A competition is cool, but I had an idea for a collaboration that we could get out pretty quickly, if we co-operated. It'd be a very simplistic graphical text adventure - you are Tim Langdell, and get to play through his life.
The game would play like this: A screen with a pretty picture, some text describing the situation at hand and then a choice you can make, and you get a new screen with a picture and some text describing the outcome of your choice. If you made the nicer, kinder choice, that's game over - sort of everybody is happy ending, but if you choose the less nicer choice, the game goes on to the next scenario.
Each scenario would be based on some assholery we know Langdell was behind.
For example, the game could play something like this:
First screen (Picture of Tim Langdell sitting behind a desk): The year is 1982. You are Tim Langdell, the editor of hardware/software reviews at the British computer magazine "Your Computer". You notice the quality of some of the games the kids send in aren't that bad at all. As a matter of fact, some of them could probably be sold commercially. Since these kids are 15-17, they wouldn't ask for much in royalties either....
What do you chose?
A) Rip these kids off! I'll make money off of their games and they'll be able to brag that they've got a game published. They won't see much money coming from it, but hey! I will.
B) Nah, I think I'll keep editing here at the magazine. I enjoy it. Besides, it would be unethical to steal these kids' games.
Quick dirty mock-up:
Option A would take you to the next screen that we also base on what we know of Langdell. If we can use his Wikipedia article against him like I did above, that's great, but we also have stuff like that interview Derek linked to on how he ripped off those guys who ported an arcade game to the Commodore, and then left for America. If you instead choose B, that's the end of the game, and everybody is happy. Langdell got a great career in video game journalism, the kids went on to sell their games to reputable companies and became big video game stars, bla bla.
So course of events could for example be
Rip off kids or not -> Develop interesting unique titles or licensed crap like "Garfield" and "Snoopy" (where the money arguably is) -> Rip off the Commodore guys and elope to the States or pay up -> sue Edge and steal their logo or not -> sue Namco or not -> write your own Wikipedia article or not -> lie your way onto the IGDA or not -> sue Edge or not -> THE END (Tim becomes the laughing stock of the entire industry and ends up impoverished on the streets of LA)
where for each decision, the good choice (the one real-life Langdell didn't make) brings you to a happy ending, while the bad brings you to the next step. Of course, the further you progress, the more rotten Langdell ends up, so we can't let him get away too lightly for past sins. You could get a "corrupted bastard" rating - kids like that stuff.
If there's a few of us, each person could do either one screen, or a set of screens (the introduction screen and one for each choice). The style of each screen or scenario could be completely different too, pixeled, painted, anything, that would just make it cooler. If there's anybody who'd volunteer to make a song that'd be cool too. I'd be happy to make one or more sets myself, organize it and make it into a flash game.
What do you think? Should I create a separate thread for this (am I hi-jacking?)? Are you interested? We could have an awesome game finished in practically a day or two.
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