I've got that jones to fly a TIE fighter again.
I'm fiending, man.
I know I could just play a little EVE Online, that shit is like methadone for space junkies, but I don't really wanna be cured of my love for spaceship crap heh.
So who wants to play some SWG with me?
C'mon, you know you wanna (not hear me say that anymore ahaha).
I need some comedy man, I'm sick of all these games that ain't totally bizarre and creepy and full of ten million bugs and broken quests and outdated items and screwed up corpse-crotch-lightning jedi powers and fat dudes rubber-banding around the dance floor all choppy in their underpants with turbans and hitler moustaches.
I'm tired of all these games with hopes for the future and silly expansions and "tons of potential" and stuff.
SWG ain't got any of that shit, hope is for wimps, man, I mean, if you are playing SWG, you know you ain't never gonna drive an AT-AT or fly an imperial star destroyer or any of that stupid crap, this is Star Wars: Apocalypse, baby, there's things that you can do now that are bound to break down and never get fixed or be taken away from you in the future, if anything heh.
You get a "lava" lightsaber and an ostrich to never ride because its slow and a Tiltawhirl Barbie Hovercar with a broken tail light to help you navigate your way through all the flashing-neon empty-vendor ghost-towns and ninja smokebombs and space tacos and fire-retardant blankets and a wide selection of beehive hairdos and beards and boney protrusions and purple blotches and the twenty-seven-kinds-of-eyebrows lag.
And you like it.
Bitch.
C'mon, you know you wanna AHAHA.
"It isn't very Star Warsy, but it is pretty David Hasselfhoffy."
Hahaha doh!
Friday, March 14, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The Fine Art of Wasting Time
MMOs are kinda like murder mysteries.
Y'know how murder mysteries tease you along with like, five zillion hours of mindless foreplay until you finally get to the big "oh, so this whole ten million pages of buildup thing was all about getting to some sentence where they finally explain that Colonel Mustard killed some dude inna library with a candlestick? man! that's really profound! thx!" fizzling pfft of an ending.
"Oh yah, baby, I'm a great lover, and you are in for a special treat, but first let me read you some poetry and give you a foot massage and set the mood."
Its all about wasting your time.
That's why they always make you kill ten mllion billion spiders to get to the good part, y'know, they're hoping you die from old age before you get to the good part, because there is no good part.
Anyways with all the stuff they do to make us not figure it out, like making us kill ten million billion spiders, or making all the hallways ten feet longer, and making us run back and forth across the country-side delivering doo-dads to the next guy, it makes me wonder why they don't ever go any deeper into the finer arts of making people waste their time.
Y'know, 'cause if you are really trying to get people to waste time without noticing it, so they'll keep paying a subscription fee, there's plenty of super sneaky and awesome ways to do it that nobody ever talks about.
Like, for example, having some artist guy make something for the game that makes folks stop and look at it for a few seconds, just because its cool looking.
You gained like thirty seconds there!
And if you can actually write something entertaining in those quest dialogue boxes, folks may actually waste some time reading those too!
That's another thirty seconds or so!
Or let people find a "hole" in the wall of a zone, so they crawl all over the wrong side of a mountain for an hour, trying to figure out a way to exploit it heh.
Or how about erasing all the monster fighting football team crap and just doing mystery stories, like where you investigate some disaster that happened at some space colony, y'know?
Those guys that write mystery stories are masters of wasting people's time and explaining some dumb ass thing that happened a while back and doesn't even really matter to you really really slowly, y'know, like, one clue every fifty pages or something.
Folks walk around all slow looking for clues and thinking about 'em and suspecting stuff and avoiding traps and ya don't even have to waste any server resources having people fight ten million billion spiders or anything, y'know, 'cause nothing is actually happening.
That's what suspense is all about, man, a lot of nothing happening.
Plus it makes the spiders seem freakier when they only jump out at the end.
Seinfeld is also all about nothing happening, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with suspense.
I dunno, mebbe it does, I dunno, mebbe there is some kinda awesome awkward comedy suspense thing, I dunno, mebbe.
