Game Ideas (Plausible and Not)
by Brian Thompson · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 01/30/2007 (3:47 pm) · 6 replies
While I'm waffling on my game creation, I've come up with a few random ideas. Perhaps something from one of these might make it into my game, but right now its just a creativity exercise.
Lego MMO: Legos do one thing really good - stack together. They also swap parts pretty conveniently, which allows players to customize their lego persona in a manner that fits well with the environment. There would be some elements of combat, as well as puzzle solving. The world would be semi-malleable. Communal property would have lots of destructable elements such as trees and inconsequential structures, property "owned" by the player would be able to be modified by the player alone, and guild property would be controlled by whomever runs the joint. While in-game currency would exist, the true trade would be in lego pieces - bricks, parts, etc. A small simple shack might cost $20,000 in-game, but a fancy shack could cost $500,000, and a palace might cost $10,000,000 - not to mention land value.
GTA-Paintball-Coloring - You live in a world of black and white outlined shapes, fully 3D. Armed with a specialized paint cannon, your job is to explore the world and recolor it. The game begins with the hero being armed with only one color (lets say red for the time being), and as you explore the world, you can leave your red mark on the objects. Gradually, you gain more colors, but at the cost of the world becoming more dangerous - as the player unlocks colors, enemies vulnerable to those colors are also unlocked. The game ends when the player has restored all the colors to the world.
Factory Simulation - Think of this as "Sim Factory". The player is in charge of manufacturing objects. Different objects have different requirements for workers and equipment, different demands by the public, and different average retail values. Higher quality items are worth more, but lower value items can be made quicker. Players can also choose between hiring various laborers, machines and automation, as well as transport systems, all while being able to control the layout of their production floor. In addition, various disasters might appear - mechanical breakdown, electrical fires, worker labor strikes, etc. that the player must deal with in order to become successful.
Lego MMO: Legos do one thing really good - stack together. They also swap parts pretty conveniently, which allows players to customize their lego persona in a manner that fits well with the environment. There would be some elements of combat, as well as puzzle solving. The world would be semi-malleable. Communal property would have lots of destructable elements such as trees and inconsequential structures, property "owned" by the player would be able to be modified by the player alone, and guild property would be controlled by whomever runs the joint. While in-game currency would exist, the true trade would be in lego pieces - bricks, parts, etc. A small simple shack might cost $20,000 in-game, but a fancy shack could cost $500,000, and a palace might cost $10,000,000 - not to mention land value.
GTA-Paintball-Coloring - You live in a world of black and white outlined shapes, fully 3D. Armed with a specialized paint cannon, your job is to explore the world and recolor it. The game begins with the hero being armed with only one color (lets say red for the time being), and as you explore the world, you can leave your red mark on the objects. Gradually, you gain more colors, but at the cost of the world becoming more dangerous - as the player unlocks colors, enemies vulnerable to those colors are also unlocked. The game ends when the player has restored all the colors to the world.
Factory Simulation - Think of this as "Sim Factory". The player is in charge of manufacturing objects. Different objects have different requirements for workers and equipment, different demands by the public, and different average retail values. Higher quality items are worth more, but lower value items can be made quicker. Players can also choose between hiring various laborers, machines and automation, as well as transport systems, all while being able to control the layout of their production floor. In addition, various disasters might appear - mechanical breakdown, electrical fires, worker labor strikes, etc. that the player must deal with in order to become successful.
#2
Im not really interested in doing MMO games, so the Lego game wouldn't appeal to me as a designer, but I definitely think it has potential for being a non-combat-centric MMO game design.
The biggest draw, to me, is the second game. It has a sort of open-endedness quality that games like Zelda and GTA possess, combined with giving the player the power to watch their actions effect the landscape.
Anyhow, thanks for your input on the lego game Mare. :-D
01/30/2007 (6:05 pm)
Right. These ideas aren't necessarily feasible. As for the factory simulation, its no less boring in my opinion than Railroad Tycoon - a commercial game.Im not really interested in doing MMO games, so the Lego game wouldn't appeal to me as a designer, but I definitely think it has potential for being a non-combat-centric MMO game design.
The biggest draw, to me, is the second game. It has a sort of open-endedness quality that games like Zelda and GTA possess, combined with giving the player the power to watch their actions effect the landscape.
Anyhow, thanks for your input on the lego game Mare. :-D
#3
01/31/2007 (10:09 am)
I think the idea of colors is interesting, I just don't play FPSes so I don't really have anything to say about an FPS concept. Re-coloring the world seems like it would make a great Yoshi-esque platformer or Katamari Damacy-type game though, so it might make a good FPS too.
#4
01/31/2007 (8:49 pm)
Im not suggesting a FPS. Im really suggesting something like a 3D platformer. More akin to Katamari than Quake... 
#6
02/06/2007 (3:08 am)
Factory Simulation sounds like something I wrote for a university a few years ago - each player had a 'factory' or chemical plant which they initially specified the size of the reactor (which determined optimum production rates and a few other things), they then had to specify each year / period how much they would produce and their selling price for the product. They would then compete for the market - lowest selling price would get most of the market that year (thereabouts) and try to maximise profits over an 'x' year period. Storage of unsold product also was a cost to factor in, and the size of the market varied from year to year. If a factory went bust then all its inventory was put on the market for a really low price - which could impact on the profits of everyone else following it. While the game was designed as being competitive there was nothing stopping the players from colluding and performing a bit of 'price fixing'.
Mare Kuntz