New Ideas: Game Design

Hey guys, I’m back. Things have been… kind of hard on me personally over the past few weeks. Lots of things just not going the way I’d like, to put it mildly. But this isn’t a blog for me to whinge about my life, and I’m trying to deal with it anyways. For now, I wanted to share a new idea here: video game designs. Now, and this is important, these posts are public and for discussion and dissemination of ideas. If anyone who is making or thinking of making shows up and reads this, by all means; take the idea and run with it. Go crazy, just come back to tell me about the finished product. I’d like to see what the end result of such ideas are. Remember, free to use and spread, just don’t forget to add a little to the discussion while you’re here.

Now, this first one is on a topic that is near and dear to my heart: horror games. The idea actually came to me as I was walking home from the store at 2 am, and I can safely say my heart was hammering with anxiety over the whole thought process, being alone in the night like that.  The basic idea is, learning about a horror game makes the game worse. Here’s the analogy I came up with while on my little stroll.

Imagine for a second you have a nice house, full of rooms to keep your things in, where you can roam in peace. Now, there are all kinds of nasty things out in the wild world, so you  have locks on all the doors and windows. Inside you are perfectly safe from the horrors that lurk in the darkness out there. Hell, they might not even be near your house in particular. Better safe than sorry.

“Standard Fantasy”

Why is it that we can actually say the phrase “standard fantasy” and have people understand exactly what we’re talking about? Think about that for a second. We’ve become so entrenched in a set form that fantasy actually has a standard now. Not standard Tolkien, not standard Dungeons and Dragons, just standard fantasy setting. We’ve been here too long folks, and it’s fine we got out. Let’s see something new, new races, new worlds, new ideas. We need something to really change-up the formula and get these fantasy worlds to be full of fantastic adventure again.

New Playable Races:
This is a big one that is really dragging things back. We need new playable races. Remember the standard fantasy setting, now think about it. Ready to name the first four races that come to mind? Elf, Human, Dwarf, Orc, in that order. Elves always live in the forest and are tall, magical, aloof buggers, Humans are generally the ones screwing everything up and are never really masters at any one thing, Dwarfs are short dudes who live underground and get sentenced to death if they ever speak without an Irish accent or are ever caught being sober, and Orcs are usually the villains, sometimes not, who are brain-dead lunks that run around murdering everything often with little reason outside of the enforced alignment of Stupid Evil. Hey, there you go, four races done to death in everything that can be described as fantasy. Sometimes you find a game that tries to break this mold, but hilariously it’s almost always for the Humans or Orcs. Think about World of Warcraft for a second. Yes, you know that game. Stop playing coy. Orcs in that game literally were Stupid Evil until very recently in the time line, and now fight to regain a lot of what they lost. Way more compelling that short guys who drink forever and pretty elves who live in a tree. It only took 2 expansion packs for those two races to really get anywhere fun. Blood Elves though, oh my the back story. On a whole the Horde were at least trying to break the mold from time to time, and often in very refreshing ways. But… they are still ‘orc’ and ‘elf.’ We need something new, or at least a new take on it. Enter Guild Wars 2…