Video Games You Wish Existed

[Zombiitwo]

The only game I wish existed is Infinity: The Quest For Earth.
Procedurely generated galaxy, direct-control ships, player-driven world, etc.
Basically EVE+Freelancer+SpaceEngine.

[-Benedict]

Someone needs to tell this to the entire games industry. Also, most of the movie industry. Fuck people being forced to make their characters "marketable". (That goes for FF6 as well. Mog was an insipid little shit.)

Even the indie games scene has this out the wazoo. Everything with characters is either abstract and vaguely ironic (see: The Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, Seiklus, Super Meat Boy) or really heavily inspired by Japan, either because it was created by Eastern folk or because the artist learned anatomy by drawing anime characters (see: Cave Story, every indie Eastern RPG ever). I think it's because nobody wants to take risks and/or work on developing a non-stylised artstyle? I want characters who are real people, please.

Relevant: I really want to see a game starring teenagers who are actual teenagers (rather than "Angsty Teen" and "Plucky Teen" stereotypes), in the vein of Bad Machinery or the Mystery Solving Teens. I had a neat idea for this- an RPG where the stats are based around self-perception. Wearing good clothes (or wicked-cool armor) boosts your Fashion, doing bad things penalises your Guilt, winning things gives you Confidence (which makes up the experience-and-levelling system), and "having a love interest who loves you back" is the most powerful buff in the game. Summed together, all of these stats would have like a 50% influence on everything the teenage characters do (with the rest being decided by the vanilla stuff like Brawn, Smarts, Speed, etc.) I mean, you're going to be better at beating up monsters if you're wearing an awesome tuxedo, right?

I guess I kind of segued into rambling about my bright idea just now, sorry about that.

'k, I'm gonna start talking up a storm in opposition to some of the stuff you just said, don't think I'm mad or trying to mischaracterize your argument- really just using it as a springboard to talk about motion and character design.

One of the major reasons you see a lot of heavily stylized, super-deformed character designs in indie games is that realistically-proportioned humans do not have conveniently-shaped hitboxes. People move their arms and legs back and forth, crouch and double over, and when they're standing still they remain rather tall and vertically-aligned, forcing level design to accommodate for a hitbox whose top is way up high compared to its bottom. It'd never work for a game like Super Meat Boy, where it's crucial that the player absolutely knows where their hitbox is in relation to the environment. In fact, that's a major design concern for most of the examples you listed- the Binding of Isaac, Cave Story, and Spelunky all benefit from allowing the player to forget about "top half" and "bottom half" and process their character as a single point. And because squares don't approximate the human form particularly well, there's a limited number of art styles that can pull it off and still look appealing.

When it comes to realistic human proportions, you either have to be working in a genre where your vertical hitbox isn't the player's concern 99% of the time (first person shooters, point-and-click adventure games, turn-based RPGs) or you need to be crafty with your level design- making sure the player always has headspace when they're moving upward, or designing your game to avoid (or trivialize) vertical motion whenever possible. When you don't take these concerns into account during character design, you end up with some frustrating mechanics. Does anyone actually like having to do a special crouch attack just to hit enemies that scoot along the floor, just because the player holds their gun in a realistic position? Stylized and square-shaped character design usually isn't a sign of a lazy artist- it's the mark of a prudent designer making decisions about how they want their character to move around in the world.

However, this doesn't mean that lazy character design isn't a serious problem for games. The fact that so many of gaming's most iconic characters are silent protagonists without realistic human characteristics is a strike against the medium as it stands. The constant refrain of "gameplay over graphics" and "gameplay over story" is the result of a particular paradigm in which games are almost exclusively sold as a particular kind of entertainment- one in which enjoyment is, if not intended to be derived from, marketed to be derived from the player's interaction with the core mechanics of the game- and specifically not from good writing, or a well-considered aesthetic, or the experience of a multilayered interactive narrative. Any resources that go towards writing and character design are judged to be wasted in the eyes of the industry, and indie games are stuck competing in the same market. Games, despite what they can be, are still built and sold as toys, and until there's a sizeable market for games that are anything else... Roger Ebert is still going to be kinda-sorta-almost right.