"What is up with all this suspense?"
Hahaha daaaamn I'm good.
Anyways, think about it, you get a lot more creeped out and slow down a lot more in these stupid games in any stretch of hallway where there doesn't seem to be any monsters around, y'know, 'cause you know something fishy is going on.
"wtf? is the server broke?"
And you have to read the stupid dialogue boxes when yer solving a mystery, so that's like a two-for-one right there heh.
Dude, make the players have to answer questions every once in a while, then they'll have to read the shit ahaha.
Heck, let me write some of it and then they'll always be reading it thoroughly just to see if they can catch me swearing and insulting women or some shit.
Or you could just say that maybe I wrote some of it, and then those people would waste more time with it, even though I didn't actually have to write any of it.
That's what I'd do.
"There might be a nudity toggle in this game."
See, there's advantages to maintaining that aura of unpredictability and mystery heh.
Plus yer getting money from wasting the time of a bunch of nasty cracker-ass halfwits, that's the best kinda money ahaha.
And you could always just let a lot of typos go to keep the grammer nazis busy and happy correcting you too (or should I say "to" AHAHAAHAHHA*cough*).
And there's all sorts of other little shit where you could gain another thirty seconds or so of wasted subscription time without resorting to some stupid monster-whacking grind, waiting for boat rides, taking griffin rides, graphics lag due to lots of leafy trees, "mysterious" game lockups that make people reboot, really slow auction houses, one-hour delays on mailing items, stuff that only happens at night, pit traps that you gotta spend thirty seconds climbing out of, swimming around in lakes really slowly, giving people emotes to play with and letting them dye themselves different colors, not giving people enough inventory space so that gotta dick around with their baggage.
But even though a lot of that shit flies under everybody's conscious radar, none of that stuff is really looked at as a positive thing, y'know, like the way that people look at the guys who waste their time with mystery stories, or dudes that make intriguing art that makes people just stand around and gawk at it like idiots.
Even though its the same goddam thing, really, from a technical perspective.
The great thing about mysteries and suspense is that they kindle people's imaginations with Red Herrings and shit, that's like getting your players to create six times as much content as you actually created for you, y'know?
That's what I always loved about Stephen King, not the endings and shit that he actually wrote, but the junk he just made me think about that he coulda wrote.
And you don't even gotta waste any of your time figuring out how to show the dude get his head hacked off and all the blood squirting out with special effects if you just say it happened off screen heh.
And people always say that that kinda crap is all artistic and good and shit!
C'mon, man, it don't get no better than that!
Mystery is good for another thing, if you can think of ways to get people PvPing against each other, Mystery Style, like they do on Big Brother, wasting all that time keeping secrets and gossiping secrets and trying to figure out what the other guy is planning, but that's a topic for a really Advanced Course on Time Wasting.
I really dunno why they don't just copy set-ups from Big Brother, y'know, throw yer ass in a room with six other players and then start fucking with y'all, the dudes that came up with that shit are game design geniuses heh.
I could never do that kinda junk without a lawyer or something to keep me from from figuring out ways to get people to kill themselves like that dude from the Saw movies ahaha.
Well, whatever, at least we're wasting time talking about wasting time thinking about wasting time better, y'know?
That's something heh.
Y'know how murder mysteries tease you along with like, five zillion hours of mindless foreplay until you finally get to the big "oh, so this whole ten million pages of buildup thing was all about getting to some sentence where they finally explain that Colonel Mustard killed some dude inna library with a candlestick? man! that's really profound! thx!" fizzling pfft of an ending.
"Oh yah, baby, I'm a great lover, and you are in for a special treat, but first let me read you some poetry and give you a foot massage and set the mood."
Its all about wasting your time.
That's why they always make you kill ten mllion billion spiders to get to the good part, y'know, they're hoping you die from old age before you get to the good part, because there is no good part.
Anyways with all the stuff they do to make us not figure it out, like making us kill ten million billion spiders, or making all the hallways ten feet longer, and making us run back and forth across the country-side delivering doo-dads to the next guy, it makes me wonder why they don't ever go any deeper into the finer arts of making people waste their time.
