If you could design a game...

It’s a dream of a lot of gamers. Be honest, did you never tell yourself “it would have been better with MY ideas!”?

Ed Boon, one of the creators of the “Mortal Kombat” franchise, once said in an interview that only the idea is not enough…you have to know how programming works to really think of how a game can be created.

Well, I think that ideas ARE everything.

There are of course a lot of things, that we all would like to see in games, but it’s just not possible to implement them at this time.

On the other hand, there are certainly quite a lot of outstanding ideas in the minds of some gamers somewhere in this world. Now, why is it almost impossible to suggest those ideas to the designers of games?!

I’ll give you an example of what would be a good idea for a RPG (in my opinion) and I’m sure that it would be possible to actualize it into a game with the current methods and possibilities of programming.

Imagine you create a character. After you’ve gone over the stats, the class, the look and the other basics, my idea comes in:
Let’s say the RPG plays in world with seven lands. As you create your character you have to choose one of those lands (basic information for each land would of course be provided). Secondly, you are presented with details of each of the main towns which can be found in the land you chose. You select one of those towns and thus your starting point in the game.

To even further personalize how you start of in the game, you have to choose whether you want to be poor or rich (or something in between), if you own a house, if you have a family (are they already dead, still alive and are you living together with one of them), etc.

The options that you can choose from should be limited to what kind of race or class you are. If you are some kind of Druid, for example, you would have to choose a starting point inside or near a forest. As a Druid, it would also feel strange if you were above-average rich.

Where and how you choose to live in the beginning of the game also affects how people react to you, to what you do and what your reputation is.

It would of course be a lot of work to write all the different scripts for each of the possibilities, but if it’s possible to create a huge game like Oblivion, it shouldn’t be impossible.

That way you would have several different ways to start off in the game. About the first fourth of the game could be different this way each time you play (at some point the story just has to connect somehow, though, no matter what you chose in the beginning).

However, this is just an example of an idea that I would like to see in a future RPG.

I’m sure a lot of you guys have a lot of great ideas and one day it should be possible to effectively tell or show them to game designers.