I could go on about Ebert's infamous proclamation and why it continues to be a relevant critcism of, if not the medium, the industry as it stands. But sweet sassafrass there's so much there's been said about that, and such discussion is probably best saved for
MY BLOG yeaaaaaaah
so I'll curb my overthinking impulses for now. If anyone's interested, MovieBob's discussion on the subject at the Game Overthinker is a challenging and eye-opening video.

WRT your teenagers idea- sounds great. I love seeing emotional activity as a game mechanic (have you checked out LuFa's Waterworks?), and although it's been done to some extent in the Persona series (from what I've heard- I've regrettably never played the things) it could definitely take stage as a central mechanic (and I don't mean whatever the hell Super Princess Peach was supposed to be). Interestingly, the fashion-as-stat-boosts thing was done almost exactly as you described in The World Ends With You, which is up there on my big list of Games To Play Academically Whenever I Start Having Money. There's so much innovation and such a grab bag of inventive mechanics in that game that I'd be remiss to never get around to it as a designer.

[Coasterman29]

Ok. Damn.

So what it is is a puzzle game, and it switches from 2D to 3D

But it is entirely
NES or SNES style graphics
and the 3D parts
are like minecraft, but still fully 2D; it is entirely pixel art/pixelated, and it doesn't look like a 3D render, but instead moving pixelart.
The 3D parts are also first person.

The end of the game is a segment where you get N64 graphics and then the boss battle is in full 3D

Basically, it's what we can do today with videogames
Yet what we had in the previous gaming era.

And all the advertising
all the graphic art
all the everything
is done like it would look like in the 80s-early 90s

[Frost]

One of the major reasons you see a lot of heavily stylized, super-deformed character designs in indie games is that realistically-proportioned humans do not have conveniently-shaped hitboxes.

Oh yeah, big time; can't see that ever working in a platformer unless interactivity and physics take a back seat (cf: Another World). When I said "stylised" I was more referring to the characters (and the settings, and the enemies, and the storytelling) being very abstract and vague. I mean, Wind Waker is one of the most literally cartoonish games ever, but I wouldn't call it particularly stylised in this sense. Maybe "hyper-simplified" would be a better term?

I mean it's not like these indie games aren't fun and nice to look at, but damn if it doesn't get samey after a while. I'm pretty sure folks pick the hyper-simplified route out of a sort of immature desire for deniability; if you were deliberately doing a sub-par job, nobody can say that you fucked it up, right? The only game I can think of that breaks the mould is Shut Up and Jam; it's kind of telling that SUAJ has such heavy layers of humor and irony throughout the whole game, such that the tacky graphics and dialogue can be brushed off as deliberate. I can't even think of one indie game that makes a serious attempt to tell a story without resorting to endless layers of dense symbolism (cf: Eversion, Binding of Isaac), or without turning it into an ironic commentary on videogame storytelling itself (cf: Tiny Castle), presumably because storytelling is one of the hardest skills to pick up from scratch.

So yeah, it's going to be a while before we get an indie game with a half-decent set of characters, sadly. Or at least, half-decent characters that don't represent something like The Self-Destructive Fascination with Science that Led Humanity to Invent The Atomic Bomb, or The Tendency of Fun Games to be Kind of Freaky if you Think About Them too Hard.

Really need to get around to reading Ebert's criticism of videogames one of these days.

[Arsenicum]

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, Coaster....

[BRPXQZME]

The only game I can think of that breaks the mould is Shut Up and Jam; it's kind of telling that SUAJ has such heavy layers of humor and irony throughout the whole game, such that the tacky graphics and dialogue can be brushed off as deliberate.

The “Gaiden” part of the title is kind of important.

