Game Idea: Big Insurance

*Takes place in an alternate reality in which there is a company called "Big Insurance" that charges the lowest introductory rates out of anybody.

*Gamer plays a character, with the physical appearance picked out of about a dozen options, that signed up for Big Insurance without reading the fine print about the contract being irreversible and permanent. They also cover every single thing that can possibly be insured, and the character is signed up for four to six of them.

* Big Insurance the company has some sort of horrible dirt on the government which allows them to get away with tactics that would normally be illegal.

* Big Insurance agents will do things like try to drive you off the road to increase your car insurance costs, frame you for an electrical fire to increase home insurance rates, expose you to radiation to increase life insurance costs and shatter your kneecap to increase medical insurance.

*The goal of the game is to fight and outwit your way out of various forms of attempted sabotage as well as earn enough money to pay for insurance when rates increase. Not having enough money to pay insurance bills will get the character arrested for a year.

*Making money in jail is difficult but necessary in order to have a chance of paying bills once released. There will be a "jail" mode and not doing well in jail mode essentially guarantees a quick ticket back to jail.

*Ten hours of playing Big Insurance is equivalent to a year inside the game. One game lasts for ten years of a character's life.

*Achievements within the game, at least in an app version of it, could be integrated with facebook, twitter, foursquare, score.ly and other appropriate social media sites.

Hot Sauced

*App idea that relies upon figuring out a comparison between alcohol consumption and spicy food consumption (based on the Scoville Scale, not caloric quantity).

*Once the two can be compared, the app user could input a certain amount/intensity of hot food consumption and there would be a graphic showing how drunk someone would get with the equivalent of alcohol.

*Could also be reversed, with an amount of alcohol (adjusted for time and body weight) typed into the app and the graphic would show the person sweating and chuuging cold, neutralizing beverages (or barely reacting at all) based on the equivalent amount of spicy hotness ingested.

*Would be a novelty app that would likely not be used very often, but its conceivable that hundreds of thousands if not millions of hot pepper enthusiasts and college students and others would be willing to drop 99 cents on this app if someone built it.

Quick food-Related Concept

If something like what I just thought of is out there then please let me know so I can use at at some point. If it does exist, I hadn't heard of it so here's what my idea is:

There are plenty of apps that help people measure their physical activity and plenty that give dining discounts, so why not combine the two? If someone is very hungry because they exercised extensively, wouldn't it be nice if they got a discount so that working up an appetite won't be an economic strain? This would only apply to large portions and carb loading the night (maybe 2 nights) before a big race. Would have to figure out some way to minimize fraud, but making this app would not only help drive business to restaurants but provide a public service by encouraging exercise.

Media Map

This is an app idea that I literally just came up with right after I started this "Startup Concepts" blog. It would consist of a map of the world, but instead of names of places it would feature books, movies and songs that feature those places. Only one place per piece of media, so books and movies would be put where they primarily take place. Sleepless in Seattle would be in Seattle, Gone With the Wind in Atlanta, the song "Kansas City" would be in Missouri and less obvious media titles would be placed at the discretion of employees.

Once media works are placed on the map, users could mouse over them to see what works take place in their city or in whatever other place that they're curious about. Double clicking on it could lead to the Amazon page for that product, with the affiliate links being the main source of revenue. Users could zoom in and out, just like with regular maps, for easier searching, and they would also be able to narrow down the maps to only have media items that fit within certain parameters such as year released and genre.

There could also be a quizzes section of the app, with the quizzes often requiring using the app in order to make answering the questions easier. If cheating can be guarded against, higher scores on the quizzes could earn a user increased privileges such and being able to message employees with advice regarding missing or misplaced media products or even earn moderation rights and/or a chance to work for the app.

Finally, this would heavily utilize researchers and therefore create at least a few jobs for people who majored in History and other Liberal Arts subjects.

A Little Explanation

I've come up with a bunch of business ideas over the years that I don't have the funds or managerial capabilities to actually start, and I'm tired of just waiting around for the perfect entrepreneur to find me and implement my ideas. So I've created this blog in order to share some of the ideas that I've had as well as new ones that I'm confident I'll come up with if I actually make coming up with such things a priority.

My goal is to come up with, and write down, several ideas per week. Many of them will likely be terrible, and sometimes I may accidentally come up with something that already exists, but hopefully some will actually be good and a little honest feedback will help determine which ones might be worth pursuing.

Feel free to e-mail me at ethan.mawyer@gmail.com if you're interested in discussing a concept in private or buying the rights to use the concept.