Shit My Dad Plays

In response to “Advice for Serial Killers” from The Escapist forums:
SKX is a serial killer in Condemned but that series just goes off the wall after a while so…

I think the answer to the question is that players *are* serial killers. Think about it, the player butchers thousands of NPCs in the average game often in a repetitive style or with a limited arsenal.

Some games even have you take trophies, most noticeably from boss fights.

Although most players are like the evil squared love child of a Spree killer and Serial killer.

– Scorched_Cascade

I think the problem with making a game about being a serial killer, aside from moral issues of course, is making it somewhat sandbox but without making it mass-murder.

Take GTA. You aren’t a serial killer. You are a mobster. What is associated with that is that you are going to kill people to fuel your own goals. But each death is kind of empty.

Take Dexter as a good example of this. He stalks his prey, learns habits and then kills and disposes of them in an exceptionally precise way. This is how I think a serial killer would be best represented. A game replicating this well would have to be endlessly deep. You would have to be able to target anyone, go anywhere and have an amazing amount of freedom. It would have to be essentially open ended, and simply end when you are caught.

This I think would translate amazingly as a game experience. Imagine how it could play out. You start off as a novice, killing people haphazardly, but slowly gain skills and make cleaner and cleaner kills. You could eventually master the perfect murder. But then the game would have no point? But then like has been seen in real life, you could start making purposeful mistakes, or leaving messages to enhance the experience.

Long story short, it could be amazing, but would have to be focused.

And also, murder is very wrong, just in case I was coming across as a aspiring murderer :S

– Reallink

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In response to “Zombies Rule, Vampires Drool” from The Escapist forums:
While vampires can go surfing in the Californian sun for all I care, I’m now getting sick to death of my once beloved zombie. You can’t throw a rock without hitting a designer who thinks “I have a great idea for a new mode: Zombies!”

It does play into our egos. We got the tools, we got the talent, let me mow them down and I’ll survive it all. Hell, most games are about that now, but from a different stand point. Most games: You’re out gunned and you’re out classed, but you’ll find a way to make it some how! Most zombie games: They are over there, you have guns, show them good old fashion Human ass kicking.

It’s so EASY to put zombies in nowadays that it’s just played out. Like any song you heard on the radio, it keeps playing and playing and playing until you are forced to try to remember when you found it to be innovating and cool.

– ObsidianJones

Yes.

And for that matter Zombies too have had their fair of intellectualizing. Through the night of and return of series we’ve seen zombies that talk, rationalize and even attempt to find some measure of tolerance for those still living. So now the big deal with zombies apart form the mindless gamer analogues we mostly know, is to discuss them in light of social ills like the treatment of minorities. We aren’t at the point where anyone is writing zombie romance books yet but give it 100 years. The ladies will be pining for “Team GWUAHaaaAHAHHHHAW” by then, I assure you.

– Ghengis John

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In response to “Contemporary Immortality” from The Escapist forums:
Dracula is a figure of horror, but not all vampires are. Lately the concept of becoming a vampire via bite has been less a metaphor for rape in which the victim’s will is brutally subjugated and more of an opportunity for a Changeling fantasy where a world full of magic and mystery is suddenly visible. I mean, that’s fine, but that kind of fantasy doesn’t sit well with me, in which superhuman power is obtained by birth or accident rather than by the exercise of the character’s will or choice. Dracula had to sell his soul for that shit, y’know?

– Fleaman

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In response to “Vampire of the Rising Sun” from The Escapist forums:
Ahh, the eternal fascination with the beautiful-dead.
There is this long-standing theory that the image of the vampire is most summoned in times of economic crisis, whilst in times of economic prosperity, the image of Frankenstein replaces it in the public mind.

And if you look at recent economic history, this theory seems to hold water.
We’ve seen the rise of the Borg during late-century periods of economic flourishing, used mainly in the same way as the original idea of Frankenstein’s Monster; as a response to ensuing technological developments, the Borg, much like Frankenstein represent the notion of defying Death through Scientific achievement.

Subversively, the idea of Vampirism palates to the notion of maintaining Integrity and Beauty even beyond the veil of Death. Resisting the corruptive forces of decay in the context of a society that seems to be crumbling around itself …THAT is the pivot-point of the Vampire’s allure and fascination.

The main tangent between these two seemingly disparent ideas is Immortality.

– Neferius