Players take on the role of a young Doctor doing their residency. (I’ve been watching Scrubs lately.) I’m having trouble envisioning the gameplay for this one, but I’m thinking it has to revolve around resource management, especially time management.

Gameplay and graphics are similar to The Sims, but with the player controlling only one of the residents in the hospital. Other residents could be controlled by the computer for offline play, or by other players, adding a social dimension to the game. Players may cooperate with each other or sabotage one another in order to curry favor with the hospital administration.

The game is interspersed with mini-games which represent many of the tasks the young doctors face. Performing surgery, basic medical maneuvers, and diagnosing patients’ problems are all examples.

At the beginning of the game, players decisions are guided by the attending physicians. As the game progresses, players receive less and less guidance, until they are entirely on their own. The game culminates with the doctors graduation from their residency.

I have been falling behind on doing the Game Ideas of the Week, but I’ve been jotting down my inspirations when I have them, so I can crank out a few of these over the next few days.

The game this week is a genre hybrid of massive proportions. It combines elements of MMORPG, RTS, and FPS games.

Players have a persistent avatar who participates in FPS battles that are heavy on vehicles. (Think Battlefield 2.) As the player gains experience he unlocks new weapons and special class related abilities, as well as moving up the military command structure. The catch is, experience is only gained for completing objectives on the battlefield, which are handed down by the commander.

The commander is another player, who is playing the game from a RTS point of view. The commander assigns tasks to groups or individuals on the battlefield and experience is assigned to those tasks based on their difficulty. Moving to a forward position may be a simple task and would be rewarded with little experience, while assassinating the enemy commander would be worth a great deal more experience. Commanders receive experience based on the success of their troops on the battlefield. As commanders gain more experience, they can move up the command structure.

Higher level commanders have increasingly more control over the logistics and grand strategy of the war. They can view the map from further out and move supplies and troops to different locations on the globe, to counter the movements of their enemies. To put the game in terms of a MMORPG, each battlefield would be like an instance, to which the commanders could commit troops and other, lower level, commanders. The globe would be one server, with hundreds or thousands of players logged in at one time.

The setting of the game is the year 2072. The game presents a somewhat bleak picture of the future, with World War IV in full swing. There are five factions that players can commit themselves to:

The high tech, but economically weak, United States of America. The USA uses a lot of mechs/powersuits and aircraft on the battlefield.

The powerful-in-numbers Islamic Crescent. The Crescent stretches from Morrocco to Malaysia and is the only faction with petroleum-based technology. On the battlefield they often use explosives and heavy armor.

The People’s Empire of China has the strongest economy and thus can field lots of very expensive technology. Short-range personal nuclear weapons are a favorite.

Europe fields small lightweight vehicles and use predominantly laser weaponry.

Russia has a powerful, if technologically dated, military. Russia’s miltary only fields their own armies if the motherland is invaded. Russian troops are often loaned out as large mercenary forces to the other powers.

Additionally, players may form their own smaller organizations, to represent mercenaries, pirates, or even a smaller independent nation.

Players would shape their server through strategic conquest, and potentially one faction could “win” the server by conquering the entire globe, at which point players in that server would be allowed to reconfigure their characters and starting locations would be reset.

The game presents a number of game balance difficulties, resulting from the kitchen sink mentality and from the inherent difficulty of designing an all-PvP MMO, but it is a truly epic game where players can feel like they are affecting the game world in meaningful ways. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more RTS and RPG features sneaking into the Battlefield series with the inevitable next iteration.

This one is a bit different. It is an educational game, designed to teach the players about foreign policy and international relations. It takes place in meatspace as much as it does in cyberspace. It is run over the course of one or more days and requires a large number of students (70+).

Students are placed into groups that range in size from 1 to 6. Each group represents a different player in international politics. For example, the United States may be represented by a team of six students, while the Red Cross may be a single student. Possible groups include nations, NGOs, the UN, NATO, International Corporations, News Organizations, etc.

Within each team, individual students have their own role to play. (Queen, Homeland Security Director, Foreign Minister, CEO, etc.) Gameplay also happens within teams, as there may be members of a team who have contrary goals to the team as a whole. For example, the Iraqi team may contain a player representing the Kurdish minority, who has a personal goal of establishing an independent Kurdish state.

