A Game of Hedonism
Wherein I reveal an idea for a game.
So, I have come up with the idea for my next game. I’ve started playing with the mechanics of it, registered domain names, and even done some basic data imports.
Here is the basic premise: Sex, Drugs, and Rock-n-Roll.
Here is a longer premise:
You are a member of world-famous, insanely popular rock-n-roll band, and this is your final tour across the United States in the year 1977.
It is basically a Choose Your Own Adventure game where, instead of traveling through time to grab a photo of an archaeopteryx, you work to make your way through your tour without getting fired, busted for drug possession, or getting caught by your spouse while having sex with groupies. Or getting addicted to heroin, or catching herpes.
It would be a short-term, casual-player game, with all sorts of humor. You could also play it for only five minutes at a time or even play through the whole 180 day tour in one go.
It would also be. . . adult in theme, since it’s difficult to write a game where you can increase your points by taking heroin before you go onstage will be accepted by the soccer-mom set.
I am currently struggling against my tendency towards complication. For example, do I track your addiction scores? Do we walk through the tour day by day, or only performance by performance?
So here is a question for those who might know about such things (since I can’t seem to find a thing on the FB site):
Is there a restriction on Facebook applications being about “adult” themes or not?
Here is another question:
Would you play such a game?
Comments on A Game of Hedonism
I would play it.
Nexuswar is full of win, and that indicates that other games made by you would also be win.
All I’ve found is point #10 in the Platform Policy. I just posted this message asking for details.
Hmm.
Well, that answers that.
funny. we have a lot of games that simulate violent acts and drug use. In one game, characters need to visit a brothel to get their energy back. Our poker game has simulated pot smoking but we call it “Maui Wowie” instead of the obvious phrases.
No idea; and yes, respectively. My inner Nigel Tufnell demands to be let loose, and will not stand for playing second billing to a puppet show.
But do you suppose I could get through without shaving my head or marrying Kevin Federline? Hmm.
(I’d play.)
I would try it.
I’m already playing that game….
only out of curiosity.
its been my experience that games that style themselves around an adult theme… well, they suck. theres many pitfalls to avoid outside the basic mechanics, a lot of which Bethesda is encountering with FA3;
presenting a viable/fun experience of adult themes; too much heroin-is-expensive-and-kills-you and you come across as a church group project, too little and its glorifying that behaviour. likewise sex and sexuality, murder and killing, etc etc etc.
where a game is created that’s actually fun to play, non preachy, and adult, rather than full of teen angst/glory of sex and booze and drugs, finding a channel to bring it to people is hard; I’m gathering facebook, miniclip, armorgames, kongregate blah blah, will probably have written or unwritten rules about what they will and won’t promote based on them wanting a nice quiet life ; ” kids encouraged to take heroin in online game” is the kind of headline these huge portals try and avoid.
as a result, most, if not all ‘adultthemed’ games I play tend to be lacking in coherency, crippled by their channel or woefully underproduced, boiling down into violence=win or drugs=lose. the RPG element seems to be excised somewhere between drawing board and upload.
its difficult making drunkenness fun in a game; it costs money, makes things harder to do and the following day your character is poisoned. role-playing differnt states of mind in a game is… difficult.
so yeah. curiosity.
“You are a member of world-famous, insanely popular rock-n-roll band, and this is your final tour across the United States in the year 1977.”
Yes. Bonus points if you can *form* a band (create a party, select a genre(s), theme, name) and deal with owners, cheapo equipment, random events (“A crazed fan stabbed $BANDMATE! He can’t play tonight!”), etc.
“For example, do I track your addiction scores?”
To what end? If an individual has a high addiction score, how does $ADDICTION play into the tour? Does $BANDMATE skip a show? Go to jail? Become a registered sex offender?
“Do we walk through the tour day by day”
How else are you going to let the player know $BANDMATE used beer on his cereal?
“Would you play such a game?”
If it made me want to replay it to explore different upgrades/paths, I’d try it maybe three times?
I just want to play a +5 Mithril 7-string Guitar. :{
My current plan is that you create your character, pick your band name, your album’s name, and the instrument you play. Then the system will fill out the rest.
We’re kind of constrained to rock-n-roll; it makes it easier for me to write for one genre of music (plus, it just doesn’t work if you want to play someone like Barry Manilow).
My current plan is that we’ll walk through day by day but you can skip “off” days. Each day will be able to be played “by the hour” but most events will take more than one hour to complete.
And yes, there will be random events. Some of them will suck and possibly end your tour For example, you can get busted for drugs and try to escape jail and fail at that, which means you’re in the pokey long-term. Or there is a stage fire and the drummer is killed.
The reason to track addictions is thus:
Since the goal of the game is to make the “most memorable tour ever”, doing so requires that you do some crazy stuff. Which, often, will require taking some sort of chemical. Each drug will give you a “bonus” to your performance (can you imagine a Doors show where he wasn’t stoned? No.)
However, the more you use the higher power chemicals, the less bonus you get. And as the addiction grows, you have to take more and more of the chemical to get the bonus.
So, like, the first time you do, say, coke (1 dose) before going on stage, you’ll get a +5 bonus and a +1 addiction. The next time, you take 1 does and get a +4 bonus and a +1 addiction (final bonus = drug bonus – addiction level). So after five shows taking only one dose, you have to take two doses to get a benefit. Addiction values are always subtracted from your performance score.
HOWEVER, if you have an addiction level of 5+, you HAVE to take a dose to “even out” or else you have a penalty (-5 or higher) to your performance.
Each dose may have 1 or more addiction points per dose. So if you take two doses of coke on your first show, you’ll get a +10 bonus but a +2 addiction.
Obviously, you can choose to just play straight the entire time, but the way points are scored means that you will want to have as much of a point bonus as possible.
So, uh, it’s kind of a resource management game with the entire “managing your addictions” thing.
I don’t think I would play. I think I will leave my reasons for that private for now.