Blog of Josh Hall

Had a dream about a video game last night.  It was a free roam world, 3rd person, kind of like the game Black & White.  All the characters were animals and you had to interact with them to learn "concepts" like trading, communication, hiring, etc to get things done.  The point was just to create a community that worked together and you got to chose how they worked together, whether through strict government policies, violence, friendly favors, etc.  It was a very cartoonish and humorous game.  The animals were very personified.

So that was the extent of the dream, and then I started thinking about this more and fleshing it out.  As far as names for the game, the first thought was "Orgz" since it’s catchy and could be short for ‘organization" or "organisms".  My next thought was for a sub-title, which was something like "All animals are created equal.  some are just more equal than others."  Which is an obvious lending from the book Animal Farm  by George Orwell.  Then, you’d have to consider the legal ramifications, but it would be a great opportunity to base the game on the book and just call it Animal Farm.  You could use all kind of quotes from the book like "2 legs are better than 4".

You could pick from a few animals as your character, each with their own personalities and benefits:

Duck – Everyone’s friend since they are in the air, water, and on land.  They’re pretty emotionally unstable and irational though.  They also can’t do much hard labor.

Horse – Very stern and a strong laborer.  Things are the way they are because they should be that way.  Not cooperative or open to change or creative inovation.

Dog – Smart and analytical.  Able to organize (herd) everyone to action by motivation (not fear).  Sometimes distracted by leisure instead of work.

So the goal of the game would be to run a farm, but it’s really more of town exchanging goods and services.  Like, the pigs have bacon to trade, you don’t actually kill the pigs for their bacon, you talk with them and work out something in exchange, like X amount of mud for Y amount of bacon.  Keep the pigs happy, and they’ll give you more bacon.  you could even get a little more complex about designing the layout of the farm.  Keep the cats away from the muddy pigs so they’ll chase the mice out of the barn.  A sense of humor will determine the success of the game, so you have to put in a lot of witty things like being able to open a petting zoo for money, but none of the animals like being extorted like that (form of prostitution).  Or humans coming in and offering to outsource your cow production items like milking, meat packing, etc.  Cows would be really stupid in the game.  Really stupid.

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Tags: create, game, George Orwell, happy, money, Work