Concepts That Should Be Games? 203
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.
What i would like to see (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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
Re:What i would like to see (Score:2)
Re:What i would like to see (Score:2)
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
Re:What i would like to see (Score:2)
Re:What i would like to see (Score:2)
MMO War Game (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
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.
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
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
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
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
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
Re:MMO War Game (Score:3, Informative)
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
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
It's also wrong. Anakin didn't kill Padme.
Re:MMO War Game (Score:3, Informative)
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
Oh no, that's a really bad thing for Anakin to do ... does he go to the Dark side after that?? :-)
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
"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
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
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.
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
Savage (Score:2)
Then you should be playing Savage [s2games.com], which has precisely this set-up. Windows & Linux versions.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:Savage - Check out the demo (Score:2)
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
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.
Re:MMO War Game (Score:2)
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)
Re:Hitchhiker's Guide (Score:2)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game_nola
Enjoy!
Sweet! I'd never heard of that one. (Score:2)
A Runouni Kenshin Game Would Be Interesting (Score:2)
Re:A Runouni Kenshin Game Would Be Interesting (Score:2)
Logan's Run (Score:2)
Everyone's a game designer. (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Everyone's a game designer. (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Everyone's a game designer. (Score:2)
You're new here, aren't you?
(I'm sorry, it had to be done!)
Re:Fun games that can't be marketed. (Score:2)
Klonoa, FF X-2 I know very little about.
Re:Everyone's a game designer. (Score:2)
Re:Everyone's a game designer. (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Ender's Game (Score:2)
Re:Ender's Game (Score:2)
Re:Ender's Game (Score:2)
Re:Ender's Game (Score:2)
Great books do not always make great games.
Now a Logan's Run game could be cool.
You have to find your way out before your life clock starts flashing.
The other game I am waiting to see would be a western.
Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
Re:Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
Re:Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
Go to http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ [sourceforge.net] grab a copy, and you're welcome.
I've played through QfG 1 through 4 several times on dosbox.
Re:Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
Note: the opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of all women everywhere.
Re:Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
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
Re:Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
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
Re:Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
Re:Bring back the adventures! (Score:2)
I doubt XBox 360 will be any different. More of the same, with more chrome.
A few ideas (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A few ideas (Score:2)
It'll never happen, but: Big-O (Score:2)
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
Re:It'll never happen, but: Big-O (Score:2)
Re:It'll never happen, but: Big-O (Score:2)
Though I do think they explained some things with the last episodes -- Cartoon Network had an option for a third season after all.
I want to see (Score:2)
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
Games made from non-obvious sources (Score:2, Interesting)
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
Re:Games made from non-obvious sources (Score:2)
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.
A new challenge (Score:2, Funny)
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.
Re:A new challenge (Score:3, Funny)
Try getting women to sleep with you.
Re:Wow, you're an idiot (Score:2)
Not if the location and velocity of one ball affected the behaviour of the other.
Imagine a situation where the balls are on different tracks. One ball has to consistantly complete a simple circuit in a set time or faster. The other has to get from one end of the path to another. Everytime the ball falls of the path, the time needed to complete the circuit is reduced and a life is lost. If the time on the circuit isn't achieved, the path width is reduced in the maze and a life is lost. And thats just two bal
Re:Wow, you're an idiot (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, though, there's a game for PSP called Mercury, I think, where you're guiding an amount of mercury through a level, monkeyball style, but the blob can
Marines vs. Aliens (Score:2)
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.).
Re:Marines vs. Aliens (Score:2)
From the summary... (Score:3, Funny)
That's five words!
Re:From the summary... (Score:2)
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)
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.
SPOILER Re:Stupid writer (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Stupid writer (Score:2)
Re:Stupid writer (Score:2)
Shadowrun! (Score:2)
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
Re:Shadowrun! (Score:2)
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.
From a galaxy far far away. (Score:2)
as usual, PA is right on this (Score:3, Funny)
i think they're on to something
Re:as usual, PA is right on this (Score:2)
A lot of the time PA will talk about the subject of the cartoon on the news page, but nothing on this. They need to say exactly what problem they have with it.
