Video Game Idea #1: Shopping For Destruction

[Arnox]

A long time ago, a game from Pandemic came out for the original Xbox and PS2 called Mercenaries. Some of you may remember it. It was a game about playing as a freelance mercenary in war-torn North Korea. It was pretty much GTA: Military Edition. Now, it was a great game but the one thing that made it really take off was the Merchant of Menace. Basically, you carried around a PDA with you wherever you went that could access this black market website to order anything from weapons to vehicles to full-blown airstrikes. It worked wonderfully and there was a lot of cool items you could unlock and order down at most any time in the game.

Unfortunately, ever since this game came out, there hasn't been anything that's done this idea very well. Just Cause 2 didn't have airstrikes and things in it cost a huge ton of money and took a bit to order. Red Faction Guerilla fulfilled the awesome destructive aspects of Mercenaries amazingly but it completely lacked any sort of an on-demand shop you could order from. And finally, the sequel to Mercenaries was a broken glitchy mess with a huge amount of problems, technical and gameplay wise that were never fixed.

So where am I going with all this? Well, we need another game like Mercenaries. Not Mercenaries 1.5 mind you, but like Mercenaries. And what game would that be? A sandbox set in the Matrix universe. It pretty much writes itself at this point. You call your operator to order stuff, you can fight with both melee and weapons, you have the whole world to work with in terms of locales, and you have all the vehicles and all the weapons in real life to work with plus the police, military, and Agents as antagonists...

However, ideas are a dime a dozen in the industry. As Ken Levine once said,

A great idea is meaningless. A great idea that leverages your existing technology, gets the team excited, is feasible to do on time and budget, is commercially competitive, and, last but not least, floats the boat of a major publisher... Now you have something.

So, does it:

Leverage our existing technology? Absolutely. Past games such as Mercenaries and Max Payne have already laid down most of the groundwork for the gameplay.

Gets the team excited? If you're not interested in summoning a Ferrari and then ramming it into three other cars and a building and then jumping off epically to shoot an RPG at yet another car in slo-mo just as a quick example, I don't know what will get you excited.

Is feasible to do on time and budget? This one may be the most questionable of the lot but I definitely believe it could be done properly with the right team, a decent budget, and about 3 years.

Is commercially competitive? Well, it would combine a mass of amazing ideas into one game and has the potential for hosting some amazing engine technology so I'd definitely say so.

Floats the boat of a major publisher? You guys remember GTA 5? One of the best selling video games of all time? If that can sell, this game will, guaranteed.

So there you have it. So will we ever see anyone make this idea a reality? Maybe. But probably not. Matrix games have never really sold very well (even though that has nothing to do with the game concepts themselves but rather their execution) so that will probably deter a lot of publishers from touching the concept. However, there are still some publishers out there that are willing to take risks so we may still definitely see this happening. If it does though, you can be sure I'll be throwing my money at a retailer as fast as I can so I can play that crap.

[peskybear]

Fuckin loved Mercenaries. Never played the second one but it sounds like I didn't miss anything by not. Maybe the Matrix stuff could be tweaked so that it's a Matrix-like world? It might seem like a safer investment for publishers if it had those elements that would lend itself well to the type of game described, but not necessarily outright 'The Matrix'...

[Idiosyncrasy]

Which publisher did you get?

[Σ]

Interesting idea except for the whole make it in the matrix universe spin on it. I must admit I come from the Just Cause 2/GTA V camp and haven't played Mercenaries but I think I see the general idea you are trying to get at. What I would really like to see is a video game is something like this.

I would start with a character creator. Essentially give the player free reign on character design while keeping the player at an even footing with any potential starting AI. Inputs and variables for the creation of a character would be things like interests, abilities, look, occupation, geographic location some preset background information and socioeconomic information. Very D&D style really.
After the player creates a character the game compiles a life for them so to speak.

The game starts off with you waking up one day. You then go about the day completing whatever tasks you want to complete. For example, the game would generate a workplace depending on the information you put in the creator. You can go to work and make money. The thing about this is the game would place you in a job you want. You could be a store clerk or a drug dealer or a tycoon of some sort. You can take any job you want or not even have a job at all. There would also be characters you can talk to about various lucrative opportunities. These could range from someone wanting you to smuggle weapons to taking up a paper route.

As you continue in the game you are able to meet contacts and build yourself up. If you want you can go to work as a spy in some government agency, or a cartel member. Maybe you would like to become a freedom fighter for an African warlord or become an African warlord. Or you just want a small apartment where you can make good money selling pot. The game would have an extensive market system that would range from going to the corner store to ordering stuff off the web. Various items would need to be obtained through various means.

[splooge gook]

But make it sorta like Mercenaries

[starvingniglet]

mercenaries 2 fucking kicked ass

I bought the game but lost the fucking rulebook with the product key on it

and got a new pc

so I have the disc but can't play it

its bullshit

I guess I will have to illegally download it

[Arnox]

Interesting idea except for the whole make it in the matrix universe spin on it. I must admit I come from the Just Cause 2/GTA V camp and haven't played Mercenaries but I think I see the general idea you are trying to get at. What I would really like to see is a video game is something like this.

I would start with a character creator. Essentially give the player free reign on character design while keeping the player at an even footing with any potential starting AI. Inputs and variables for the creation of a character would be things like interests, abilities, look, occupation, geographic location some preset background information and socioeconomic information. Very D&D style really.
After the player creates a character the game compiles a life for them so to speak.

The game starts off with you waking up one day. You then go about the day completing whatever tasks you want to complete. For example, the game would generate a workplace depending on the information you put in the creator. You can go to work and make money. The thing about this is the game would place you in a job you want. You could be a store clerk or a drug dealer or a tycoon of some sort. You can take any job you want or not even have a job at all. There would also be characters you can talk to about various lucrative opportunities. These could range from someone wanting you to smuggle weapons to taking up a paper route.

As you continue in the game you are able to meet contacts and build yourself up. If you want you can go to work as a spy in some government agency, or a cartel member. Maybe you would like to become a freedom fighter for an African warlord or become an African warlord. Or you just want a small apartment where you can make good money selling pot. The game would have an extensive market system that would range from going to the corner store to ordering stuff off the web. Various items would need to be obtained through various means.

Looks like you're talking about a full realism simulator. Unfortunately, it would take way too much work to do. In order to have it completely realistic, SO MANY things would need to be developed and it may very well be too hardware intensive to actually work on someone's machine. It would be awesome but it's just not feasible.