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Games Entertainment

Concepts That Should Be Games? 203

Posted by Zonk from the i-can-think-of-a-few dept.
Now that we've seen what's in the pipe for the immediate future IGN is running an article hoping for the games of the future, and talking about novels, tv shows, and other properties that they'd like to see be made into games. From the article: "...while we at IGN are all for original, non-franchise titles--reference Katamari, Psychonauts, God of War, Spore--a lot of us have places in our hearts for certain TV shows, films, and books that made us all fuzzy with joy." What would you like to see be made into a game? Microsoft, if you are listening, I have two words for you: Shadowrun MMOG.
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Concepts That Should Be Games? More

Concepts That Should Be Games?

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  • What i would like to see (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FidelCatsro ( 861135 ) <fidelcatsro&gmail,com> on Friday May 27, 2005 @03:51AM (#12652745) Journal
    I had a concept for a game , it was kind of like a massive RPG .
    in the spirit of elite , but with planet sections (which would work kind of like morrowind , daggerfal etc) you could buy new ships and fly them around wing commander style and fly to difrent worlds and get jobs ,And you could eventualy buy your own world and start to produce things managed in a sim city kind of way where you build it up and can have custom garages for your space ships and a trophy hall .
    In the game would be a games console for which you could buy mini games to play on it in your house/home planet/fortress ship or whatever . a kind of freeform RPG with space battles , world building and Galactic domination .
    It would have to be on a scale unseen since the days of elite ...
    You could get loads of difrent jobs etc well thats just me it may be a little tricky
    • I think there really could be better space games. Ships fighting each other would be cool, but I'd like to see something along the lines of pirate spaceships warring with each other, where you are part of a crew that can be boarded and stuff by larger vessels/groups. Things involving turning off an enemy's gravity, jumping into lightspeed to escape, using your ship to enter an atmosphere while being boarded...there are a ton of other possibilities. Quests could revolve around protecting merchant vessels for
      • I had actualy considerd something like that ,Virus troops that you could join whos mission was to take over a ship , which could be used for getting yourself new ships (lawfully or unlawfully as i would like to see a full legal system, obviously simplified as patent litegation in a game would suck)
        For the later part of the game when you have your home planet and can start employing people and build an army and a fleet you could add in a RTS element , building planetry defense and perhaps taking over quadren
    • Sounds sort of like the original announcement of Star Wars Galaxies...
      • Yeah , shame that never came to pass . Though i didn't nick the idea i got it back in 93 after playing simcity 2k(i think it was 93) . I just thought how cool it would be to mix Arena (elder scrolls1 , but in a more sci-fi vent)) elite and sim city into one combined space saga

  • MMO War Game (Score:5, Interesting)

    by skyman8081 ( 681052 ) <skyman8081NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday May 27, 2005 @04:01AM (#12652774) Homepage
    I've always wanted to see a massively multiplayer online War Game, where players of different ranks would fight each other, ranks would be determined by skill and luck.

    A person who is a grunt on the ground plays in a very FPS type of play, the squad commander would be in charge of them, and it would play much more like Full Spectrum Warrior. Above that is the battlefield commander, who would control the squads via an interface similar to that of Total Annihilation. Above him is the admin appointed players who choose where to fight and to allocate resources in which battle. No autonomous power plants on the battle field, only supply lines to main generators.

    Admins could reward sides who fund R&D with goodies to help them.

    I've always wanted to play an RTS where all the grunts on the ground were live players.
    • I've always wanted to play an RTS where all the grunts on the ground were live players.

      I'd like to see this work, it's a really cool concept.
      You'd need a system where disconnected players get swapped for ones in queue or something though.

      • You'd need a system where disconnected players get swapped for ones in queue or something though.

        Do it like 'Enemy Territory' does it. Players connect to a server, and if there is an open slot they get to play. They pick a side, and fight.

        In the war simulation the parent describes, a disconnected player could be replaced by a 'bot. Real players who connect would take the place of 'bots. As they disconnect, another 'bot is spawned to take their place.

        It would be interesting - if done right, you d

      • I've always wanted to play an RTS where all the grunts on the ground were live players.

