Video games that don’t suck
A month ago, I wrote about shooting games (LINK), and one of my complaints was that they were all the same. Actually, the problem is more severe: all mainstream [tag]video games[/tag] are the same nowadays.
It’s like the film industry, where everything [tag]Hollywood[/tag] puts out to theatres has the same generic love/revenge/random guy in a strange situation plot.
It’s like the [tag]music industry[/tag], which goes through phases that everyone tries to copy, and ends up ruining the genre. I’ve lived through pop and [tag]emo[/tag]. Metal’s probably coming next…
Anyway, back to the point I’m somewhat trying to make. You see, video games lack creativity. Here at ClashBang, we’re going to change that. Let’s all make up the plot of a video game that won’t suck!
Make a comment on this article!
This ClashBang.com article was written by Chris Chu. Tired of privately venting his frustration in vain, Chris decided to share his discontent with the rest of the world.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 14th, 2007 at 7:22 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
March 14th, 2007 at 7:26 pm
Well, first of all, the character will be a girl. OMG, you say, a GIRL!
Well, duh, how else do you expect the game to draw an audience?
Let’s make her smart, too. Give her an IQ of 200, and everytime you (the gamer) suck and can’t think of a solution to the puzzle, she’ll cross her arms and tap her feet impatiently. “Are you THERE yet”? She’ll ask. Then she goes to take a coffee break and tell you to let her know when you figured it out.
Now, we need a setting…
March 14th, 2007 at 10:50 pm
I’m bad at setting… but I think that one important thing is that you don’t need to waste time going from one place to another, and walking through empty fields, empty woods, empty hallways, or anything stupid like that. I think that, in order to do this, you either need to have the problems/situations/villains come to YOU, or we need the space to be a fictional “everywhere” … ya, maybe you want to go from the dessert to a boat, but that is easy. Because the boat is there when you need it.
March 15th, 2007 at 10:10 am
How about in the future? This way, you can work in teleporters without much questioning.
March 16th, 2007 at 8:33 am
The future sounds excellent. But we need the game to have a purpose. Our super-intelligent girl character needs a task to perform. Any ideas?
March 16th, 2007 at 11:01 am
How about turning the tables and rescuing a man?
March 16th, 2007 at 6:53 pm
zombie cheerleaders……
March 17th, 2007 at 12:50 am
What type of game is it going to be? Shooting? Clicking adventure? Text-based? Mind controlled?
March 17th, 2007 at 11:27 am
I thought we were trying to get rid of the same old genres that the video game industry has ruined… so why don’t we make it all of them? I can’t think of any new type that we could invent, but perhaps as our girl-hero moves through the game, she meets challenges that require her to shoot, talk to people, play mini-games, race fast vehicles, etc. Wouldn’t that work?
March 17th, 2007 at 9:23 pm
You have a point. What are some things that girls are good at? Maybe we can derive something from that.
March 18th, 2007 at 9:35 am
Well, if we are looking for things that girls are good at, then we probably SHOULDN’T let her drive. (oh. burn.) Unless we make her have to pass her driver’s test. … that should take half the game. (oh. another burn.) … what age is our girl? I mean, is she still in high school? Or is she going to be Zelda-esque and age throughout the game. I KNOW. She should start out as an elementary school kid, and one hour of game play = one year of her life. You have to beat the game before she dies. But I still don’t know how you beat the game, because we still don’t know what kind of game it is.
March 18th, 2007 at 11:34 am
Ouch.
Since we all seem to agree on some sort of progression and different elements within the same game, how about an adventure game?
There’s definitely pauses in the action, since you’re supposed to click around to find clues. There can be action sequences too. Also, the characters can age according to the duration of the game. Actually, I don’t think I’ve seen a game where the main character ages (apart from the Sims, which is more like a virtual dollhouse).
March 19th, 2007 at 8:57 am
You age in that crappy game for XBox… I don’t know if your appearence ages, though, or if it just tells you that you are now 54. But I don’t remember the name of that game. But I think our character should age, and yes, I think an adventure game sounds good. So… now we need an obstacle/villain.
March 19th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Will douchebags with popped collars be preying on women in the future too?
March 19th, 2007 at 9:55 pm
Oh, and the “crappy game for XBox” you mentioned is Fable, I believe. Scott has 2 copies.
March 20th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
I was, in fact, referring to Fable. Thank you for clarifying that. As for the douchebag villain, I am thinking that the douchebags with popped collars (and their hats on at quirky angles) should be the minions of the evil main villain. You know… when she is at the high school age of the game, there are people with popped collars who she has to get rid of. … which brings up another question: what are her fighting capabilities? I can’t really see her carrying around a gun or bow and arrow, but I also don’t really see a Simpson-esque sling slot or something sketchy like that. She could be skilled in self-defense, but she definitely needs something else…
March 20th, 2007 at 12:59 pm
I was, in fact, referring to Fable. Thanks.
As for the douchebag villains… I think we definitely need to have douchebags as the minions of the evil, main villain… but douchebags spend too much time looking in the mirror and worrying about their hair to actually formulate a plan for world domination. So we still need something better.
Also, she will need a weapon in order to fight. I don’t really see our girl running around with a rifle or a bow and arrow, but I also think that a Simpsons-esque sling shot doesn’t quite create the right effect either. She will obviously be skilled in self-defense, but she needs something else too. Any ideas?
March 21st, 2007 at 9:09 am
Pepper spray and a killer kick to the groin.
March 25th, 2007 at 10:48 pm
So, I’m going to take what we have here and make a new post based on it. We can take the comments to the new article once I write it :)
March 26th, 2007 at 10:40 am
Yay!
April 4th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
Hey Chris. You said that you were going to post this in a new post, and then you didn’t. So I have another idea… what about having real backgrounds (like, actual photographic places) and then have the character be a kind of Paper Mario cartoon girl. She would be hardcore. It would be a very impressive contrast. I got this idea from the commercial for the XBox 360 Guitar Hero 2.