I’m a
wannabe video
game designer. From time to time I come up with ideas that are on the brink of
plausibility. I’ve decided write one of my ideas up in the hope that a fellow noder is actually a
real games designer, and might actually make this game. In return I would promise to buy it when it’s on sale in my local
Electronics Boutique.
I got my inspiration from reading a story about Elvis. Apparently whenever he saw a show that annoyed him, he would shoot at his TV with his Magnum handgun. In this way Elvis wasted tens of televisions. I’m sure he got a lot of satisfaction from this… now that I have digital cable I often want to do it myself! I would like to re-create the delights of shooting at TVs but without the danger of imploding cathode ray tubes and firearms.
The objective of the game is simple… merely shoot people you don’t like on TV. The player(s) each have a light gun. This can be pointed at the TV, in the same way you might do if you were playing House of the Dead. The light gun is connected to some kind of console. This machine works out if the shot was on-target and assigns a “kill” to the player.
In this open-ended game, the player can shoot at whomever he or she wants. As a result of a well-aimed burst of shots, the user will be rewarded with an amusing blood-splatter effect. Also, the game would keep track of a head-count, effectively the number of celebrities that each player has virtually maimed.
I would like each console to be somehow linked into a central database. From this it would be possible to work out which celebrities or TV commercials are being shot at the most. In this way, the gaming public could send a signal to the TV and advertising executives to get off their butts and make better television.
I suppose you could also link this kind of game into a TiVo type video recorder. Shooting at something – particularly commercials gives the user a more satisfying way to register their distaste.
There are three absurdly big challenges that would need to be overcome before a game like this could ever be made:
Concerned parents might fear that this game might inspire another Columbine style high-school massacre.
The technology to recognise human body shapes on a TV screen in real-time is still outside the capability of today’s game consoles.
TV and advertising executives would probably be upset that their “masterpieces” were being shot at.
I think the chances of anybody making a game like this within the next five years are very slim – still I shall live in hope.