Andrew Tepper, eGenesis

The range of experiences presented in current games is too narrow.  We hope to address this problem by providing examples of games that encompass a diverse and unusual range of emotions.  We started by making a list of emotions outside the common range of violence/fear/aggression.  Then we chose a dozen or so and brainstormed ideas for games that would evoke that emotion in the player.  (In a few cases we also found examples of board games or computer games that already exist.)  In addition, we made a short list of Games That "Shouldn't" Be Made.  Our view of course is that controversial art is good for society, so they really should be.  So these simply serve as more extreme examples of ideas to push our colleagues outside of their complacent sequel-making grind.

Having gone through this process, I would also say this makes a great exercise both for stretching the creative muscles, and to get a new team on the same wavelength, practicing how they can best bounce ideas off each other and develop them into something fun.  On that grounds alone, I would recommend that game companies consider this kind of "blue sky" or "impose unusual limits and see what ideas the team can come up with" exercise.  But we were surprised to find out that, while not expecting to, we also turned up a number of ideas that seemed very viable as actual products or game mechanics to use within our products!  It's also a very refreshing break from months or years of thinking within the same narrow grooves of a typical product development cycle.  Feel free to grab our list as a starting point, have the team make up their own, or come up with some even more off-the-wall category.  Try games based on different principle of physics (easy), or on certain kinds of sounds (trickier), or specific tastes and smells! (are you kidding me?)  The possibilities are endless, and the places they'll lead you to are surprising.  Placing arbitrary limits on a process has long been known to be a powerful stimulant to the creative process.

Olivier, Cat, and Andrew will attempt to build versions of Father Christmas, Truth or Dare, and Real Time Democracy.  All the other game ideas that aren't picked up by other Project Horseshoe participants will be released on the Internet as public domain for anyone who wishes to make them, along with a copy of the report to inspire developers to think more broadly.  Any of the game ideas that haven't been used for anything within one year will be released to the public domain as well.

In our initial brainstorming session, we came up with the following list of emotions that we felt were a bit different than the ones most commonly evoked by existing games.  Some of the ones that were similar or have a lot of overlap were grouped together:

Guilt / Nurturing
Ego
Love
Jealousy / Envy
Generosity
Pride
Suspicion
Schadenfreude
Frustration / Masochism
Fiero
Homesickness / Nostalgia
Lust
Greed
Inspiration / Hope
Despair / Hopelessness / *Cynicism
Skepticism
Embarrassment / Shame
Compassion
Calm / Relaxation / Peace of Mind / Enlightenment
Sadism
Attention-seeking / Recognition - Acceptance - Acknowledgement

Once we had this initial list, we went through to pick out one of interest, brainstormed the outline of a game design based on it, then returned repeatedly to the list to pick another.  Here's what we ended up with.

            Father Christmas.  You're giving gifts to children all over the world.  As the game progresses, you have the opportunity to make and give away more gifts each time, if you want to.  But the more gifts you want to make, the more time you have to spend clicking controls and managing the elves scurrying around the toy assembly lines in Santa's Workshop.

            Other ideas: The Ebeneezer Scrooge game.  Philanthropist: allocate your money between different poor people and charities - the more you spend, the less you have available to grow your business, buy yourself luxury items, etc.

            Existing examples: Ultima IV

            The Prince!  Play the role of a Machiavellian leader who must keep up the appearance of a democratic process.  Put in puppet candidates to split the opposition vote!  Keep your popularity high while managing the budget and manipulating people so you can win again in the next election.  Figure out what promises you need to make to groups with conflicting goals, and how to deal with them when you can't always do what everyone wants.  Learn the laws and manipulate the system!

            Other ideas: The Gerrymandering game.  (Our politicians play this one in Texas - do yours?)  Giving players storyline expectations, and then letting them down.  Players getting gadgets that are unreliable - especially if they fail to work right when you need them most.  NPC political candidates you support that then don't do what you wanted them to do.

            Existing examples: One of our team members pointed out that many racing games, such as Mario Kart, made him feel cynical.  This is because they give advantages to whoever is in last place, and disadvantages to whoever is winning, to keep the race more "interesting".  Perhaps this questioning of the true nature of our simulated realities is a healthy thing, if it reminds us to question our assumptions about our "real" reality we live in.  (It is real, right?)

            Ten Catty Bitches!  The sorority game.  Watch bad stuff happen to the other girls (and to you too).  Your goal is to get the best husband!  Watch dates go hideously wrong, while hoping yours go better.  Or pursue the alternative victory condition, and try to finish your actual degree!  Sabotage the dates of your rivals!

            Alternative version: Make it multiplayer, and allow male Fraternity boy characters too.  Add a "Hazing" round for the male players.  Players can be honest about whether they're putting their time and effort into actually graduating, or just dating and partying all the time...  Or they can lie to each other, and try to find a husband/wife with good grades who will support them after college.  Careful though, if two dropouts trick each other and get together, they both lose out!

            Grandpa's world.  An RPG where everything is like grandpa says it was in his day.  Walking to school is uphill both ways, and your television is books!  Get people used to seeing the world from a very different point of view, and show how that alternate setting is one that people would have fond memories of too.

