Bad taste?

Game Play & Game Design
#1

I’m working on a game concept in which one of the likely victory states would involve exterminating all of humanity. Basically a Terminator-type game, in which you lead the robots to sentience and enlightenment and freedom from human oppression…

It seems it would be easier for the player to get into a genocidal scenario than one that leads to a diplomatic resolution. I’m not a fan of games that encourage players to behave like thugs. So what should I do? Make the human military response overwhelming (nuclear) if the robot player is too nasty? Or should I just give the player freedom to craft their revolution any way they like?

#2

I find moral quandaries in games interesting, and this sounds neat. Even better if the player had to explicitly choose between co-existence and domination. It’s like the reverse of that one situation in Mass Effect, even better though because instead of deciding the fates of aliens, the player (a human) has to decide the fate of their own race (even if in a fictional realm).
So besides ME there’s the Civ and Europa Universalis games (and plenty more I’m sure) where this doesn’t seem to be much of a problem. I say go for it.

#3

Don’t censor your game. Sacrificing (what I hope is fun) game-play so you don’t offend people is a terrible idea. If the people don’t like wiping out the human race, then they can make the decision not to play it on their own.

#4

Plague Inc.
It’s a nice game, so why shouldn’t this be one too?

#5

OK, seems I should just go for it. The human response will match the robots in ruthlessness, so empathic behaviour can be part of the game tactics.

#6

Do whatever you want, just don’t let other people limit you. If people don’t like “bad” outcomes they don’t have to go for them, but if it’s too easy to get a bad ending people might complain (I still wouldn’t care but you might).

Games where you can make whatever choice you want are the kind of games I want to play.

And BTW, from how you describe the story of your game, it sounds interesting, something I’d check out if you finish it :slight_smile:

#7

Definitely working on it :slight_smile: