RPG that teaches people useful skills

What I want people to learn
- Make the player build w/e other r/l skills that will help him/her improve their real lives.


The elements of happiness
- I want people to understand that Maslow's hierarchy of needs is what they should be focusing on.
- You can populate the rest of "what I want people to learn" with just the skills necessary to meet each of those needs (eg making friends, dating, choosing a career)


Conversation skills
- I want to train people to "ping" other people by making an innocuous comment or asking a quick question and then paying attention to the tone of the person's response. Low tone/energy, short response means no interest. Higher-pitched/energy or longer response means they might be interested in talking more.
- I think I may want to abstract away all of the conversation. The emphasis should be on the fact that you will get better with experience. If there's an easy way to incorporate it I'd be interested in exploring it, but I have a feeling it could get very complicated very quickly.


Dating / attraction / marriage / relationships
- Model how, if you spend time talking to one person, it makes it easier to strike up a conversation with other people (eg approaching women after having gone on a date)
- Model how it is better to change your definition of 'success' to celebrate smaller things, like just being willing to walk towards someone you're attracted to instead of walking away from them
- Model that method of approaching I practiced where you stay seated, and you practice spotting women you think are attractive and getting up out of your seat and walking towards them.
- Model the method of gradually moving closer and closer to where a girl is, like in Amarcord.



Time / task management
- Have one component of the game be the tracking of tasks / having a task list: the player is given a notepad and has to write down tasks as they're given, and remember which tasks need to be completed before which other tasks. But this will require having a fully functional task thing in the game, which might be a lot of work. So the first step may be to have tasks that are complicated and random enough that people will NEED to have a task list (ie they won't be able to consult an online guide that tells them what to do).
- Also make the player use the Pomodoro Technique.
- Make one of the challenges having the player focus in one direction instead of jumping from one thing to the next. ie have lots of options they can choose from
- I want the different breakdowns of time: their whole life, ten years, 4 years, 1 year, 1 quarter, 1 month, 1 week, 1 day. I want people to finish the game knowing how to break things down like that.
- I want people to learn to create and use checklists.
- I want people to have to schedule things around their work / school.


Grooming (diet / clothing / etc)
- Make the player chew their food 50 times. But don't just let them mash on the chew button; make them count while they're doing it. eg make them choose when to swallow the food and penalize them if it's less than 50. Also, don't prevent them from doing things while chewing. Have it as some separate button they press while they can still walk around, navigate menus, etc.
- Make the player eat a little bit at a time, maybe make them drink protein powder to lose weight.
- Make the player improve their acne
- Make a component where the player has to improve their weight.
- Make the player smell bad and have to learn to shower every day. Make it so they can't tell at first, to model how you won't be able to tell in r/l.


Deciding where to live




Deciding what profession to pursue




Dealing with addictive / habit-forming activities
- eg drugs, tv, videogames. I want people to understand how to balance their current happiness with their future happiness.
- I want people to know how to break out of those kinds of activities: gradually reducing exposure instead of trying to stop all exposure immediately.

- Make the player build up a memory of positive experiences, and punish the player if he has a bad experience by making him "traumatized" (equivalent of being severely wounded), and have it take a long time for him to heal.

- I'm imagining this as a Pokemon-style game: top-down, simple graphics, no loading screens between world sections, 
- See if you can work in horror, comedy, tragedy, and other things people won't be expecting but will enjoy:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10 ... ore-239459
A guy commenting on Alien: Isolation: "I’d say the only shame of the game is that you know, in advance, that you should be terrified of these sounds. That’s the one thing that (even though it just means I’m dead scared the whole time) sort of spoils a horror game overall: You know what you’re getting into, you know you should be scared before the game gives you much to be scared about."
- I want to explore the possibility of designing the game to be played through several times, with increasing difficulty each time (like with GoldenEye). I should figure out how long the game should aim to be so that players don't get bored. Maybe just copy GoldenEye's game length? Including the number of areas?