        It exists, Its called "Savage". s2games.com. One of the best games ever made without a doubt. The company that distributed it totally screwed it up by releasing it before it was ready, and the guys who wrote it really did a lot of hard work on it to get it ready for prime time.

        The genius of the game is that its *EXTREMELY* tactical but at the same time dumbasses can play it and smack stuff. It really takes a coup

        • OH, and when I say economy -- the game is segregated into matches each of which last anywhere between 15 - 75 minutes, but can be extended by vote. Your character can level up -- but characters aren't persistant -- you get a new one at the end of each match. And the economy is started fresh each time (the economy consists of "red stone" and "gold" which are used to build tech and buy tech respectively... controlling access to gold and stone are the primary ways in which a game is won)

    • Re:MMO War Game (Score:3, Informative)

      by DingerX ( 847589 )
      The dude before me mentioned WW2OL.
      I supposed Planetside is in there as well.
      There already are FPS RTSs -- specifically Operation Flashpoint Missions. The major problems are the underperforming netcode and the lack of Join in Progress. Both of these, I understand, will be addressed with the next game in the series (Armed Assault or something).
      The problem with big battle simulations is that modern combat involves a bunch of grunts who get slaughtered and a few guys with nice toys who do the slaughtering. So
    • Why do you put movie spoilers in your sig?

      It's also wrong. Anakin didn't kill Padme.

      • Re:MMO War Game (Score:3, Informative)

        by chrismcdirty ( 677039 )
        The sig never said that Anakin kills Padme (unless he changed it since you called him out). At this point right now it says "Anakin force-chokes Padme", which is completely true.

      • Oh no, that's a really bad thing for Anakin to do ... does he go to the Dark side after that?? :-)

        • Nah, that can't possibly happen, Darth Sidious isn't stupid, he'd say "Hmm, this guy has no legs, arms, or for that matter face and is best friends with Jar Jar. Looooooser! Now, which planet did I find Maul on again? Perhaps he has a brother."

          "What's that Admiral Tarkin? Intelligence reports of a crazy guy living on Tatooine, next door to Annie's uncle (the one who just mysteriously adopted a kid), named Kenobi, who dresses like a Jedi? It's probably nothing but hey! lets live a little and nuke the site f
      • Anakin - You said I killed Padme
        Palpatine - When Padme saw you had turned to the darkside, she lost the will to live. So what I said was true... from a certain point of view.
    • Not an MMO, but Natural Selection really comes very close to what your describing. Another 'RTS with real-people as the units' game is Savage. I would suggest trying them out, they are both great games.
    • I've always wanted to play an RTS where all the grunts on the ground were live players.

      Then you should be playing Savage [s2games.com], which has precisely this set-up. Windows & Linux versions.

      Cheers,
      Toby Haynes

      • Check out the demo. I remember playing it for like a month, that's how fun it was. It gets quite interesting when there are quite a few players. The strategy is really the most important part, individual player skill I would say comes second.
    • It's an idea that's been floating around for a while. I would love to see it as well.

      One way to do it would be to allow "generals" playing the RTS mode to instance quests in the form of missions for "commanders" who would then instance commands to troops in their squad.

      Why would people obey these commands? Experience.

      And "command" is a skill tree that allows you to enter the squad and rts modes, thus ensuring that commanders and generals know what they are doing.
    • I second that. Additionally I'd like it to have an open interface, so that different clients could plug into the server - FPS client for the grunts on the ground, flight sim clients, tank sim clients, things like SubCommand, whatever.
      Give the player the ability to switch with AI controlled units anytime and wage a massive war, were a single game might take weeks or even months to complete. Make the strategic level important, so that accurate planning of attacks on supply lines, production facilities and al

  • Hitchhiker's Guide (Score:3, Interesting)

    by b00m3rang ( 682108 ) * on Friday May 27, 2005 @04:04AM (#12652789)
    It would probably translate into a game better than the movie (although I liked the movie, too).
  • The Kenshin cartoon series features a Japanese Battousai who has decided to live in peace and be a protector of the weak. Very humourous at times and lots of moves to incorporate in a game.
  • I want to drive one of those funky vehicles!

  • Everyone's a game designer. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 27, 2005 @05:00AM (#12653027)
    Just as everyone's a critic, everyone thinks that they have the ultimate game idea.