Also, in a thread about complaining about JRPGs, according to a guy I talked to that talked to the guys that... you know what, I’ll just copy-paste it here. Hope he doesn’t mind. Well, he better not; it’s a damn good post.

I guess the question is, what is a present day JRPG that is doing things right? You know, a JRPG that is less than three years old, that could serve as a model for future JRPGs to use as inspiration? Does one exist?

Barkley, Shut Up & Jam: Gaiden

show spoiler

hide spoiler

Back to your regularly scheduled on-topic discussion!

Oh, shit, I can't believe I didn't think to mention that. See, people will be all LOL BARKLEY SHUT UP AND JAM GAIDEN but the thing is, it's not guilty of any of the things we're complaining about in here. It's genuinely funny, it's genuinely good satire of video games, which is... something I don't see very often.

I think the big thing it does right is, it's making fun of jrpgs, the people who play them, stuff of that nature. But it doesn't cross the line and stop being a good game. There's something wild and interesting going on all the time in that game, and I know for a fact from talking to the people who made it that most of that stuff was thrown in just because. They were hanging out in IRC, threw some ideas around, and just put it in the game because they thought it would be fun.

Ghost Dad? Hell? The part where you compose beautiful fucking poetry for that dude's girlfriend? The adventure game puzzle segment on Liberty Island? That shit is amazing, and it was all spur of the moment. There's almost never a time where you go into a dungeon to advance the plot, and if you do, something else is going on in there. I think that's what we want out of JRPGs: something fun, and interesting, and exciting, that isn't just another plot dungeon they put in there to fill out a checklist to meet quota. And I'm not talking about minigames!

In conclusion: Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden is one of the best JRPGs ever made, and it could never have been made from an actual game studio.

IN CONCLUSION: You need to start making the games you want to play.

Now ain’t that the truth!

[weirdguy]

The combination of their ingame joke and Minecraft's fan translations made me want to put an Al Bhed translation pack into Minecraft, but I couldn't wrap my head around what I was supposed to do.

Anyway, I kind of agree...it seems like what a game has to do to make money, and what it has to do to be genuinely fun, are at odds at each other sometimes, and perhaps the best solution is the one you make yourself.

[Coasterman29]

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, Coaster....

So the game is a puzzle platformer.
It is 2D and 3D.
It is with SNES or NES style graphics, like megaman or something.
But the 3D doesn't appear 3D.
It still looks like pixel art.
Not like Minecraft or Duke Nukem, but like an actual one piece of pixel art.

The final bossbattle is in full, render looking 3D, but with Nintendo 64 style graphics.

[kholhaus]

Mojang+MediaMolecule+Bethesda+Valve = ???

Not something I'd want to happen per se, but something that would be interesting to see what becomes of it.

[Descriptor]

So the game is a puzzle platformer.
It is 2D and 3D.
It is with SNES or NES style graphics, like megaman or something.
But the 3D doesn't appear 3D.
It still looks like pixel art.
Not like Minecraft or Duke Nukem, but like an actual one piece of pixel art.

The final bossbattle is in full, render looking 3D, but with Nintendo 64 style graphics.

Sooooo.... Kinda like Super Paper Mario?

[Coasterman29]

Basically imagine Terraria, Minecraft and Super Mario 3D on an NES. Everything (looks) flat and 8bit

[Inconspicularity]

A self-evolving MMO.

An MMO with no quests, no story arc bullshit, no leveling, etc. An MMO where players are the biggest impact to what happens. A single person would have a hard time changing anything, but if that person managed to find other people with a similar mindset, they could rise in influence eventually being able to, for example, topple a corrupt government. The laws of humanity then cause the people who toppled the corrupt people who then get corrupt themselves. Power, as people say, corrupts.

But the joy of all of this is that there are no hard-coded rules. Every rule, pattern, law etc are all caused by human nature, not the game. Pretty much a world simulator.