Y'know, 'cause if you are really trying to get people to waste time without noticing it, so they'll keep paying a subscription fee, there's plenty of super sneaky and awesome ways to do it that nobody ever talks about.
Like, for example, having some artist guy make something for the game that makes folks stop and look at it for a few seconds, just because its cool looking.
You gained like thirty seconds there!
And if you can actually write something entertaining in those quest dialogue boxes, folks may actually waste some time reading those too!
That's another thirty seconds or so!
Or let people find a "hole" in the wall of a zone, so they crawl all over the wrong side of a mountain for an hour, trying to figure out a way to exploit it heh.
Or how about erasing all the monster fighting football team crap and just doing mystery stories, like where you investigate some disaster that happened at some space colony, y'know?
Those guys that write mystery stories are masters of wasting people's time and explaining some dumb ass thing that happened a while back and doesn't even really matter to you really really slowly, y'know, like, one clue every fifty pages or something.
Folks walk around all slow looking for clues and thinking about 'em and suspecting stuff and avoiding traps and ya don't even have to waste any server resources having people fight ten million billion spiders or anything, y'know, 'cause nothing is actually happening.
That's what suspense is all about, man, a lot of nothing happening.
Plus it makes the spiders seem freakier when they only jump out at the end.
Seinfeld is also all about nothing happening, but I'm not sure that has anything to do with suspense.
I dunno, mebbe it does, I dunno, mebbe there is some kinda awesome awkward comedy suspense thing, I dunno, mebbe.
"What is up with all this suspense?"
Hahaha daaaamn I'm good.
Anyways, think about it, you get a lot more creeped out and slow down a lot more in these stupid games in any stretch of hallway where there doesn't seem to be any monsters around, y'know, 'cause you know something fishy is going on.
"wtf? is the server broke?"
And you have to read the stupid dialogue boxes when yer solving a mystery, so that's like a two-for-one right there heh.
Dude, make the players have to answer questions every once in a while, then they'll have to read the shit ahaha.
Heck, let me write some of it and then they'll always be reading it thoroughly just to see if they can catch me swearing and insulting women or some shit.
Or you could just say that maybe I wrote some of it, and then those people would waste more time with it, even though I didn't actually have to write any of it.
That's what I'd do.
"There might be a nudity toggle in this game."
See, there's advantages to maintaining that aura of unpredictability and mystery heh.
Plus yer getting money from wasting the time of a bunch of nasty cracker-ass halfwits, that's the best kinda money ahaha.
And you could always just let a lot of typos go to keep the grammer nazis busy and happy correcting you too (or should I say "to" AHAHAAHAHHA*cough*).
And there's all sorts of other little shit where you could gain another thirty seconds or so of wasted subscription time without resorting to some stupid monster-whacking grind, waiting for boat rides, taking griffin rides, graphics lag due to lots of leafy trees, "mysterious" game lockups that make people reboot, really slow auction houses, one-hour delays on mailing items, stuff that only happens at night, pit traps that you gotta spend thirty seconds climbing out of, swimming around in lakes really slowly, giving people emotes to play with and letting them dye themselves different colors, not giving people enough inventory space so that gotta dick around with their baggage.
But even though a lot of that shit flies under everybody's conscious radar, none of that stuff is really looked at as a positive thing, y'know, like the way that people look at the guys who waste their time with mystery stories, or dudes that make intriguing art that makes people just stand around and gawk at it like idiots.
Even though its the same goddam thing, really, from a technical perspective.
The great thing about mysteries and suspense is that they kindle people's imaginations with Red Herrings and shit, that's like getting your players to create six times as much content as you actually created for you, y'know?
That's what I always loved about Stephen King, not the endings and shit that he actually wrote, but the junk he just made me think about that he coulda wrote.
And you don't even gotta waste any of your time figuring out how to show the dude get his head hacked off and all the blood squirting out with special effects if you just say it happened off screen heh.
And people always say that that kinda crap is all artistic and good and shit!
