenty of times before, and when it does you have a choice: use a syrette on your buddy to heal him, mercy kill him by firing a round into his head, or just leave him there to die.
I've never used the latter two options, ever. Even if I'm almost dead myself, I usually give up my syrettes for my buddy and hobble on to the next safe house. So I knelt next to him, unscrewed a syrette, and jabbed it into him. Didn't help. He continued writhing in pain. So I used another syrette on him.
Didn't work either.
This had never happened before. I was getting worried. Usually, it just took one syrette and then he'd be back on his feet. "Give me all," he said. All right, bro. I can do that. You need it more than I do. I ran my hands over his convulsing form, primed the third syrette, stuck it into his chest.
He gave one last gasp, his eyes went wide, and then he fell back into the sand, limp.
The rage I felt as I ran my palm over his face and closed his eyes was one of the purest moments of fury I've ever felt in a game. I emptied my gun into everybody who was still left alive after that.
And I actually, honest to god, wanted to reload the game just for another chance to save Josip.
The game has unavoidably large problems otherwise and heaven knows it's not perfect with all that tedium and checkpost grinding in there, but it's moments like this where you know that the developers were serious about taking the medium and what it can do that much further.