Below are some brainstorming notes I took while watching this video explaining the different major parts of an RPG created with RPGMaker:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdvilXNMxtQ

- What's the equivalent of actors?
-- Wingmen
-- Girlfriend
- encounters:
- what's the equivalent of HP and MP?
-- HP: self-confidence?
- What's the equivalent of skills?
-- openers (PU)
-- detecting IOIs
- What's the equivalent of leveling?
- What's the equivalent of classes?
- What's the equivalent of items? (eg potions, antidote, mana up, magic up, resist up)
-- Alcohol
-- Caffeine
-- Ice-cream
-- Any kind of mood-altering substance
- What's the equivalent of weapons?
-- Well, items are consumed (I think), so weapons would be durable goods.
-- So...maybe some kind of prop, like a deck of cards (for doing magic tricks)
-- A bunny rabbit
-- A kitten
- What's the equivalent of enemies?
-- People you need to converse with? There's a bit of a difference in r/l b/c you expect to interact with 

people over time, not just once.
-- So maybe the goal here is to be able to charm people when you first interact with them.
- What's the equivalent of 'troops'?
-- Groups of people. Cliques.
- What's the equivalent of 'states'? (eg posion, blind, silence, sleep, paralysis, cower)
-- Embarrassed
-- Shocked
-- Any kind of emotional state that would affect a person's behavior.
- What's the equivalent of 'animations'?
-- Just moving around during conversation, eg holding up a cat for the person to look at.
- What's the equivalent of 'common events'?
-- He uses it to track survival variables that are constantly falling, so maybe use it to track things like 

that.


















Description - I need to modify this to fit Status
"Catch the Clown" is a little action game. In this game a clown moves around in a playing field. The goal of the player is to catch the clown by clicking with the mouse on him. If the player progresses through the game the clown starts moving faster and it becomes more difficult to catch him. For each catch the score is raised and the goal is to get the highest possible score. Expected playing time is just a few minutes. 

Goals/Resources

Game objects - There will be just two game objects: the clown and the wall. The wall object has a square like image. The wall surrounding the playing area is made out of these objects. The wall object does nothing. It just sits there to stop the clown from moving out of the area. The clown object has the image of a clown face. It moves with a fixed speed. Whenever it hits a wall object it bounces. When the player clicks on the clown with the mouse the score is raised with 10 points. The clown jumps to a random place and the speed is increased with a small amount.
Sounds - We will use two sounds in this game. A bounce sound that is used when the clown hits a wall, and a click sound that is used when the player manages to click with the mouse on the clown.
Controls - Controls will be WASD along with the ability to move the mouse around and click on things. [But maybe there shouldn't be mouse required, as that prevents phone users from playing]
Game Play - The gameplay will be based on the simplicity of Pokemon.
Levels - Just one giant level, like in Pokemon. But not that big. I want it to be a single town or small city.

Artemis - Spaceship Bridge Simulator
http://www.artemis.eochu.com/?page_id=160
- it teaches teamwork. What if there was a similar game that trained people to work well together in the types of situations they'd encounter while running a startup? Or while married? The space setting seems a little too abstracted from the real world to get the same kinds of benefits...but maybe I'm wrong!

Modeling human interaction

- Start with a zoomed-out model, just like how shooting guns in games is modeled: you click on the person and they do something you want them to do.
- Then add in new things to model. So now you click on them and before they do something you want them to do, you need to make a decision that will decide how the other person will react.
- You will need to have some way to make the decision, and I think the way to do that is to have the player keep track of both his own behavior and the behavior he observes in the other person, and make a decision based on that.
-- For example, a simple case might be observing the other person and seeing if they do one of those 'tells' that are depicted on 'Lie to Me'.
- Now if this is all being simulated graphically (like, say, a 2D sprite or 3D model), you could have the player watch for these tells visually (like in the very innovative 'Spy Party').
- If you're doing a text-only game, you'll need to present the tells through text, and since presenting the tells through text would make them obvious, you might want to have some other method for deciding whether or not the player will notice the tells.
-- For example, you could have the player read books to learn about different tells, and then they can choose from a menu to spend time looking specifically for those tells, which would raise some % chance that they'll spot the tell in future conversations. And then you can have that % drop over time if they don't continue to allocate time to practice looking for that tell, as a way of teaching people about the way human memory works (we forget stuff we don't practice!).