The game is coordinated through a central website where teams can submit actions and communicate with each other either publicly or secretly. In addition, the website allows countries to issue press releases and is where the news organizations publish their scoops.

Before the game begins teams meet to discuss strategy and set goals for themselves to accomplish during the game. Gamemasters assign point values to each of the goals students want to accomplish, and the students’ performance in the game is based on how many of their goals they accomplished and how difficult the goals were to accomplish. Meeting with each member of the EU would not be worth many points, but establishing a Palestinian state would. In addition, each teams loses or gains points based on the strength of their economy at the end of the game, which is determined by in-game factors like trade agreements.

In addition to the players, the game requires a number of GMs to coordinate actions. Gameplay is very free-form, with almost any action being possible. To take an action teams must complete a simple web form detailing what the action will entail. Examples include moving troops, signing an international agreement, launching nuclear weapons, holding peace talks, conducting a terrorist attack, or anything else the players can dream up. Once a GM has approved the action it is posted to a page that is constantly updated with everything that is happening. Actions may succeed or fail based on random chance or based on the whim of the GM. Actions happen on a FIFO basis.

Some organizations may want to conduct secret actions, such as terrorist activities or espionage. Many countries have a spy masquerading as a member of another country. Indeed there may be entire organizations in the game that are a secret to everyone but their members and the GMs.

The game represents the culmination of a series of lectures or perhaps even a whole class about international politics. Players also conduct independent research on the role they play in the game. The game gives the students a chance to apply the theories learned in class and in their own research in a fun interactive setting.

The idea this week is kind of lame, but it’s the best I could come up with. It has been nine days since I last posted one of these.

Dog Park is a simple 2D game, which would work well as a Flash game, a tablet PC game, or on a Nintendo DS. You control a dog. You are trying to mark as much territory as possible in a park, which you are viewing from above. When you surround an area with your scent, you gain control all of the territory inside of it. The catch is you’re on a leash, which is being held by a human walking along a winding path through the park. You can never stray farther from your owner than the length of the leash. You are in competition with other dogs (multiplayer or AI) to control the most territory inside the park. Periodically a squirrel may distract you or the other dogs, causing a temporary setback.

Strictly speaking, you could say this game isn’t so much a game idea as it’s a mod idea. It is a multiplayer only mod, which pits two players against each other head-to-head. The first phase of the game has the players preparing the level for their opponent. They are presented with a map from a FPS that contains nothing but a start and an end point. Each player gets the same empty map, which they then fill with obstacles (units, traps, etc.). When each player has finished setting up their map, they must navigate the map created by their opponent (standard FPS gameplay). The first player to the end wins. (Alternatively, victory could go to the first player to clear the entire map, the player with the most points at the end, or even the player who survives the longest.)

I often have an idea for a game that keeps coming back to me over and over again. I’ve decided to start writing these down to train myself on how to articulate gameplay ideas.

To that end I am starting a new recurring feature on this blog: Game Idea of the Week. Okay, sure, it’s not a very catchy name, but it gets the idea across in five words. Starting today, my goal is to write down at least one game idea every week. The description will probably be no longer than a paragraph; but if I really like one of the ideas I may flesh it out to a full page or more.

Without further ado: The Wild. The Wild is a game that takes its inspiration from the lost-in-Alaska-after-my-plane-crashed-into-an-icy-lake genre. The player takes control of a small party of survivors who must attempt to make their way home from the crash site. The terrain is randomly generated, yielding a different game each time. The player is presented with a map once, at the beginning of the game, but they have to work from memory while playing. The characters’ equipment consists of whatever the player salvages from the rapidly sinking plane in an action mini-game at the beginning. Gameplay is from a top-down or isometric viewpoint and falls into the RPG genre. (i.e. characters gain experience to increase skills, etc.)

The player is primarily concerned with trying to keep the characters alive and must balance activities like hunting for food, gathering firewood, building shelter, and making progress home with a limited supply of energy. Characters’ skills and attributes influence how much energy they must spend to complete various actions.

Periodically a larger event occurs, which may involve a combat encounter (such as with a wild animal) or a mini-game (for example, trying to flag down a passing search helicopter). The climax of the game has the player facing a nemesis which was introduced in a previous encounter. This nemesis could be a member of the party or a wild animal, such as a bear. Emphasis is on a game that can be played to completion in a few hours, but with strong replayability due to customizable characters and randomly generated terrain.