*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.
Will the horrible dirt impact game play? If not, it can probably be glossed over.
ReplyDeleteIf money from jail is critical, it should only be allowed for two types of players - outlaws with long arms and business owners. Joe the Plumber would just be out of luck.
I can see the fun in this if players can choose whether to be working stiffs or insurance agents.
When we were chatting, you mentioned that you felt your ideas were too complex for implementation. At the time, I didn't know you were talking about games. The ability to abstract the "fiddly bits" is what makes a game fun. In Monopoly, imagine if you had to pay a pro-rated utility bill for every property you owned. Ugh! It adds complexity without making a sizable effect on the goal of the game. So, leaving it out doesn't hurt.
Playtesting with scraps of paper will be the best way to winnow out the good ideas from the great ones. Then you can spend more time on the great ones :)
Cheers,
Mitch