            Other ideas: Make a "classic" fantasy RPG where most of the good, fun stuff to do is in the town, the forests and dungeons and caves are harsh and make you wish you were back in town again.  The Mayberry game.  An exploring game where you can view and contact your home town through a magic orb, having contact with family, friends, pets, loved ones back home while you adventure - with goals that tie back to there (marry childhood sweetheart, send money back home to family, find a cure for someone sick, etc.)

            Truth or Dare - the webcam version!  You alternate dare rounds and truth rounds.  In the Dare round, everybody has to perform the same Dare in front of their webcam, where all the other players can see.  After the Truth round, if other players vote your answer the least sincerity points, your last Dare round video is automatically uploaded onto YouTube!

            Other ideas: The "trying not to fart in an elevator" minigame.  The Naked in a Hotel, trying to sneak back to your room game.  (Maybe when you get there, your door is locked - time for level 2!)

          Taxation.  You're running a kingdom, and you need Gold for building, feeding and equipping troops (and occasionally hiring mercenaries) to defend against rivals or to go invade them.  Not to mention throwing lavish parties to persuade more Dukes and Barons to join you!  But that money has to come from somewhere...  Decide how fast to tax the peasants.  Squeeze a little more money out of them and you can have that nice tapestry or that jeweled scepter you always wanted.  Tax them too much, and they starve to death!

            Other ideas: Dividing the Cake: Meet different NPCs, they react to you based on how you  have split cake with others in previous rounds.  "Doormat" NPC is always generous no matter what.  Selfish NPCs always suspect you, some people value frosting or corner pieces more.  Fisherman: You need fish to eat, and can sell extras for money, but there's only so many fish in the sea & other players need them too.  Oil Barons: Two or more players often get access to the same oil deposits - pumping slower makes it produce more overall before it's exhausted, but pumping faster can let YOU get more of a share of it than the others!  Factory: the global warming game.  The more you produce, the more money you make - but the more carbon emissions you make too.

            Existing examples: Many, including almost every RPG ever made.  But hopefully our ideas take a different slant on greed than most games, which just totally indulge it with little or no consequences.  (Though see again, games like Ultima IV.)

            Unlike the others, we didn't come up with much of an idea for this one, and just decided to move on to the next subject instead.  But I promise you, we feel really bad about that.

            Existing Examples: Most virtual pet games - Tamagotchi. Nintendogs. Animal Crossing.  Neopets.

            Real Time Democracy.  On the face of it, this game is an attempt to model a political system in a virtual world, seeking to find ways to get more people involved and come up with a system that works better.  But if it works out well, it could conceivably help us learn ways to improve our real life political systems and governments.  What could be more hopeful than that?

            Other ideas: Games that tie into a real world political campaign.  The Jackie Gleason game - he is the Icon of Hope.  (Or in more modern times, Pinky and the Brain.)  You try scheme after scheme to make more money.  Your cheerful but incompetent buddy keeps screwing things up, and you have to try again!  (Maybe this could go under "Frustration", depending on the slant you give it.)

            Existing examples: A Tale in the Desert (Thanks Andrew!), Asheron's Call.

            For the sake of keeping Project Horseshoe out of trouble with the Communications Decency Act (not to mention various other acts, some of which can't be mentioned here either), we're leaving out the idea we came up with for this category.  I'll just say that our second idea here was called "Cold Shower!", and leave it at that.

            Existing examples: Crossword Puzzles

   The Trading Game.  Everybody gets various commodities, but each has limited information about the true value of them all.  Wheel and deal, share info or mislead the other players by trying to buy lots of cheap junk early!  Each round, every player gets additional information, including news stories and tips from their inside sources, indicating which items are likely to go up or down in price.

            Existing examples: Paranoia, Werewolf, Clue, Under Cover, Acquire, Diplomacy, Poker

            Villagers.  Players are divided into small "sharded" village groups.  Everybody has a different job that matters to all the other players, so they can be best at their own thing, and what they does will matter to others - from mayor to cook to carpenter.  Random events occur that will focus on different members of the community at different times.  A drought focuses attention on the farmer, visiting dignitaries come see the mayor at a public reception, after a tornado the carpenter and everyone else involved in rebuilding houses are key.

            Other ideas: Virtual Ball - Take any goal-scoring sport (soccer, hockey, rollerball), and each team has a randomly designated member assigned as the only one who's allowed to score.  Every few minutes, this role switches at random!  Karaoke, with each contestant broadcast on the giant screen in Times Square.  Griefer: the game! - NPCs are programmed to simulate the behavior of human players in an online RPG.  You go around trying to irritate them as much as possible.  The more points you score, the more imaginatively they cuss at you.

            Existing examples:  Puzzle Pirates, YouTube

            Prison Escape.  This is a graphic adventure where you start in a jail cell (awaiting a death sentence for a crime you didn't commit, of course) and manage to find a way out.  Another prisoner accompanies you, and always has optimistic ideas or expectations that always turn out to be wrong.  Still, if you work hard the whole game through, all the dead ends and disappointments, you can get through all the corridors and guards and stairways to a doorway that leads to the outside.  Only to find out you weren't really in a building as you thought all along, but on a prison ship.  Which is sinking.  And on fire.  And there are no lifeboats.  The game ends there.