    The problem is that every single person who plays videogames - from those that work in the industry to those who occasionally fire up a console - ALL have a couple of ideas for a game. Heck, working in a development team we often come up with several concepts a week just talking amongst ourselves.

    The problem is not the ideas - it's the implementation. The basic idea takes 1% of the effort, 1% of the time. Building the damn thing is what takes effort. 18+ months of VERY hard work toiling on a project. By the time you have a couple of designers, a content team, engineering staff, a producer and a publisher - that's when things start to diverge from the original idea. It's very difficult to preserve the original purity of your concept because in the end you have to create a game that (1) has to be fun, (2) can be marketed, and (3) that people will buy. It doesn't matter if *you* think it's a cool idea, if it won't sell enough to recoup your investment - in which case, good luck feeding yourself.

    Independent games are great when they can get made and can tackle some of these areas that mainstream games can't approach. But it's the "getting made" part that's hard.
    • "It's very difficult to preserve the original purity of your concept because in the end you have to create a game that (1) has to be fun, (2) can be marketed, and (3) that people will buy."

      That assertion is redundent and misleading. Any game that is fun can be marketed because people will buy any game that is fun. The primary virtue of a game is it's level of fun. So unless your original concept was not fun, that assertion is false.

      Perhaps what you meant is that it's hard to maintain the original purity

      • Re:Everyone's a game designer. (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Shaper_pmp ( 825142 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:07AM (#12654598)
        "Any game that is fun can be marketed because people will buy any game that is fun. The primary virtue of a game is it's level of fun. So unless your original concept was not fun, that assertion is false."

        With the greatest respect, that's the biggest load of idealistic Utopian horse-pucky I've ever read.

        "Build it and they will come" works when you only need a tiny fraction of the whole audience to make an endeavour worthwhile. Nobody, but nobody sinks millions of dollars into a game and relies on word-of-mouth to spread it.

        Word of mouth might get you many things (respect, a hard core of gamers who passionately love your game, and lots of blog-coverage), but it won't get the game in stores, it won't push the game to Joe Sixpack who's too busy drinking beer to read gaming blogs (but who nevertheless represents 50%-99% of your market, depending on the platform), and it certainly won't allow the game to break even.

        It is possible, I'll grant you, for tiny cult games, movies or books to achieve mainstream success, but this is a mixture of 5% excellence and 95% pure, dumb luck. For every one you see, there are literally hundreds of thousands that die cold and lonely deaths, unmissed by anyone.

        I long for the day when this is true - when you can just produce something great and it'll automatically translate into wealth, fame and success - but even with the advent of the internet, that day is years (if not decades) away.

        And still relies on luck, even when it arrives.
    • Counterexample: Alien Hominid [alienhominid.com].
      • Counterexample: Alien Hominid.

        Err that's not a counter-example. That's proof that there are plenty of good ideas out there if only people would actually impliment them.

        They did a post-mortem in Game Developer where they explained about how they financed the game by MORTAGING THEIR HOUSES. The end of the post-mortem is an apology/thank-you to their spouses and loved ones for putting up with them as they stuggled through a whole lot of uncertainty and near financial ruin. They talk a great deal about the h
  • I've always thought that the battles (both real and "play") in Ender's Game would lend themselves brilliantly to computer games - if you could work out a sufficiently immersive UI...
    • Homeworld is pretty similar to what I imagined Ender's game (although its been a while since I read the series)
  • I read in the Time issue that featured the Xbox360 on the cover that the Xbox team was gearing up to produce experimental games that would have appeal beyond the current market of shooters and sports games, especially since they want to bring in the female buyers. Well, when Sierra still produced adventures, they brought in women players en masse, at least according to Sierra's then manager, Ken Williams. Why not bring them back? I'm sure if done right, they'd be a big success. Microsoft owns the rights to
    • The only RPG/adventure games I ever got into were Quest For Glory and Kings Quest. If the game would still run on my computer (it moves entirely too fast now), I'd be playing it again. I never cared for Final Fantasy or Legend of Zelda - they never captured my imagination. Perhaps it was simply because they had too much of a fantasy influence or because they were simply set in a different environment than what I traditionally thought of as exciting.
    • Heck yeah. I only go for Nintendo b/c they're the only company that makes games I like. The most recent games I've had any desire to play were Zelda - Four Swords and Paper Mario - Thousand Year Door. I loved both, although Zelda was a little more linear than I was hoping for. Mostly I just play my SNES. I have no interest at all in first-person shooters or sports games.