C'mon, man, it don't get no better than that!
Mystery is good for another thing, if you can think of ways to get people PvPing against each other, Mystery Style, like they do on Big Brother, wasting all that time keeping secrets and gossiping secrets and trying to figure out what the other guy is planning, but that's a topic for a really Advanced Course on Time Wasting.
I really dunno why they don't just copy set-ups from Big Brother, y'know, throw yer ass in a room with six other players and then start fucking with y'all, the dudes that came up with that shit are game design geniuses heh.
I could never do that kinda junk without a lawyer or something to keep me from from figuring out ways to get people to kill themselves like that dude from the Saw movies ahaha.
Well, whatever, at least we're wasting time talking about wasting time thinking about wasting time better, y'know?
That's something heh.
Playing Favorites
When something goes down like this, at least you know the break-up-make-up sexual favors afterwards are gonna be great, so it all sorta works out in the end.
The important thing to remember here is that you can't let these guys make you think that you can't Play Favorites and get away with it.
I mean, Playing Favorites is pretty much what friendship is all about, don't listen to these guys that tell you that you shouldn't try to make and be friends with the people who play your game.
And you might think that the WoW guys don't play favorites, but they might just be really good at making friends with the kinda folks who won't give 'em up for love or money at the first opportunity.
Or maybe they only make friends with Amish people who aren't allowed to use technology and communicate with the outside world or something.
See, that's why you should seriously consider giving me all the kewlie items and sexual favors and stuff.
No, not the Amish thing, I meant the Love or Money one, but I'll be Inga the Nasty Warden or anything you want for kewlie items and sexual favors, baby.
And its okay if you don't give me nothing, 'cause I'm a big enough man to know that you are just playing hard-to-get to keep things exciting over all these years heh.
Anyways, the simple Rule of Thumb as far as Playing Favorites goes is that you need to seem like you are treating everybody as your favorite.
Even the totally sucky people, like Steve.
Because giving just one person special treatment would be messing with everybody else's inalienable rights to special treatment.
And you can't think that you can somehow just "cop out" and not play favorites, because that's the same as saying that you hate everybody, or that you have no taste or opinions at all, and that all you wanna do is trade your artwork for money, and let your art be judged on its own merits, which is just gonna make everybody hate you because you are making them do a lot more work instead of just telling 'em what to think about it heh.
That's not to say that you shouldn't maintain a little mystery about yourself, as long as it works to your advantage.
I might be a totally smoking hot chick, for example.
Dude seriously, you never know.
And don't let anybody like Dundee scare you with all his "serious business" crap and his "vague Lovecraftian hints of danger that makes your imagination do all the work" about how you may be messing up how much money your game is gonna make or something if you start Playing Favorites.
Trust me, he doesn't know a goddam thing about Playing Favorites.
It'd be like taking bicycle safety advice from Superman or something, y'know, wtf does Superman know about bicycles and safety?!
Yah, well, he better not start no shit with me or I'll start telling people his Real Name AHAHA.
And there's more important things in life than money and subscription numbers in some stupid ass game anyways.
I mean, what are you gonna do with all that money and stuff in the end anyways?
Pay for some sexual favors, right?
See, that's definitely not better than having fun partying and making friends with people and getting the chicks for free, baby.
The important thing to remember here is that you can't let these guys make you think that you can't Play Favorites and get away with it.
I mean, Playing Favorites is pretty much what friendship is all about, don't listen to these guys that tell you that you shouldn't try to make and be friends with the people who play your game.
And you might think that the WoW guys don't play favorites, but they might just be really good at making friends with the kinda folks who won't give 'em up for love or money at the first opportunity.
Or maybe they only make friends with Amish people who aren't allowed to use technology and communicate with the outside world or something.
See, that's why you should seriously consider giving me all the kewlie items and sexual favors and stuff.
No, not the Amish thing, I meant the Love or Money one, but I'll be Inga the Nasty Warden or anything you want for kewlie items and sexual favors, baby.
And its okay if you don't give me nothing, 'cause I'm a big enough man to know that you are just playing hard-to-get to keep things exciting over all these years heh.