            Other Ideas: Dig Your Own Grave! - Big rocks get in the way of your shovel, to make things more difficult.  Cool Hand Luke - a southern chain gang game, with sadistic guards.  An online game where two (or more) people are dependent on each other and have to cooperate to succeed, but they are deliberately given very limited and mostly ineffectual means to communicate with each other (a few strange hand gestures, scrambled text chat, etc.)  The tasks they have to complete come with fairly short time limits.

            Shock the Rat!   This is a fairly typical pinball game, except that the left flipper button also shocks a rat. Alternately there's a casino with a floor of identical slot machines, but one also shocks the rat.

            At this point, we stopped thinking up more game ideas, for the sake of mankind and the world's overall well-being.

In closing, here's a list of some of the most controversial, offensive, "dangerous", rude, crude, lewd, or just plain obnoxious subjects we could think of.  Needless to say, though we spent only a little time on it, this was one of the most fun parts of the exercise.  Doing what you're "not supposed to do" is always fun, as any kid knows!

Beyond that, however, we feel that one of the important roles of art and entertainment is to stimulate people's minds and get them to think.  Both thinking about new things, and thinking about old things in new ways.  Controversial issues are one of the most important kinds of things for people to think about in a society - grappling with the difficult and divisive issues is how we make forward progress.  When art chooses these issues as a subject it's making you think about, often the art itself becomes controversial.  Computer games should embrace this mission as fully as the non-interactive arts have.  Perhaps more so, as they give people an option to pretend to experiment with different choices rather than just looking, reading, watching, or thinking about what someone else did.

Some controversial works become revered by later generations, such as Huckleberry Finn.  Others are just remembered for their capacity to offend, such as "Piss Christ", or simply baffle people, like Andy Warhol and his tomato soup cans.  But they all make people think.  Which, as more of the world moves into the information age, has become an increasingly desired skill!

Our own field has recently produced such fare as the Super Columbine Massacre RPG.  Though it generated a lot of interest and a number of reviews on the internet, the Sundance film festival removed it from their juried independent games competition, prompting several other entrants to withdraw in protest.  Regrettably, many people still have a low enough opinion of computer gaming as a medium that negative subject matter is automatically viewed as making a game "reprehensible".  While we might explore ideas about everything from nazis to Hannibal Lector in books, movies, paintings, etc. people haven't gotten used to games being used to be thought provoking, meaningful, or artistic.  Thankfully some recent titles are taking on these subjects in interesting ways, which we hope will lead our medium to progress.

With that said, here's some ideas that, handled tastelessly enough, could set us back twenty years!  On the other hand, if done with an eye towards challenging people's assumptions and making them think, maybe you could turn almost any of these into a meaningful work of art.  There's another good mental challenge we leave you to think about - could you do it?

    MMO set in the deep south.  Different subscription fees are charged for a slave (lower) or to play a plantation owner (higher).  Slaves try to escape, owner tries to make as much money as possible on cotton.  Play as a sheriff and hunt down escaped slaves, earn a reward for each one captured.  Masters get to play "The Sims" with mansion decorating.

   Virtual Rapist.

   The John Denver game.

   Pimpin' Tycoon.  Recruit more girls and see how big a financial empire you can build!

   Sim-Holocaust

   Casino Camper - You live in Monaco in the 1800s, where they stuffed the pockets of suicide victims with money to preserve the casinos reputation.  (This is a real historical fact - the casino wanted people to think someone was well off but unlucky at love, perhaps.  Not that they lost all their money gambling and killed themselves because of that.)  You stalk people, kill them, leave them on the beach, wait for the money, then steal it before the police arrive!

   Dorm Roommates - Jock, Geek, etc. are your roommates.  Get them to commit suicide and you get a bigger bed, and automatic A's for the semester!

  The priest, the pedophile, the nazi, and the cannibal.  (For the "politically correct" version, we replace the priest with a hooker.)

  Terrorism!  Use Google maps to find target.  Or an old-school adventure game.  "You are in a room.  You see innocent civilians here."

  Game about being old.  Watch your Toilet Meter, game randomly change locations of objects you use & need.

  Town Drunk - the Game!

  Drunk Driving! Driving game with blurred vision, lack of control.

  Sim-Jerusalem.  "Jesus died for our Sims."  Earn the bonus round, and you can pound the nails through his flesh yourself! (Advertising Slogan: "Hey, Somebody Had to Do It!")

  Mr. Potato Muhammad (No images of the Prophet are allowed?  We'll see about that!)

section 5

next section

select a section:
1. Introduction  2. Speakers  3. Executive Summary  
4. FabulaRasa: Story in Games
5. Games that Encompass a Diverse and Unusual Range of Emotions
6. Interactive Natural Language Artistic Experiences
7. Professionalizing Game Design
8. Schedule & Sponsors