      Note: the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of all women everywhere.

    • Just FYI, Xbox already has Syberia and Syberia II, two of the best adventure games made in the last 5 years. It also has some 'psuedo-adventure' games like Beyond Good and Evil.

      A lot of the "oh no adventure games are gone!" crap is from people who thing "adventure" = "LucasArts." There are still adventure games being made every year. If you buy them, there will be MORE adventure games made every year... since not a lot of people buy them, there are LESS made every year. See how that works?

      Seriously, i
      • The Syberia games are awesome, and so is the Broken Sword game that was released some time ago.

        But I still miss the big releases, like when Sierra and Lucasarts (and before that, Infocom, Level 9 and the other text adventure houses) reigned supreme. You could count on Sierra releasing new games on an almost per month basis, so while we have a few releases now, it's nothing like it used to be.

        But yeah, I agree with you. Too many equate the adventure genre with Lucasarts and the defunct Sierra, and thus thi

      • The problem is that basically no adventure released today is equally good the old ones released a decade ago. Syberia for example looks nice, but gameplay is full of annoying things, tons of doors where you just get some random fill answer, instead of something meaningfull, tons of scenes that serve no purpose beside stretching your ways to walk and such and a story that really isn't all that exciting. Syberia is an ok game, but seriously I stopped playing half the way through since it simply was way to bo
    • Yeah, Microsoft said that about the XBox as well, before that was released. Experimental games, games that were radically different than anything available on the other consoles. It never really materialised, though the XBox did have a few good games.

      I doubt XBox 360 will be any different. More of the same, with more chrome.

  • A few ideas (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Lonin ( 876821 )
    I'd like to see some quality MMO and single-player RPG's come out for some popular Fantasy series/titles. A new Wheel of Time or Malazan Book of the Fallen MMO or RPG would be awesome. As for original ideas, I'm still waiting for a MMORTS. Rome: Total War Online, anyone?
    • Just to completely dilute your idea, I always thought that the way the 'story' in Pokemon goes would have lent itself to a MMORPG game. I might be hard to keep an 8yr olds attention for long enough though.
  • Big-O's giant robot battles had a sense of weight and realism to them. Imagine an on-screen Roger Smith pulling back that lever, and watching that giant pneumatic hammer arm rearing back....

    The incongruous giant robot sections of the N64 Goemon games are the closest thing to the idea that's in my own personal gaming experience: a robot's cockpit view of the action, laggy, weighty controls, and a wide variety of attacks for different situations. I really think it'd work absurdly well, though I'd imagine t
  • And this is harcking back some, maybe someone can remember. There is a C64 magazine called Zzap 64 and in the back they would have a comic strip, and in one of these they described the God Game.

    A real God Game, one where there's a nice inhabitted world, and you have godly powers to summon whatever you please to aid, or (more likely) hinder the people of the world.

    Thats what I want

    I want to perform evil "acts-of-god" dropping large rocks on groups of people etc.

    Even controlling religion, bringing back s
  • Well, that article ignored the fact that Fahrenheit 451 has already been made into a game [retrosite.de]. But what can you expect from the snes kiddies at IGN...

    Anyway, I'd like to see games made out of stories that don't exactly sound like gaming material. The classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber would make a unique game. With a plot primarily revolving around relationships between characters and the obligations that customs force upon them, gameplay would have to be very different from the standard action gam
    • Anyway, I'd like to see games made out of stories that don't exactly sound like gaming material. The classic Chinese novel Dream of the Red Chamber would make a unique game.

      Ooh, could it drag on interminably like the book?

      Another idea of mine is a game based upon the Phantom of the Opera, which seems to have been adapted into just about every entertainment medium except for videogames (yes, there was even a pinball table).

      Actually Microprose (I think it was them) had a phantom game.