(to drop puddles in calm water, the game might randomly create disasters (although it'll never calm down since some men just want to watch the world burn))

[-Benedict]

An MMO without quests and leveling would become stagnant fast- if literally the only mechanic for directly increasing power/wealth is engagement with players and politics, you wouldn't be able to build a userbase large enough to sustain anything interesting. It'd depend entirely on how you can more abstractly represent player advancement, or alternatively how you could collectivize player effort. Squidi actually wrote a really interesting post on the subject- how to create a communist society in the context of a game by removing individual player "characters" with personal stat growth and instead tying progression to the growth of the community facilities. Check this out!

I was about to launch into a rant about how you could do something similar with Dentrala's archipelago idea thing, but the bus is about to arrivw at the station so i gotta go
*arrve
*arrive

[Inconspicularity]

, for example,

I wasn't bothered to make a 20,000 long essay on everything you could possibly do.

[Emeexuqu]

a REAL Banjo-Threeie
nuts and bolts was a decent CAR game, it just wasn't a good BANJO-KAZOOIE name

[Namboto]

A self-evolving MMO.

An MMO with no quests, no story arc bullshit, no leveling, etc. An MMO where players are the biggest impact to what happens. A single person would have a hard time changing anything, but if that person managed to find other people with a similar mindset, they could rise in influence eventually being able to, for example, topple a corrupt government. The laws of humanity then cause the people who toppled the corrupt people who then get corrupt themselves. Power, as people say, corrupts.

But the joy of all of this is that there are no hard-coded rules. Every rule, pattern, law etc are all caused by human nature, not the game. Pretty much a world simulator.

(to drop puddles in calm water, the game might randomly create disasters (although it'll never calm down since some men just want to watch the world burn))

See, I had an idea like this, but with even more impossible-to-meet expectations

I want my logs to be made of atoms

I want my lighting effects to work like real light

I want my AI to be AI

I want gravity that works for the same reasons as gravity

I WANT THE WORLD

to bring this into a realistic realm of possibility, I'd want a world where everything is radiant. You'd get something like "warm spring" + "wolves" -> "baby wolves" + "time" -> "hungry adult wolves" -> "wolves eating sheep" -> "villagers complaining about wolves" -> "hey look you have a sord why don't you kill these wolves for me" -> "dead wolves"

And the wolves would be dead forever and not respawn or anything stupid like that. Basically problems will happen not because they're programmed to happen by some greasy code-monkey who is vastly under-payed and under-appreciated, but because they naturally occur.

And in a game like that you could make money and advance however you wanted. Sure there'd be money in adventuring (from hunting to raiding tombs and such) but if you wanted you could also make delicious culinary treats as a full time thing and sell them to hungry adventurers and never have to face the (virtually real) threat of dying at the hands of some smelly ogre.

[littlequietguy]

I want a Prehistoric MMO. Play as a Caveman and fight Dinosaurs and Woolly Mammoths and such. I've got Dino D Day to satisfy me (holy shit guys everyone buy Dino D Day it's the best) but I still want an MMO.
Hunter (DPS)
Gatherer (HEAL)
Crafter (TANK)

Actually this game would probably be bad due to lack of variety and unbalanced classes. Maybe a MUD like Urban Dead would work though? Tell me what you guys think, if you don't care then ignore me.

[sporb]

Dude, you just described my dream game that I'v been pondering forever now.
This game, it needs too be made.
(I'm referring to LittleQuietGuy)

[ArmsAreLoud]

As long as I get to explode dinosaurs with the power of rock n' roll Lord Raptor style I'd buy it.

[Quirk]

Hey, another idea:

A World War Z style zombie survival game. You have X square males of open, randomly generated world, one type of zombie (slow ones), and it's online. Then you throw in all the really- in-depth survival things (hunger, thirst, toilet, even mental health) and basically see how long you can go. Resources will be limited, and might go through fluctuations (heaven help you if winter decides to hit), but it wouldn't be impossible to have a single game run for months if you get a good fort going.