Anyways, the simple Rule of Thumb as far as Playing Favorites goes is that you need to seem like you are treating everybody as your favorite.
Even the totally sucky people, like Steve.
Because giving just one person special treatment would be messing with everybody else's inalienable rights to special treatment.
And you can't think that you can somehow just "cop out" and not play favorites, because that's the same as saying that you hate everybody, or that you have no taste or opinions at all, and that all you wanna do is trade your artwork for money, and let your art be judged on its own merits, which is just gonna make everybody hate you because you are making them do a lot more work instead of just telling 'em what to think about it heh.
That's not to say that you shouldn't maintain a little mystery about yourself, as long as it works to your advantage.
I might be a totally smoking hot chick, for example.
Dude seriously, you never know.
And don't let anybody like Dundee scare you with all his "serious business" crap and his "vague Lovecraftian hints of danger that makes your imagination do all the work" about how you may be messing up how much money your game is gonna make or something if you start Playing Favorites.
Trust me, he doesn't know a goddam thing about Playing Favorites.
It'd be like taking bicycle safety advice from Superman or something, y'know, wtf does Superman know about bicycles and safety?!
Yah, well, he better not start no shit with me or I'll start telling people his Real Name AHAHA.
And there's more important things in life than money and subscription numbers in some stupid ass game anyways.
I mean, what are you gonna do with all that money and stuff in the end anyways?
Pay for some sexual favors, right?
See, that's definitely not better than having fun partying and making friends with people and getting the chicks for free, baby.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Gremlins
Y'know how when you think about the Battlestar Galactica ship, you always automaticaly think about Commander Odama?
Like, they're inseparable, they go hand in hand or something.
Its the same deal in the new show and the old show, y'know, take yer pick, doesn't matter.
It helps in Battlestar Galactica that you hardly ever see the Commander off the ship, I guess, 'cause I don't really get that from Star Trek, where the Captain and the ship are pretty separate (and they blow up Enterprises a lot).
But the Millenium Falcon and Han Solo is pretty much the same thing as the Battlestar Galactica deal.
Anyways, on one hand, you got a deal like that, where a ship sorta takes on personality somehow from the dude in charge of it.
And on the other hand, you have dime-a-dozen fighter pilots, and dudes in games where you are always upgrading your ship to different ships, or something where the commander of a ship is always getting switched out with somebody else, so you never end up with that weird symbiosis thingie.
And its weird, 'cause when you think of the ships that have their own personality, they're always associated with a guy with a strong personality, even though the two personalities are actually different and separate, y'know, like the Millenium Falcon establishes its own identity against Han Solo's personality, by breaking down or saving his ass at different times or something, I dunno, they're sorta like a boy and his dog (hell, the Millenium Falcon even makes robotic dog noises heh), or a married couple, or something.
I'm not saying its super important or it should be one way or the other or anything, its just something that's been rolling around in my brain like a wet shoe in a washing machine lately heh.
Y'know, like, sometimes mebbe its better not to upgrade to different ships all the time, but just upgrade the parts inside it, or something, so the thing has a chance to get a personality.
I guess that would work with fighter pilots and starfighters or whatever, too, you just don't see that as much, I mean, its pretty hard to think of an example of one of those, and the ones like that that do have personalities always look a little different from all the other ones.
Bah whatever, I guess I'm just being a typical superstitious pilot guy heh.
Like, they're inseparable, they go hand in hand or something.
Its the same deal in the new show and the old show, y'know, take yer pick, doesn't matter.
It helps in Battlestar Galactica that you hardly ever see the Commander off the ship, I guess, 'cause I don't really get that from Star Trek, where the Captain and the ship are pretty separate (and they blow up Enterprises a lot).
But the Millenium Falcon and Han Solo is pretty much the same thing as the Battlestar Galactica deal.
Anyways, on one hand, you got a deal like that, where a ship sorta takes on personality somehow from the dude in charge of it.