  • I'm looking for a single player, simultaneous multiple entity game. The entities must have distinct roles as individuals and be able to perform specific team actions, whilst the player maintains individual control. I'm not talking about mouse control, where agents follow predefined behaviours, I want controller control, where if I drop concentration for a fraction of a second I loose control. Think monkeyball with 2+ balls, or a topdown/side scroller, isometric rpg

    I've been playing games for over 20 years.

    • Want a challenge?
      Try getting women to sleep with you.
  • I would like to see a MMORPG based on FOX [fox.com]'s popular science fiction franchise. I don't care about Predator (Aliens vs. Predators). I know FOX had a game like this before MMORPG was known.

    I would like to see something like World of Warcraft [worldofwarcraft.com], Star Wars: Galaxies [sony.com], etc. with various missions (quests) in various places. There would be different classes as well like Natural Selections [unknownworlds.com] including commanders, ships (medic, weapons, etc.).

  • From the summary... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Jack Taylor ( 829836 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @07:04AM (#12653441)
    I have two words for you: Shadowrun MMOG

    That's five words! ;)

    • I have two words for you: Shadowrun MMOG

      That's five words! ;)

      Pedantry aside, I'd like to see anyone other than microsoft or nintendo make this game because... this game sorta has to be playable from your rig. It's the nature of the game.

  • Stupid writer (Score:3, Informative)

    by Eivind ( 15695 ) <eivindorama@gmail.com> on Friday May 27, 2005 @07:46AM (#12653610) Homepage
    Perhaps he should consider actually reading the books he is recommending as source-material for games ? This reads a lot as if he's simply read the back-cover blurb or at most a review of the books in question.

    For example, when describing "Enders Game" he writes that: The gist of Ender's Game is that Earth is in danger of annihilation by an insectoid race. The twist is that the battle is taking place a long, long way from home, requiring Earth to train children to save the human race so that they won't die of old age by the time they reach the battlefield.

    That is, infact, as they say "not even wrong". Ok, so it's correct that earth is in war with some aliens, but that's about it.

    spoiler warning

    spoiler warning

    spoiler warning

    But when Ender ends up commanding the flotilla in the final battle against the aliens (while himself beliving, or atleast being made to believe it is merely yet-another exersize) he is not old at all.

    I don't remember if the book says exactly how old he is, but he gets put into military training from age ~7 and spends some time in two different (in-space) academies before this happens. I'd say he's probably a teenager or so.

    If a 7 year old can command the battle at say 15, they could just aswell have started with a 20 year old and let him command at 28. Why this ain't done, but instead children are used isn't really explained in depth.

    • Why this ain't done, but instead children are used isn't really explained in depth.

      It's hinted at and stated openly several times throughout the book. If you enjoyed it at all you might do well to re-read it because you managed to gloss over one of the central themes of the book.

    • Er, I think he was just trying to avoid using a spoiler. For most of the book, you are led to believe that these children will eventually be sent to a galaxy far, far away for the actual battles - that's why it comes as such a shock when it happens the way it does. And weren't there actual people in the ships he was unknowingly commanding? I haven't read it in a few years, but I thought those were all flown by battle school graduates who weren't good enough and so became cannon fodder instead of commander
  • A shadowrun MMORPG would be so sweet. Shadowrun had some of the best concepts around, and was probably my favorite PNP game. I loved that you had the cyber stuff, implants, vampires, orcs, and vehicles decked out with missile launchers.

    Another one I daydream about is a Transformers MMORPG. That one is a little trickier though. Since there is a predefined set of characters, I am not sure if you can really do it well. I am not sure it would be as fun to just be a random robot. I would want the chance
    • Forgot to add that Neocron was a good attempt at a Shadowrun like MMORPG, but missed the mark in some key areas. The actual game mechanics weren't great, and there were a lot of bugs. The lack of players made it less fun also.