- I think modeling human relationships and interaction more carefully could be a great way to make a game that both men and women would enjoy. Right now there's a lot of division, where most men will play games that involve violence and adrenaline rushes (because that seems to be something men have some instinctual drive toward), and women seem to mostly play casual games like FarmVille that don't involve violence or adrenaline rushes.
-- Ex: http://usabilitynews.org/video-games-ma ... er-social/

Quote:

Results reveal that males overwhelmingly played more violent video games than females. However, females reported playing both violent and non-violent almost equally. Males were more likely than females to be drawn to games from the Strategy, Role Playing, Action, and Fighting genres whereas females were more likely than males to play games from the Social, Puzzle/Card, Music/Dance, Educational/Edutainment, and Simulation genres. Overall, more males than females treated video game playing as their primary hobby, while females viewed playing video games as less important than other hobbies such as watching television.

-- Ex: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/ ... women-play

Quote:

I can use my wife and I as examples for you if you like...

We're both 29 and as for games...

What she's been playing and enjoying lately...
1) Minecraft, so much Minecrafy, she lives and breathes Minecraft at the moment.
2) Pokemon Black
3) Hidden Object Adventure Games (She's been going through a lot of them lately)

What my wife seems to enjoy most are games with a more "relaxed" playing atmosphere where you aren't being constantly bombarded by enemies, stimuli... what have you. She also really enjoys puzzles, especially in the Legend of Zelda titles, though she isn't very good at them we definitely play them together as I am complete shit at Zelda puzzles.

-- Ex: http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64900.html

Quote:

"Many of my female friends play crosswords, 'Soduku,' 'Zuma,' 'JewelQuest' and other casual games on a regular basis," Robyn Tippins, a community manager at Yahoo Developer Network, told TechNewsWorld.

However, that's not all they play. Another commonly held myth -- that female gamers are primarily only interested in casual games -- is also out of date.

"The only difference is that women typically spend less time in a single sitting playing than their male counterparts," said Phaedra Boinodiris, chief executive officer of WomenGamers.com.

-- Ex: http://www.casualconnect.org/content/ga ... o-ten.html

Quote:

I can think of at least ten reasons why the women who might not play hardcore games so often play casual games instead:

Casual games are typically short—quick to play and easy to pause. Say you’re a mom trying to cook dinner, take care of chores, run errands, etc. If you’re going to sneak in a little play-time, you need a game you can save often and pause at any moment. You need to be able to pick it up, play for 20 minutes or so, and run out the door—as opposed to a game which requires several hours of focused play to progress.

You can stop a casual game with little consequence. When you’re on the go, you don’t want to be penalized for leaving a game in the middle or letting it end on its own. If you are playing Solitaire, Tetris, or Checkers, it doesn’t really hurt you to leave the game at a moment’s notice and not come back. Although some versions of games may have timers running, and online versions may have session time-outs, usually the stiffest penalty you might face is losing a chance at a record when you have to quit a high-scoring game in progress.

Casual games are easy to learn. When you don't have much time and you aren't a “hardcore gamer,” it helps when a game is easy to learn and instantly fun. Casual games always have relatively small learning curves. It's the whole “easy-to-learn, hard to master” mantra. And if you’ve only fifteen minutes of play-time, you don't want to feel frustrated because it took you that long to figure out how to choose your game mode.

