Blog - Business-Sim Makes Everything More Interesting...

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Well, it's official: I'm addicted to playing with the Spore Creature Creator.
My students are a little alarmed with how many creatures I've made already just today.
What can I say? My designer mind means I have to play with, explore, and test every possibility ...
Plus I'm a sucker for any game with a good character creation system.


However, prior to that, one game I was picking up again under a perhaps false claim of 'research' was Evil Genius.
(I'm also a sucker for Dungeon Keeper style games, playing the villain and setting devious traps... after all, the game play of those kinds of games is strangely like the more fun parts of level design...)

How is it research? Well, I've been toying with (in my head only, so far) a very similar game. The major difference being that my idea is about superheroes rather than supervillans.

See, I've determined I like to freshen up any genre by blending it with the business-sim game genre (or "tycoon game," if you will). Since supervillain business-sim was basically already taken, I decided to snatch up the next best thing and try for the superhero angle.

Even cliché styles and genres (like, well, superheros) can be given a little bit of unique interest if you consider doing an economics simulation out of the topic rather than the obvious. For example, there's tons of zombie-shooters out there, but nothing as wacky and quirky as a game where you manage a company that hunts zombies for profit or something. (My mind was kind of stretching there in an attempt to combine "zombies" with business-sim...)

In short, I find the business-sim is my go-to game genre when I want a little more originality and quirkiness when thinking through a game concept.

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posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 6:45 PM  0 Comments Links to this post