      Neocron kept me occupied for a couple of weeks, but if they took it to the next level in the form of Shadowrun, I would wet my pants with excitement.
  • I would like to see a game about good versus evil fighting with light swords in a galaxy far far away. And maybe they could make a series of movies about it (I'm pretty sure this hasn't been done yet, at least I haven't seen any mention of anything like this ever on Slashdot). And, if its really good they could merchandise all the items and submit the profits to the open source community. --- Seriously though, I don't think just a new idea is needed but a change from the same old concept of taking the s

  • as usual, PA is right on this (Score:3, Funny)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @08:35AM (#12653851)
    Will Wright's PEE [penny-arcade.com]

    i think they're on to something

  • Total Annihilation (Score:5, Interesting)

    by supabeast! ( 84658 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @09:01AM (#12654005)
    How about just a nice continuation of Total Annihilation? I just want a wargame that plays slowly and tends to last for hours, instead of the current crop of *Craft games and their knockoffs where I just end up fighting off the latest rush tactic from Korea in games that rarely last more than thirty minutes.

    And before anyone points it out, I do realize that there's an Open-Source remake in the works, but I'm looking for a big studio production.
  • I thoroughly enjoyed Shadowrun as a RPG, and I'd like to see that turned into a MMOG. But at this point I'd take any edgy futuristic game (Cyberpunk, Warhammer 40k, even Twilight 2k). I haven't been too impressed with the sci-fi games that have been coming out. I have some hope for Auto Assault, but if that falls through a good Car Wars game is in order.
  • Online multiplayer (not massively) mystery/adventure game. Basically I'd like to see something like Gabriel Knight 3 put online with cooperative mystery solving as the main purpose of the game.

    Each server would be a single detailed town or city in which the mysteries take place. Server population is kept low to encourage tight communities and the ability for everyone to have a role in solving the plot. Every couple of months the game designers come up with a new mystery plot to solve. They scatter clues ar
    • The problem is that everyone in the game would set up a forum on the web and collectively they'd have each month's mystery solved in like three days. You can't have a dev team keep up with stuff like that.

  • Paranoia RPG! (Score:2, Interesting)

    by piggy ( 5857 )
    The Computer is your friend!

    Of course, you'd go through clones a bit too quickly...

    Would still be fun -- backstabbing, confusion, lies, deceipt, mutants -- everything one could ask for!
  • It mentions 1984 possibly as an RPG, which would be interesting. But I think I'd rather have Sims: 1984. Atlhough, it'd be just a wee bit darker and bleaker than the other Sims titles, so maybe the branding wouldn't work so well. But a sims-type game set in Orwell's 1984.
    • In high school, I didn't pay attention in class; I just programmed on my TI-86 instead. Senior year, I was working hard on 1984: The Game. It was supposed to be an RPG that takes you through the story, except that Winston Smith gets a machine gun and takes out the Ministry of Truth. I had the battle system and Winston's apartment pretty much done, but that was it. All I remember is that Winston had some attack involving the use of Proletariat smut....

  • Nation Sim focusing on culture (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Conspiracy_Of_Doves ( 236787 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:21AM (#12654765)
    I would like to see a game with a dynamic system based on all kinds of sociology and psychology (basically culture in general) including religion. The probem with a lot of the games that involve culture is that the 'cultures' in them are preset and unchangable.

    A game where you get to mold the details of a culture and see how it develops and how it interacts with other cultures would be fantatic.

    A primitive version of what I am thinking of would be something like NationStates [nationstates.net]. With that, you just set up a style of government, and you deal with issues that it sends you every day. I am thinking more along the lines of something realtime where you not only delt with issues that it gives you, but also initiated events yourself, actively influencing the culture.

    The culture would have various subcultures in it: religious, intellectual, militant, pacifist, apathetic, civil-rights-loving, and others groups of that nature. There would also be a counterculture element, if the culture moves in one direction, a certain low percentage of the population would move in the opposite direction.

    In the real world, naturally an individual person can belong to more than one subculture. But of course in the game we are looking at the cumulative effect, not at individuals.

    Some subcultures might work well together and a person could easily be a member of both, like intellectual and freedom-loving, while others are almost entirely incompatible in the same person, like pacifist and militant. Subcultures like that would even be aligned against each other.

    There would be two numbers attached to each of the subcultures, one would be the number of people in that subculture (the sum of all of these could very well be greater than the population, since an individual can be in more than one subculture). The other would be how strong that subculture is, perhaps what percentage of the 'Ideosphere' (for lack of a better term) the ideals of that culture take up. For instance, if two subcultures have approximatly the same number of people, but the people in one are more vehement in their beliefs, then that subculture would have a higher percentage.

