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True Crime - Good Cop, GTA - Bad Cop? 33

Posted by simoniker from the renegade-cop-rampage dept.
Thanks to GameDevLeague for their article discussing discussing the Grand Theft Auto-like Activision game True Crime, and its good cop/bad cop dilemma. The author argues: "In Differentiate or Die, Jack Trout says if you're not the leading brand with the killer attribute - then you should go 'opposite' the leading brand's killer attribute." He continues: "What attribute does GTA own? Crime. How do you go opposite of crime? Law enforcement." But he laments that, while you play a cop in the game, "...Activision went and called it True Crime! And buried the law enforcement angle so deep I can barely even tell from the ad copy that's what it's about." So does everyone "want to be bad" nowadays, thus Activision's clone-like marketing ploy, or do users genuinely not care as long as the game is fun?
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True Crime - Good Cop, GTA - Bad Cop? More

True Crime - Good Cop, GTA - Bad Cop?

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  • COPS

    You ride along on patrol looking for bad guys in Lakeview, WA.

    It'll sell better than Deer Hunter.
  • do users genuinely not care as long as the game is fun?

    Exactly.

    I could care less whether I'm playing as the good guy or the bad guy in a game, so long as it is a fun game. After all, that is the point of a game, to be fun.

    But even more important than the good/bad side of a game is CHOICE. Give the player the option to be a good guy, or to be a bad guy. Let them decide how they want to play the game.

    Grand Theft Auto is a great example of the power that choice gives players. I play vice city a lot, b
    • "I only wish more game developers would follow suit."
      They would be following IDSofts suit. If it wernt for ID, we'd be getting sued under the DMCA for modding our games. ID revolutionized the modding industry by using the easy to figure out format(cant think of the name offhand) for doom after seeing how many people tried to hack mods into wolf3d. Because of that we could turn a fps monster game into an airplane simulator (AirQuake), RTS (DiD), Or just totaly innovate new gameplay (3wave, fortress, etc).

      It

  • Dress Ups (Score:2, Funny)

    by Yakman ( 22964 )
    In GTA3: Vice City I like to put on the police uniform and calmly drive around the streets in a Police Cruiser. When I see a gang of Haitians or Cubans I will proceed to exit my vehicle, AND BEAT THE LIVING CRAP OUT OF THEM WITH MY TRUNCHEON. Then I get back in my car and keep driving.

    Sometimes I use the minigun.

    I like stories.
    • Non-amusing to anyone but me anecdote: When playing Vice City, I took on the persona of the dirty cop -- Tommy was always wearing the cop uniform, and driving around in some sort of law enforcement vehicle.

      Anyways, I go on to do the biker missions (for Mitch whats-his-name). In the beginning of the cut scene when you first meet Mitch, he looks you over and says, "You don't look like the law to me." Despite the fact that I'm wearing a cop uniform and have a cruiser parked outside.

      (Got a similar reactio
    • In VIce City, you can get points for helping a cop stop another criminal - and of course, there's the vigilante missions :)
  • Shows you can be a "good guy" but also have the kind of all-out war that the real police can't get away with. (Often.)

  • Playing Battlefield 1942 online, I've noticed an unusually high proportion of juvenile fuckwits wanting to be badass nazi stormtroopers. They play as "Adolf Hitler", "22SSPzrDiv", "SS PnzrGrndr", and other trite combinations they pick up off some WWII history site.

    Going online and playing as one of Uncle Joe Stalin's guardians of freedom and democracy and demolishing the pseudo-nazi little shits is always amusing.

    Essentially I think two kinds of people who like to play bad as bad guys in games--the ones
    • Essentially I think two kinds of people who like to play bad as bad guys in games--the ones who enjoy watching Bond movies and say "damn" when the hero gets off Goldfinger's laser table in the nick of time, and the morons with inferiority complexes who give nazi salutes just to irritate people. Draw your own confusions.

      Oh about those of us that think that we could build a better spy trap? Other than it is "unAmerican" to want to play the "enemny" nation and what them to win, what is wrong with playing a

      • Nothing un-American about it. Frankly, I don't care what anyone considers "American" and what "not". I see where you're coming from, but I think there's a bit of a difference between building an evil totalitarian nation in a game like Civilization, to see where it goes, and getting into an FPS with a "d00d! Hitler! Nazi! K00l!" attitude.

        I am not making moral judgments about it (I play Axis or Soviet or whatever bad guys happen to be around quite a bit, if for example it's the team with free slots--no
  • I wanna play a criminal. I don't want to play an all out postal psychopath (unless I get frustrated and feel like going down in flames) - if a few guys need to get whacked as part of my schemes, no biggie. I want to plan my own "scores" - not "Italian Job" scores (though that would be fun too) - more like "Heat," "Resivoir Dogs," or "The Usual Suspects." I want to start out small - maybe rob a gas station or two, be a small time dealer, etc.. - then move up into the big leagues as I gain a rep. I wanna get
    • When will someone make a realistic crime game?
      I want to get rich and buy cool stuff and flaunt my cash, drugs and guns to my buds.
      I wanna get mixed up with "made men" who might hook me up, or might mark me.
      I don't want there to be random "scooby snacks" hidden away to heal me or hide me from the cops. When I get hit by a bullet - I want it to suck - bad.

      So... You want a game where you camp out watching a target for 3 days, you want to hire a group of thugs to help you, and you want to be chased by rea
      • I realize that "real crime" is not the idealized movie version and I am not suggesting that the game be 100% realistic, but what could be more boring than makingtrade goods in EQ? Having to bail to Mexico because the heat is on would be a good deterrent to making mistakes or blasting your way through bad situations.

        Obviously, the cops would have to have a negative consequence for indesciminately blasting mobsters - demoting them to a beat cop or a desk-jockey would be a good first time offenders punishment
  • I didn't even notice that you are a cop in true crime. I thought it was a GTA clone from what marketing I have come across. I enjoyed playing GTA and just exploring the world and going on crime sprees. (I never do the missions). True crime sounds like fun if you can be a renagade cop and go kill the bad guys. I'm sure there are plenty of people who would like to really give the criminals what they deserve, in a role playing, fake environment of course :)
  • If there were a cop simulation, it might be about as much fun as running through the code of a C program.

    Why?

    One of the great things about GTA series is the planning you did in the missions. What car to use, how exactly to do it, etc. The vast majority of cops have something called procedure. Rather than creatively solving your problems, you "do it by the book". If you wish to deviate, you need to call headquarters and are more often given orders than a blank check to decide what to do. Who wants to
    • If there were a cop simulation, it might be about as much fun as running through the code of a C program. Why? One of the great things about GTA series is the planning you did in the missions. What car to use, how exactly to do it, etc. The vast majority of cops have something called procedure. Rather than creatively solving your problems, you "do it by the book". If you wish to deviate, you need to call headquarters and are more often given orders than a blank check to decide what to do. Who wants to make
  • You could make it a competition thing. Tie the two games together so that True Crime cops try to catch GTA players. Then you could have gangs of GTA players vs. precincts of True Crime players.

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