And on the other hand, you have dime-a-dozen fighter pilots, and dudes in games where you are always upgrading your ship to different ships, or something where the commander of a ship is always getting switched out with somebody else, so you never end up with that weird symbiosis thingie.
And its weird, 'cause when you think of the ships that have their own personality, they're always associated with a guy with a strong personality, even though the two personalities are actually different and separate, y'know, like the Millenium Falcon establishes its own identity against Han Solo's personality, by breaking down or saving his ass at different times or something, I dunno, they're sorta like a boy and his dog (hell, the Millenium Falcon even makes robotic dog noises heh), or a married couple, or something.
I'm not saying its super important or it should be one way or the other or anything, its just something that's been rolling around in my brain like a wet shoe in a washing machine lately heh.
Y'know, like, sometimes mebbe its better not to upgrade to different ships all the time, but just upgrade the parts inside it, or something, so the thing has a chance to get a personality.
I guess that would work with fighter pilots and starfighters or whatever, too, you just don't see that as much, I mean, its pretty hard to think of an example of one of those, and the ones like that that do have personalities always look a little different from all the other ones.
Bah whatever, I guess I'm just being a typical superstitious pilot guy heh.
Protoculture
First, we'll simulate a cheesy-ass little Amish Village, y'know, like they had in the Village.
With cute red-headed blind chicks, and some kindly old leftist beard-folk with secret college knowledge, maybe, but no stab-yer-face scary halfwits, y'know, like they had in UO.
And because that shit sucks, we'll immediately try to figure out how to escape from that newbie yard with the cute red headed chick (our first pet haha), after doing a few crappy butter churning quests that were obviously designed to illustrate our cultural superiority by showing us how sucky it is to be an Amish guy so we'll wanna get the hell outtta there.
And so we run through the woods with all the fake monsters innit, and we get all scraped up and dirty, and we come to a wall.
And we'll climb over the wall, and we'll land in a black and white museum or an amusment park dedicated to 1950s Leave It To Beaver suburbia, complete with drive-in everythings and hotrods and white socks and stuff, but we won't know its a Golden Age Recreation Village at first so it'll be all creepy and weird, classic Twilight Zone, with resident actors (or mebbe they're sorta life-like robots, ala Westworld or something, except they can all do a creepy robot version of the Twist, that'd be cool too) and caretakers with walkie-talkies and jumpsuits that'll chase us around.
And then we'll come to another wall, and we'll climb that.
Or mebbe we'll just find an exit this time heh.
And we'll come face to face with a totally futuristic megalopolis, an entire planet crawling with robots and flying cars and dudes with jetpacks and helmets and laser guns and stuff.
But no cat people, 'cause I hate cat people.
Yah, alien races that are human bodies with the heads of animals are the worst, none of that.
Alligator men are okay as long as you know its campy and there's only one of 'em, y'know, like a monster instead of a whole race of Alligator Men who understand nature better than us 'cause they're part animal (ugh) or have a culture based on might and dying in battle like some half-assed version of the Vikings (gah Klingons heh).
So anyways we get a job working the docks at a starport, and we start to learn about the Real World from all these toothless crackhead heavy metal space pirates and prostitutes, with nothing expected of us, 'cause we're dumbass no-technology Amish people.
Or mebbe we're hillbillies who know all about NASCAR and moonshine and doing bootleggers to escape from the cops or something, 'cause that'd give us a genetic edge in the space pilot-slash-mechanic-slash smuggler thingie, but you get my point.
See, in a game like that, all the UO people like Raph could stay in that Amish medieval faire place at the beginning until they were ready to make the transition to the good stuff (heh heh heh heh heh).
And everything is intuitive, you don't gotta know anything or read the instructions or know any tiresome scfi background trivia garbage to get started, 'cause yer a know-nothing innocent-ass two-fisted Amish guy who is always doing funny-ass shit like defending a woman's honor and whatever.
Or you are a wrestling fan from a Trailer park.
Or a caveman, same thing.
Mebbe there's two or three races and starting points, that's always good for replayability heh.
Yah, mebbe you need more of them starting place things, now that I think about, for folks from other cultures, but those are the only ones I'm familiar with ahaha.
