A while ago I watched a pretty good video on YouTube called Should Video Game Characters Age??. When I think about it, this is a really interesting concept. The kids who grew up reading Harry Potter (not me; I was the nerd who read them all within a year) grew up alongside the characters. In the first book (1997/1998) Harry is eleven years old and in the final (2007) he’s seventeen. Not only do the characters themselves grow and mature, so do the plot and themes. The early books were overall more whimsical children’s stories but towards the end there were topics such as race/class warfare and death. This is the best example I can think of that shows how to keep your audience with a story. So why don’t video games do it?

Maybe because Harry Potter games suck?

Take a look at some popular franchises (especially Nintendo ones) and see if we can find a pattern. Did you guess what they all have in common? No? I’ll just keep the prize to myself then. For the most part, the age of their protagonists and the tone of the game stay consistent. Some have been around for so long that they’re over a decade older than their target demographic. I don’t have a problem with this, but you really don’t feel as much of a connection to a character who was the same age as you were when you first played the game two kids and a wife ago. This has been done a little bit before. I’ve seen it in Kingdom Hearts 2 and maybe in Jak & Daxter (I say maybe because I never played much). But what if we had a game where the maturing of the character is really a huge focus? As always, I have a great game idea. Maybe if I do this enough someone will pay me… Nah.

We start off with our character. Billy, for boys or Jenny, for girls. Billy and Jenny are 10 years old and they deal with ghosts and monsters in their town. I know it’s vague, but the story isn’t what I’m focusing on right now. The first game is rated E10+ and Billy and Jenny have childish additudes, childish dialogues and childish personalities. Just like the real ten year-olds playing the game. Five years later the sequel comes out. Billy and Jenny are still fighting the ghouls but they’ve matured. Not so much that you forget they’re kids, but just enough that is believable to have happened between ten and fifteen. The game is rated T for teen and has darker themes and a more serious tone. The fact that Billy and Jenny are teenagers will noticably change the gameplay. Since a high school student generally has less restrictions than a ten year-old, the game world will be significantly larger.

Not included: the level where Jenny spends two hours stalking her ex on Twitter.

Finally we end the trilogy five years after the release of the second game. Jenny and Billy (now Jennifer and William) are young adults just like the kids who played the first game ten years ago. The game is rated M for Mature and it really starts to get dark and serious. There’s murder, religious themes, torture, intelligent glimpses of how the characters have grown and also been affected by these supernatural occurrences. This would be the only game franchise to go this far into following their original customers into adulthood.

Unfortunately, this game may never be made. No one with a budget wants to do anything original. Also, I doubt many studios could really plan a franchise ten years ahead. Even after L.A. Noire was such a big hit, the studio closed its doors. Oh well. It’s not like it’s my first game idea that will never happen.

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The Late Night Gamer has a Tumblr! Follow it into a van so it can give you candy and Pokémon cards!

 2. Freakazoid

You know how everyone loves how lovable insane Deadpool is? Well if you crank up the insanity by 1000%, give him superpowers that operate on cartoon physics and make him  kid-friendly, you have Freakazoid. Freakazoid was a show on Cartoon Network brought to us by the same people behind Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain. There’s even a great scene in Freakazoid where the three essentially go back in time and murder the fourth wall’s parents, but I digress. Click to read the whole article at GamerSyndrome.com

VGBoxArt.com

I’ve talked about Halo before. Halo 2 was my first FPS and even today the more popular franchises like Battlefield and Call of Duty are boring in comparison. There’s a reason that Halo was the defining franchise for the Xbox. It is the only FPS to have such varied gameplay while having a rich story and universe. It is the only thing that makes me want an Xbox is the upcoming Halo 4. Sure having an Xbox means I can play with my friends online, but if it weren’t for Halo there wouldn’t be any multiplayer game I would want to play. Since Microsoft refuses to play nice and make Halo cross platform or port to PC (a platform they own), those of us with a PS3 are missing out. If any of you have a mind for marketing you’ve noticed something very important. For those of you who don’t, I’ll fill you in. There is a market for an original franchise.

For as long as the Playstation 3 has been out, no one has taken the Halo formula and used it to make a game. Now when I say “Halo formula” I don’t mean I want a Halo clone. I want something original that does right what Halo does right. The way I see it, the Halo formula is as follows:

• Protagonist that the player can project themselves into
• Medium-sized assortment of weapons, each with their own distinct specified purpose, pros and cons
• Quick and easy use of vehicles in single-player and multiplayer
• Rich story and universe that makes room for well-written novels, comics, movies and sequels
• Unique and easily distinguishable enemy classes
• Story mode that makes the game satisfying even if you never touch the multiplayer mode

This is what makes Halo so unique and it’s so simple. You’ll notice that the COD franchise has none of these. Just six bullet points and you have the guidelines to make a great game. This is coming from a guy who isn’t paid to come up with ideas for games. Why hasn’t anyone caught on? Are developers too scared to try to come up with something great? I just don’t understand why that in the last 10 years since Combat Evolved we haven’t had anything pop up that could rival it. Maybe Dust 514 will fill these shoes, but I doubt it. I might as well give up and buy the cheapest Xbox 360 I can find and huddle up with every Halo game I’ve missed. If you don’t hear from me until spring, that’s probably what I’ve done.

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The Late Night Gamer has a Tumblr! Follow it before the hipsters do!

Possible DLC?

Last fall I picked up L.A. Noire and I was pretty surprised that Rockstar had published a game with such a fresh premise. You play as Cole Phelps, a detective in the L.A.P.D. during the 1940s. Most of the gameplay involves you gathering evidence and interrogating suspects to solve the case. And if you’re like me, you spend even more time legally car-jacking people and causing traffic accidents. But while I do have fun protecting, serving and driving on the wrong side of the road, I’m still unable to satisfy the need to be a sadistic douchebag I feel whenever I play an open-world game. I want the chance to be a corrupt officer, taking bribes, bashing protesters, controlling crime instead of stopping it. I know no one likes these kinds of guys in real life, but I dare you to look me in the eye and say that this wouldn’t make for a fun video game.

Let’s say you start off as a new cop in say, Detroit (because everyone just adores Detroit). It’s your first week and you’re teamed up with an old pro. Your partner gives you some real Training Day style experience and you witness first hand the corruption in the police force. Flash forward a few years and you’re leading a raid on a drug house. The head of the operation runs away and you run after him while the other cops handle the rest. You corner the guy and he’s pleading you to make a deal. You let him be in exchange for some of his profit. If you take his offer then you are on your way to becoming one of the most powerful men in the city. Through a series of missions and negotiations you have city officials, drug lords and even other cops under your thumb and no one can touch you. To top it off you can spend your free time harassing citizens however you can imagine.

No no, that’s just too perfect.

If you don’t take this path you’ll be given a more heroic task. The people respect you and criminals fear you. But since you never took the chance to grab power, someone else did. There is a corrupt cop and you’re trying to take down his whole operation. Eventually he knows you’re on to him and he uses his influence to kick you off the force. From then on you’re a vigilante fighting for justice. Like Batman… except you’re not Batman. Thanks to your great track record you’ll have allies both in and outside of the police. With these you can put together your own guerilla war on crime. Your secret local militia will be shutting down all kinds of operations while weakening the police-ran crime empire. I guess the simplest way to describe this game would be L.A. Noire meets Grand Theft Auto with a little bit of Infamous.

What do you guys think of this game idea? Tell me how you would handle making a game like this in the comments.