Casual games come with easy-to-follow instructions. Many casual games feature tutorials, practice levels, and help sections that are easy to find and easy to follow. You may have heard the statement “Women read manuals; men don't.” Although that is a generalized stereotype (as almost all things in these sorts of discussions are) it is often true. A woman is more likely to read the help section, read a manual, or play an optional tutorial than a man is.

You can try a casual game before you buy it. It’s reasonable for anyone to want to know what they’re getting before they spend some money. When you’re serious about gaming, to find out about a game, you’ll visit the chat rooms, read the blogs, subscribe to some industry mag, and find some excuse to visit E3—anything to find out about the next cool game. As anyone who has done that can tell you, however, there are not very many women who are inclined to do all that work to find out about a game. Thus, the free demo that comes with most casual games is a superior alternative, ideally suited to those who see gaming more as a diversion rather than an obsession.

Casual games are inexpensive. Another reason I think so many women like casual games is that they offer a relatively low price point. A mom trying to feed a family, take care of the home, and pay for piano lessons is likely to be more willing to buy a casual game for $4.99 or $19.99 than she is to buy a console game for $49.99. What’s more, I’m guessing that even those who are totally hooked on a favorite casual game like what that $20 says about them: that playing the game is just a silly little pleasure—not that big of a deal.

Casual games don’t require much computing firepower. In general, the average home PC with an Internet connection can run almost any casual game on the market. It is much easier to get into games when you don’t have to repeatedly upgrade your hardware or buy a console system just to play the game. So while a woman is already on the computer checking e-mail or surfing the web, it’s easy to take some time out to play a casual game.

Casual games usually don’t feature the stereotypical video game turnoffs for women
If you ask women what they dislike about the most popular casual games, they’ll generally mention the same issues: unnecessary violence and big, bouncing boobs. To some degree, the young male demographic generally associated with hardcore games is a self-fulfilling prophecy: because they are designed for young males, that’s what they attract. In contrast, casual games are devoid of those turn-offs. In fact, their imagery is almost explicitly inoffensive and friendly—and women notice.

Casual games don’t have the same physical requirements as hardcore games. I’ve heard of women suffering from nausea or motion sickness while playing FPS games like Halo or Unreal Tournament. Also, many females feel they can’t compete with the fast-twitch play required by some hardcore games. In contrast, you don’t need great physical prowess or exceedingly fast hand-control to play Diner Dash or Solitaire. 

Casual games are more fun! Ultimately, fun is what really matters.

- Each interaction with a person could be a "level" that takes 5-20 minutes.

- Try to tap into Minecraft's ability to set a stage for stories:http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/03 ... se-review/

Quote:

Article:
From a narrative point of view, it’s interesting for much the same reason that Minecraft was. Both it and Din’s Curse are games with little to nothing set in stone, plot-wise. There are no characters purpose-built for you to fall for, no set-pieces to take your breath away and no ending to provide closure, and yet the free-form design of the game provides something infinitely more alluring. You create your own stories, and explore your own landscape where anything can happen.

To put it another way, I played Torchlight for some ten hours and while I enjoyed myself, there’s part of me that considers those hours wasted. I was just clicking on monster after monster in an addict’s trance. Walking away from Din’s Curse, I’ve got all these lovely memories of heroism and failure, of tension and peace, of the time the town I was saving got ravaged of a thunderstorm of such apocalyptic intensity that it was actually safer to stay in the dungeon.

Comment:
I’ve only played the base game, but I really, really enjoy it. The mechanics are admittedly boring as all get-out. However, that’s not much of an issue to me, because I’ve never played a Diablo-like that didn’t bore me to tears long before completing the game.
But the dynamic nature of the game keeps me coming back for more. I’m always excited to see what the next town has in store for me. And there have been a few towns I’ve been through that led to me eventually simply rushing through to get to the next without fixing all the problems to hide the shame from failing the town in so many ways.

it’s really quite a brilliant game. Probably not for everybody, but I would suggest that every at least try the demo, since it really is quite the experience.