Re:as usual, PA is right on this (Score:2)
Re:as usual, PA is right on this (Score:2)
i think they're just goofing on the idea that Will Wright is so revered that any concept he comes up with will be met with adjulation.
Total Annihilation (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Shadowrun or something cyberpunkish (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Shadowrun or something cyberpunkish (Score:2)
The Mystery (Score:2)
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
Re:The Mystery (Score:2)
Paranoia RPG! (Score:2, Interesting)
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!
Sim1984 (Score:2)
Re:Sim1984 (Score:2)
Nation Sim focusing on culture (Score:3, Interesting)
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 (Score:2)
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...
Re:Redshift Rendezvous (Score:2)
How about a MMOG based on "Surface Tension"? (Score:2)
The survivors manage to create microscopic humans that could successfully compete in a microscopic environment with various lo
Gi Joe? (Score:2, Interesting)
My Silly Ideas (Score:2)
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)
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.
Re:Ringworld (Score:2)
Re:Ringworld (Score:2)
I wasn't aware of that DOS game, but I found a review of it here: GameBytes issue 21 [ibiblio.org].
Actually, this is the sequel. You may have played the original.
Ringworld RPG (Score:2)
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
Re:Babylon 5 Online (Score:3, Informative)
Babylon 5 : I've Found Her [firstones.com]
project have done some marvelous work. Its in progress right now, but I had quite a bit of fun with the (free) prequel campaign. It is one of the few space fighter sims that seems to understand that momentum is conserved. They have both 'controlled' flight, where the corrections are made for you, and 'free' flight where you can gather enormous speeds.
Bab5 good, Culture better? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd want something comparatively similar to Halo - at least some missions on an Orbital (just for the awe-inspiring location), but you could also have plenty on planets, GSVs or even AirSpheres (how cool would that be? And technically *easy* since it's almsot entirely enpty air).
Antoher cool thing would be streaming level geometry, so you can have effectively unbounded levels.
One thing I remember reading about Halo when it was first mooted was the idea that there wouldn't be "levels" as such - instead the engine would stream landscape off the hard disk, bump-mapping and abstracting it to reduce level of detail (and so processor time) as it got further away (like GTA3, with a further-away horizon, or Black & White's "whole island zooms in to worm in apple" engine).
You could (I believe) relatively easily generate such a system using algorithmic modeling (like Spore) for terrain, with geometry and bitmapped textures only explicitely specified for set-piece areas and buildings dotted around the map. The feeling of freedom would immerse you more in the game than any number of in-engine cutscenes, even if you spent 90+% of your time moving between planned-out set-piece locations.
You could break the monotony by requiring the player to change location at points in the game (eg, to other Orbitals/planets/etc), but once on one you could travel anywhere within it without waiting for loading screens or encountering impassable barriers (except on the outer edges of Orbitals/Plates, obviously).
Of course, an bump-mapping engine that good would also allow you to fly diametrically across Orbitals, or land on planets from orbit, so it should then be relatively trivial to even allow for flight-based missions (using true physics, please - none of this "spaceships handle like atmospheric planes" crap).
Imagine foot-based missions on an Orbital, which end with you getting into a shuttle, flying up to an orbiting GSV and flying/dogfighting (a la Consider Phlebas) within its interior structure, all without stopping to load...
(Ok, GSVs would probably also have to have their geometry explicitely (rather than algorithmically) defined, but with the huge memory capacities of today's desktop PCs, I still can't see any show-stopping problems as long as the "transit from orbital-to-GSV" time was long enough to stream the GSV into memory first. Hell, spice it up with a dogfight or two on the way, and the user won't even notice the time).
Re:The Ring (Score:2)
Re:The Ring (Score:2)
Cholo (Score:2)
I particularly liked the ability to download and copy programs from robot to robot, solving puzzles with combinations of a utility provided by a specific program with the abilities of
Re:More heterogenous games (Score:2)
Holy carp, I forgot about that game. Of all the star wars games ever produced, that is probably the one I spent the most time playing. It seems so deceptively simple!
I have to find that CD now.
Re:Three Words (Score:2)
Re:Shadowrun: Agreed (Score:2)
Re:God of War is Original? (Score:2)