Dude, c'mon, that's the awesomest blueprint for a Traveller-Star Frontiers-Firefly-Frontier-Privateer type game there's ever gonna be.
With kickass hover cycle chases through the streets and Post-Apocalyptic Super Vans and those monster truck planetary explorer vehicles and ice planets with snow mobiles and Retro Rocket Rangers in silver spacesuits and evil corporations and milk-spewing androids and alien ruins that turn out to be the Ancient Super Advanced Ancestors of Human Beings ('cause you always gotta have that).
And helicopters.
And no cat people.
Easy peasy.
With cute red-headed blind chicks, and some kindly old leftist beard-folk with secret college knowledge, maybe, but no stab-yer-face scary halfwits, y'know, like they had in UO.
And because that shit sucks, we'll immediately try to figure out how to escape from that newbie yard with the cute red headed chick (our first pet haha), after doing a few crappy butter churning quests that were obviously designed to illustrate our cultural superiority by showing us how sucky it is to be an Amish guy so we'll wanna get the hell outtta there.
And so we run through the woods with all the fake monsters innit, and we get all scraped up and dirty, and we come to a wall.
And we'll climb over the wall, and we'll land in a black and white museum or an amusment park dedicated to 1950s Leave It To Beaver suburbia, complete with drive-in everythings and hotrods and white socks and stuff, but we won't know its a Golden Age Recreation Village at first so it'll be all creepy and weird, classic Twilight Zone, with resident actors (or mebbe they're sorta life-like robots, ala Westworld or something, except they can all do a creepy robot version of the Twist, that'd be cool too) and caretakers with walkie-talkies and jumpsuits that'll chase us around.
And then we'll come to another wall, and we'll climb that.
Or mebbe we'll just find an exit this time heh.
And we'll come face to face with a totally futuristic megalopolis, an entire planet crawling with robots and flying cars and dudes with jetpacks and helmets and laser guns and stuff.
But no cat people, 'cause I hate cat people.
Yah, alien races that are human bodies with the heads of animals are the worst, none of that.
Alligator men are okay as long as you know its campy and there's only one of 'em, y'know, like a monster instead of a whole race of Alligator Men who understand nature better than us 'cause they're part animal (ugh) or have a culture based on might and dying in battle like some half-assed version of the Vikings (gah Klingons heh).
So anyways we get a job working the docks at a starport, and we start to learn about the Real World from all these toothless crackhead heavy metal space pirates and prostitutes, with nothing expected of us, 'cause we're dumbass no-technology Amish people.
Or mebbe we're hillbillies who know all about NASCAR and moonshine and doing bootleggers to escape from the cops or something, 'cause that'd give us a genetic edge in the space pilot-slash-mechanic-slash smuggler thingie, but you get my point.
See, in a game like that, all the UO people like Raph could stay in that Amish medieval faire place at the beginning until they were ready to make the transition to the good stuff (heh heh heh heh heh).
And everything is intuitive, you don't gotta know anything or read the instructions or know any tiresome scfi background trivia garbage to get started, 'cause yer a know-nothing innocent-ass two-fisted Amish guy who is always doing funny-ass shit like defending a woman's honor and whatever.
Or you are a wrestling fan from a Trailer park.
Or a caveman, same thing.
Mebbe there's two or three races and starting points, that's always good for replayability heh.
Yah, mebbe you need more of them starting place things, now that I think about, for folks from other cultures, but those are the only ones I'm familiar with ahaha.
Dude, c'mon, that's the awesomest blueprint for a Traveller-Star Frontiers-Firefly-Frontier-Privateer type game there's ever gonna be.
With kickass hover cycle chases through the streets and Post-Apocalyptic Super Vans and those monster truck planetary explorer vehicles and ice planets with snow mobiles and Retro Rocket Rangers in silver spacesuits and evil corporations and milk-spewing androids and alien ruins that turn out to be the Ancient Super Advanced Ancestors of Human Beings ('cause you always gotta have that).
And helicopters.
And no cat people.
Easy peasy.
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