Cliffy B Gets Emotional

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hal

hal

Dictator
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This year's Game Design Challenge at the Game Developer's Conference featured three contestants who were charged with creating a game with an unusual theme. Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski was among the three chosen, who pitched an idea for a first person "empathy game".

Bleszinski spoke next, presenting his idea for a first-person "empathy game" that places the player in the role of a father. The goal is to keep your family alive and intact, and to "stay physically and emotionally close to your family." Bleszinski claimed, "Our medium has the power to make people think twice about anything."

Bleszinski further proposed that the UN could require world leaders to spend time on the simulation, in order to prevent leaders from detaching themselves from the full implications of their decisions. He imagined that there could be different versions for specific regions and races, and even suggested that the leaders publish their "scores" for accountability. Gamespot has all of the details.
 
ShakeZula

ShakeZula

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Bleszinski spoke next, presenting his idea for a first-person "empathy game" that places the player in the role of a father. The goal is to keep your family alive and intact, and to "stay physically and emotionally close to your family." Bleszinski claimed, "Our medium has the power to make people think twice about anything."

Bleszinski further proposed that the UN could require world leaders to spend time on the simulation, in order to prevent leaders from detaching themselves from the full implications of their decisions. He imagined that there could be different versions for specific regions and races, and even suggested that the leaders publish their "scores" for accountability.
Click to expand...
...
 
TomWithTheWeather

TomWithTheWeather

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When your job is Lead Game Designer, you come up with games based on anything that pops into your head. Shoot, a guy I work with was talking about a game where you are a squirrel and you collect nuts and stuff. The gameplay would be very sandbox-ish like GTA or Oblivion, but kid friendly obviously. He said he had the idea when he saw a squirrel running through the yard as he was leaving for work.

Someone like Cliff has to stay open to all sorts of ideas. You could literally make a game out of anything.

Bleszinski spoke next, presenting his idea for a first-person "empathy game" that places the player in the role of a father. The goal is to keep your family alive and intact, and to "stay physically and emotionally close to your family." Bleszinski claimed, "Our medium has the power to make people think twice about anything.
Click to expand...
How far off is this to the Sims? Not very. It digs deeper into the family part of the game instead of the household part. :)

Bleszinski further proposed that the UN could require world leaders to spend time on the simulation, in order to prevent leaders from detaching themselves from the full implications of their decisions. He imagined that there could be different versions for specific regions and races, and even suggested that the leaders publish their "scores" for accountability.
Click to expand...
This part is brilliant. How many of you would like to see Bush have to run his possible decisions through the UN before actually making them? We might be bombing less countries. ;)
 
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D

DeathBooger

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TomWithTheWeather said:
Shoot, a guy I work with was talking about a game where you are a squirrel and you collect nuts and stuff. The gameplay would be very sandbox-ish like GTA or Oblivion, but kid friendly obviously. He said he had the idea when he saw a squirrel running through the yard as he was leaving for work.
Click to expand...

That was already done, it was called Conker's Bad Fur Day, and it was awesome.

Cliffy just needs to make another green rabbit game and stop being a philosopher.
 
Flytag

Flytag

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Jul 12, 2004
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actually if anyone knows of the Princess Maker series, they will know that what CliffyB's talking about has already been done in terms of a single member at least... if someone were to make a new innovative game, I would like to see an isometric third person persective game! with diablo-esqe random dungeons for replay value.... have variable intergers, like var1 is "retrieve from", "discard at", "gather around" etc. and var2 would have a subject, like entries like var3 could have places "dungeon", "cave" "fields", etc.

<variable> could be like diablo prefixes, such as "The elder" or "the godly", each containing it's own variables in rewards <experience, gold, etc>

var1: "verb"
-gather <congregate multiple units of..>
-retrieve
-discard
-etc.

var2: "subject"
-the <variable> ninja(s)
-the <variable> crystal(s)
-the <variable> scroll(s)
-etc.

var3: "location"
-the cave
-the the grasslands
-the prison
-etc.

Quest Received:
-Take the ninja to the prison (3251 XP, 1478 Gold)

each variable would have it's own experience reward, and upon completion the total sum of exp points is yours. I mean, my idea is very vague, but I assume that if you play games, you can understand that it isn't impossible to do this.

of course I'll probably get critiqued to high hell, and I don't plan on defending myself because I don't have the patience to argue points in detail, but I don't think it's a bad idea, and it would show a lot of linear games how versatile a game can be in interms of replay value. Combine this with a style of versatility like diablo, fallout, or oblivion, and I think it would catch people's attention. Include the normal, nightmare, hell difficulty settings which diablo seemed to accomplish pretty well, and people could be playing it endlessly. Oh, and no level cap...

even if it was set up lilke UTRPG it would definately stand out to ao many games which focus on graphics these days at the expense of replay value.
 
