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Hot ginger and dynamite!
Mar. 21st, 2005 01:06 pmWhat the world needs is a console simulator with the same quality of character play and interactivity as Grand Theft Auto or Vice City, except set in the literary world of P.G. Wodehouse.
Instead of playing gangsters who indulge in all sorts of anti-social, violent, and misogynistic behavior, gamers will take on the role of an upper-class twit (male or female) in a somewhat sanitized version of 1920s London. It would be reasonably easy to construct a random plot generator (using common Wodehousian elements) that will grant a potentially infinite gaming experience.
I’m serious. Wodehouse’s protagonists always seem to meander aimlessly through the story in a reactionary fashion, acting as they are presented with problems and challenges. If left to their own devices, they just hang out and invent silly games. This seems to perfectly describe the attitude of the average computer gamer.
So, someone just needs to come up with software that intelligently takes a cast of about 100 recurring characters, which can manage their different relationships and desires, and let them evolve as the game progresses. This week, “Bingo” Little is engaged to Daisy Scumblethropingham-Smythe and he needs your help to impress her godfather. Sadly, The Affair of Uncle Wilbeforce’s Silver Cow Creamer backfires, and she dumps him. Next week, old Bingo hooks up with a foreign opera singer, and needs your help to make him look like a refined man of culture!
The player’s standing within his social web would be determined by his/her success or failure in dealing with these plots. If he/she has a string of failures, he/she might end up engaged to an amateur spiritualist who writes poems that compare the stars God’s Own Daisy Chain. If he or she fails to respect the Old School Tie, or spreads rumours about a lady, or fails to come to the aid of a chum, his or her standing in the eyes of the computer-controlled characters will fall.
The player could also completely ignore the ongoing developments in his/her social web and concentrate entirely on a life of leisure. Things like getting drunk and stealing policeman’s helmets, learning to play the trombone, going to the club and throwing bread rolls at people - these are all important elements of any Wodehousian plot. The “Club Games” (like bread roll tossing and spittoon use) could also represent stand-alone mini-games for those days when you don’t have time to tackle a full plot.
Each player could invest points in an NPC assistant, or assistants. This would reflect your household. You could be like Bertie Wooster, and spend the lot on a single super-human valet named Jeeves, or buy yourself an indifferent cook, butler, house-keeper and chauffeur.
At the very least, a game of this sort might encourage a little historical awareness and a few laudable virtues in players. Instead of forcing them to shoot cops or slap women to advance the plot, why not give them a game wherein they must compete in sack races, conduct midnight raids on the pantry, or try to smooth the course of true love for old chums?
It would even have a good rap soundtrack, by Jack Hylton! "Back in Nagasaki, where the fellers chew tabacky, and the women wiki-whacky-woo!"
I’d play it! And I’m cool!
Instead of playing gangsters who indulge in all sorts of anti-social, violent, and misogynistic behavior, gamers will take on the role of an upper-class twit (male or female) in a somewhat sanitized version of 1920s London. It would be reasonably easy to construct a random plot generator (using common Wodehousian elements) that will grant a potentially infinite gaming experience.
I’m serious. Wodehouse’s protagonists always seem to meander aimlessly through the story in a reactionary fashion, acting as they are presented with problems and challenges. If left to their own devices, they just hang out and invent silly games. This seems to perfectly describe the attitude of the average computer gamer.
So, someone just needs to come up with software that intelligently takes a cast of about 100 recurring characters, which can manage their different relationships and desires, and let them evolve as the game progresses. This week, “Bingo” Little is engaged to Daisy Scumblethropingham-Smythe and he needs your help to impress her godfather. Sadly, The Affair of Uncle Wilbeforce’s Silver Cow Creamer backfires, and she dumps him. Next week, old Bingo hooks up with a foreign opera singer, and needs your help to make him look like a refined man of culture!
The player’s standing within his social web would be determined by his/her success or failure in dealing with these plots. If he/she has a string of failures, he/she might end up engaged to an amateur spiritualist who writes poems that compare the stars God’s Own Daisy Chain. If he or she fails to respect the Old School Tie, or spreads rumours about a lady, or fails to come to the aid of a chum, his or her standing in the eyes of the computer-controlled characters will fall.
The player could also completely ignore the ongoing developments in his/her social web and concentrate entirely on a life of leisure. Things like getting drunk and stealing policeman’s helmets, learning to play the trombone, going to the club and throwing bread rolls at people - these are all important elements of any Wodehousian plot. The “Club Games” (like bread roll tossing and spittoon use) could also represent stand-alone mini-games for those days when you don’t have time to tackle a full plot.
Each player could invest points in an NPC assistant, or assistants. This would reflect your household. You could be like Bertie Wooster, and spend the lot on a single super-human valet named Jeeves, or buy yourself an indifferent cook, butler, house-keeper and chauffeur.
At the very least, a game of this sort might encourage a little historical awareness and a few laudable virtues in players. Instead of forcing them to shoot cops or slap women to advance the plot, why not give them a game wherein they must compete in sack races, conduct midnight raids on the pantry, or try to smooth the course of true love for old chums?
It would even have a good rap soundtrack, by Jack Hylton! "Back in Nagasaki, where the fellers chew tabacky, and the women wiki-whacky-woo!"
I’d play it! And I’m cool!
