In the Bullshit! episode on video games, there's an exchange something like this:
Busybody: "Why do all these games have you pointing a gun at people to kill them? Why can't it be a magic wand you point at people to heal them?"
Penn: "Well, mainly because that sounds like a really shitty game!"
Thing is, though, soon as I heard that, all I could think was... it doesn't. Even just taken utterly literally, you go around shooting random sick/injured people with a magic wand, that sounds like the sort of timekiller you might have seen in Newgrounds' heyday. And there are all sorts of games where you play, or have the option of playing, as some sort of healer or medic. Those don't really seem to approach what she was getting at, though, since they basically come in one of two flavors: strategy games with resource management, nothing like a "magic wand," and action games where you heal people so they can be better killers, which seems to defeat the purpose, especially since you yourself still see occasional combat in most of them. What I think might be interesting would be a game in the vein of Elder Scrolls, where you hone your technique in different schools of healing spells as you explore the land, mechanically incapable of doing direct harm and discouraged from doing indirect harm. You're directed to people who need your help, and it may not always be for the best that you give it, and if you do give it, there may be different ways in which to give it. To tie this together, the main quest might involve reconciling competing schools and political forces into a the quasi-medieval fantasy equivalent of a bottom-up healthcare system; a possible ending might be that you dedicate the emergent "overguild" (or whatever) to whatever god most closely reflects your actions, and he or she appears and assesses your work based on that deity's values.
Of course, the constant suffering and death in such a game would most likely annoy the above busybody just as much as CoD-style murderfests. Win-win.
On a related note, that bit from Last Week Tonight, "World of Peacecraft," a game where you do nothing but sit in conference rooms and try to negotiate a treaty that won't do more harm than good - I'd say that sounds like a good idea, but I expect all sorts of games are out that are sort of similar. It's an aspect of every 4X game, but there the object is ultimately world domination. It's part of Diplomacy, but again, world domination, and the "gameplay" is mostly a function of the human players. Does anyone know if there's a dynamic (i.e., more than just a visual novel) diplomacy simulator out there where escalating violence is considered a misstep no matter who "wins"?
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Topic: Games you'd like to see (sequels, adaptations or concepts) (Read 13362 times)