    The player would decide what kind of government the country would have: democratic, totalitatian, theocratic, etc. I am thinking that a good way to do this is instead of selecting a pre-defined type of government, all the various types could be broken down into thier defining elements, and the player could modify those elements at will, perhaps even mid-game.

    The user would deal with issues that are raised (or that he raises himself) involving economy, education, censorship, foreign policy, how the government works, civil rights, the government's attitude toward those rights, and other things of that nature. How the player deals with the issues would define how the culture changes and develops.

    I think that if there are going to be wars in the game, then they should be fought automatically. The player would be more concerned with the affect of the war on the populous. Although the player would be able to divert resources to the military; this would also have an affect on the culture, as would where the resources came from.

    I am not sure what kind of interface the game would have. If nothing graphically representational can be though of, it might just be a series of menus, charts, and dialog boxes, kind of like the game Uplink [uplink.co.uk]

    Something like that would definitely be worth my money.
  • Redshift Rendezvous [neverend.com] by John E. Stith [neverend.com].

    Set on a ship where the speed of light is 10 meters per second. It's easy to exceed the speed of sound, and a good run will shift colors and cause objects to bend. Everything you see is at least slightly in the past.

    An FPS would be very interesting (and educational, even!) but doing multiplayer would be extremely hard if you wanted to model time dilation too...

  • For those not familiar with the Scifi short story by (I think?) James Blish, _Surface Tension_ is the story of a human colony seedship (an interstellar colony ship which specialized in creating genetically engineered humans that can live in environments where normal humans could not) which crashes on a planet where the only life is microscopic and lives in various ponds and puddles.

    The survivors manage to create microscopic humans that could successfully compete in a microscopic environment with various lo

  • Gi Joe? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by jackstraw2323 ( 730834 )
    How about a MMO GI Joe game. Then I can send a trainee home in an itty bitty ditty bag. Maybe each server only has the exact number of characters open, so when you join a server you get assigned one of the title characters until you die. Join a different server and get someone different. Eventually you get to play destro or snakeyes or the ultimate - Road Block the rhyming chef.
  • I'll toss out some ideas that, when trying to actually flesh out, probably fall appart very quickly, but here they are anyways.

    First, the extension of genera.

    Online dueling. Idea is mostly spawned from jedi outcast.

    I'd like to see the dueling aspect improved upon. Take it back to a classic medieval setting. Have guys with minor sorcery powers. Things like being able to manipulate the enviroment and a few minor acrobatic moves. This way the focus is on weapons dueling, but you can make it more interesting

  • Ringworld (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jim Hall ( 2985 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @11:36AM (#12655601) Homepage

    I always thought you could do enjoyable games based on Larry Niven's Ringworld. It's so damn huuuuuge, you could have a series of games and have each take place in a different, unique locale. Towns, floating cities, plains, mountains, oceans, Mars map, etc. It could be MMO, but I would think a third-person game would be most flexible.

    If someone were to take this one, don't just follow the books. Sure, sprinkle in some events from the books (we like to see that) but don't let it be about Louis Wu. What about the Hero who was walking the "Great Arch" (the Ringworld)? Let him be the central character. He could accept missions/quests from each town he visits, which would take him into the surrounding areas (forests, plains, mountains, etc.)

    Since it's the Hero, I can imagine lots of swordplay and action. Maybe some platforming in between. Something like the 'Prince of Persia' games.

    I would think a game company could do a long series of games following the Hero across the Ringworld without repeating areas.

  • I'd love to play an RPG set in Niven's Ringworld. [wikipedia.org] (I know there is/was a pen & paper version, though I've never played it.)

    Even better might be an MMORPG set on the ring. With a surface area of 1.6 x 10^15 square kilometres, and myriad cultures one could play forever and never get bored! (Well, that's probably not quite true. ;)

    Hell, even just a game set in Known Space [wikipedia.org], be it a Man-Kzin war RTS or space sim or FPS or what-have-you.

    Maybe a strategy (think Civ) or RTS game where the player assumes t

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