[littlequietguy]

Dude, you just described my dream game that I'v been pondering forever now.
This game, it needs too be made.
(I'm referring to LittleQuietGuy)

Oh really? Tell me what you were thinking! Any other ideas for classes? Raids would be cool of course cause group tactics is basically what hunting was like for them. Boomerangs! Ancient Aborigines totally had boomerangs. Would be a cool weapon.

[Arsenicum]

show spoiler

hide spoiler

See, I had an idea like this, but with even more impossible-to-meet expectations

I want my logs to be made of atoms

I want my lighting effects to work like real light

I want my AI to be AI

I want gravity that works for the same reasons as gravity

I WANT THE WORLD

to bring this into a realistic realm of possibility, I'd want a world where everything is radiant. You'd get something like "warm spring" + "wolves" -> "baby wolves" + "time" -> "hungry adult wolves" -> "wolves eating sheep" -> "villagers complaining about wolves" -> "hey look you have a sord why don't you kill these wolves for me" -> "dead wolves"

And the wolves would be dead forever and not respawn or anything stupid like that. Basically problems will happen not because they're programmed to happen by some greasy code-monkey who is vastly under-payed and under-appreciated, but because they naturally occur.

And in a game like that you could make money and advance however you wanted. Sure there'd be money in adventuring (from hunting to raiding tombs and such) but if you wanted you could also make delicious culinary treats as a full time thing and sell them to hungry adventurers and never have to face the (virtually real) threat of dying at the hands of some smelly ogre.

Hilariously, Ultima Online had a system like this in the beta.
Yes, everyone killed everything.
No, nothing was left.

[-Benedict]

See, I had an idea like this, but with even more impossible-to-meet expectations

I want my logs to be made of atoms

I want my lighting effects to work like real light

I want my AI to be AI

I want gravity that works for the same reasons as gravity

I WANT THE WORLD

It's a long way off, but yeah- I really want to see, at least, a game where everything is an actual object, with all the complex physics of the real deal- like a car that moves forward because it spends gas which makes pistons go up and down which makes the wheels turn which makes the chassis move forward because of the wheels' friction with the ground. Or like, a person that's made of flesh and bone and walks using actual muscles instead of having a load of preprogrammed animations playing over a hitbox. You might want to take a look at Overgrowth, actually, since its main conceit is a melee combat system that determines damage and injury by actual impacts to a skeletal structure, rather than to a hit point total. I think Incon was saying something about that earlier?

[jazxsora]

What I'd really like is a first person, open world RPG set in the zombie apocalypse, set in Boston or New England. I know there's Dead Island, but that game was a huge let down. I also would like it to be made in a similar style to fallout 3 or New Vegas. Weaponry primarily focused around guns. It would take place years after the first infection, ten or twenty possibly? It would also feature tons of armor and clothing, similar to New Vegas or F3. There would be survivor settlements, with guards and large walls. If set in a big city, such as Boston, maybe have a settlement in one of the skyscrapers? This to me is my dream game.

[Frost]

I really want to see, at least, a game where everything is an actual object, with all the complex physics of the real deal- like a car that moves forward because it spends gas which makes pistons go up and down which makes the wheels turn which makes the chassis move forward because of the wheels' friction with the ground

I keep seeing this sentiment and I just don't understand it. I mean, hyper-realism is interesting on a theoretical level, and it would expose a bunch of useful systems that could be partially leveraged to make videogames better (or to plug into a sandbox like Garry's Mod), but what would videogames gain from being completely internally consistent?

I mean, if I go hunting wolves in something like TES Oblivion, I don't want to stress about disturbing the ecosystem or over-taxing my sword arm or being permanently injured or being arrested for poaching, and I certainly don't want a major storyline character to be randomly killed by the thousands of wolves who are apparently wandering around the countryside. I just want experience points, and wolf teeth that I can make into magic potions.