A Work in Progress
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The Tourist Game
(Edutainment made entertaining)
You're walking along a path in a forest somewhere. You hear all the ambient sounds of
nature around you; birds chirping, a soft wind blowing, your footsteps as you walk.
You look up and see the sunlight filteres through the branches of a nearby tree. Then
you reload the rifle you're carrying and get ready to blast some random alien race.
A virtual tourist in new and exotic lands, meeting foreign races and killing them.
One of the biggest draws of videogames is that it allows you to be instantly
transported to far-off worlds and situations. You'd never be able to play in the
World Championships of whatever sport you might like, but at least you can find an
approximate simulation of it in games. There's no real possibility that you'd get the
chance of going out into space and finding a hostile alien civilization to destroy,
but that too you can do in videogames. A chance to at least in simulation make that
winning goal in the WC final. But all that hangs on the thin thread of suspended
disbelief. Start doubting the world you're in and the experience falls flat. But in a
well-crafted, believable world you get a unique chance of visiting unknown places,
seeing brand new things that only the games designers and the possibly millions of
other gamers playing the game have seen before. In the same way you can't experience a
foreign country from a postcard, it's impossible to experience a game through reading
a review or looking at screenshots.
Though we like to ignore it, it's common knowledge that violent videogames are
de-sensitizing. We get used to the sight of blood pouring out from a wound we just
inflicted, which is quite a disturbing thought. We get used to the view form behind a
sniper rifle. We get used to the fact that a head-shot is a direct take-down.
Frightening, yes, but the best way to learn is through repetition. Now imagine if we
could replace the violence in a game with something you could actually benefit from
knowing in real life. Imagine landing in Paris for the first time in your life. You
have a task to do there, which can be anything from finding a murderer to just finding
a street address. The games architecture is based on real-life structures in Paris, and
all the NPCs speak French (albeit quite easy French). In the game you can buy a simple
electronic translation device to get you started. Interact with the NPCs in their own
language and suddenly your on your way to learning something new.
Is it that far off? Many modern games today include hours of dialog, and the graphics
are already well above what's required. One problem would be the interaction and
communication with the NPCs, which is something that has troubled gaming for as long as
you've been required to interact in other ways than terminating them. With the proper
resources and development, such a game could come into existence today. And with
videogaming's tarnished reputation and steady stream of look-a-likes, it sure wouldn't hurt.
It would, however, be a bitch to market correctly.
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