D

DeathBooger

Malcolm's Sugar Daddy
Sep 16, 2004
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Flytag said:
actually if anyone knows of the Princess Maker series, they will know that what CliffyB's talking about has already been done in terms of a single member at least... if someone were to make a new innovative game, I would like to see an isometric third person persective game! with diablo-esqe random dungeons for replay value.... have variable intergers, like var1 is "retrieve from", "discard at", "gather around" etc. and var2 would have a subject, like entries like var3 could have places "dungeon", "cave" "fields", etc.

<variable> could be like diablo prefixes, such as "The elder" or "the godly", each containing it's own variables in rewards <experience, gold, etc>

var1: "verb"
-gather <congregate multiple units of..>
-retrieve
-discard
-etc.

var2: "subject"
-the <variable> ninja(s)
-the <variable> crystal(s)
-the <variable> scroll(s)
-etc.

var3: "location"
-the cave
-the the grasslands
-the prison
-etc.

Quest Received:
-Take the ninja to the prison (3251 XP, 1478 Gold)

each variable would have it's own experience reward, and upon completion the total sum of exp points is yours. I mean, my idea is very vague, but I assume that if you play games, you can understand that it isn't impossible to do this.

of course I'll probably get critiqued to high hell, and I don't plan on defending myself because I don't have the patience to argue points in detail, but I don't think it's a bad idea, and it would show a lot of linear games how versatile a game can be in interms of replay value. Combine this with a style of versatility like diablo, fallout, or oblivion, and I think it would catch people's attention. Include the normal, nightmare, hell difficulty settings which diablo seemed to accomplish pretty well, and people could be playing it endlessly. Oh, and no level cap...

even if it was set up lilke UTRPG it would definately stand out to ao many games which focus on graphics these days at the expense of replay value.
Click to expand...

This doesn't vary gameplay, it just increases it's length. It'll get boring sooner or later. Even if you have thousands of variables, you're still pushing the same buttons to do the different, but in the long run the same, tasks. Interaction has replay value, not tasks, that is why online shooters are successful. Also, what you described is still linear, it has a beginning and and end. Even if it has multiple endings, your still going from point A to one of the many point B's, and that's the definition of linear.
 
shoptroll

shoptroll

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Jan 21, 2004
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For those unaware of the context for this part of the conference, this is a now annual panel session where they take 3 designers and give them an off the wall (although inspired by current events) topic to design a game around. The first year was love, last year was the Emily Dickenson license, and this year was a Nobel prize winning game.

These games are usually "out there" mostly since this is a very free-form thing and I don't think there's a whole lot of constraints placed on them (other than using current hardware limitations). Last year Will Wright picked up his second win for a "Bonzai Buddy"-like version of Emily Dickenson that would be included on thumbdrives as the distribution mechanism.
 
Phopojijo

Phopojijo

A Loose Screw
Nov 13, 2005
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hal said:
This year's Game Design Challenge at the Game Developer's Conference featured three contestants who were charged with creating a game with an unusual theme. Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski was among the three chosen, who pitched an idea for a first person "empathy game".

Bleszinski spoke next, presenting his idea for a first-person "empathy game" that places the player in the role of a father. The goal is to keep your family alive and intact, and to "stay physically and emotionally close to your family." Bleszinski claimed, "Our medium has the power to make people think twice about anything."

Bleszinski further proposed that the UN could require world leaders to spend time on the simulation, in order to prevent leaders from detaching themselves from the full implications of their decisions. He imagined that there could be different versions for specific regions and races, and even suggested that the leaders publish their "scores" for accountability. Gamespot has all of the details.
Click to expand...
Been done; unless he means without cameo sex scenes.
 
ImaCarrot

ImaCarrot

Professional Level Designer
Aug 30, 2005
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hoot, a guy I work with was talking about a game where you are a squirrel and you collect nuts and stuff.
Click to expand...

Hmm, I designed levels for a game where that was basically what you did. Same company perhaps?

I was actually a little disappointed with Cliff's design, props for coming up with something though. Trying to come up with a design for a game that could win the Nobel peach prize in your free time while doing design work for Gears of War must have been a big challenge.

Carrot
 
Emjoi

Emjoi

New Member
Dec 27, 1999
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Well daft ideas are fun in as a generality. We all come up with those.
The tough bit comes in converting the daft stuff into a practical playable game.

Maybe after a few passes thru some design sessions, it would evolve into another shooter... Dad gets a Flak Cannon.
 
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