Read this sad story of Gun Loco’s cancellation over at gamasutra (always sorry to hear the work is being abandoned, and a likely huge team of developers is seeing their baby killed).
First thought was : they should rebrand the game as an adaptation of “Clans of the Alphane Moon“! (old philip k dick novel, about a moon that has been taken over by the remnants of an insane asylum, but is basically a key launching ground for either side of the war between humans and insectoid aliens. Each faction on this moon is based on a particular psychosis. So it’s a Psycho-Planet instead of a Prison-planet?).
Who wouldn’t love to see a retro-hip take on psychotic clan warfare (Which clan will you choose: the manic depressive flash gordons, or the paranoid schizophrenic buck rogers? perhaps the manslaughtering Doc Savages? maybe the hebrephenian rocketeers? ).
Who wouldn’t love scifi-fantasy-pulp take on the gory-as-hell shooter?
And as a fan of the novel, i’ve love to see gameplay based around the remote-controlled synthetics, who are CIA spies going undercover on the planet as doctors/negotiators. And of course a menu system based around the “telepathic Ganymedean slime mold” side kick character idea.
…
but then i dug up a trailer and realized the game has a “wacky hip” cartoony vibe that wouldn’t fit at all. All the wrong music and voice acting. oof.
(sorry to ramble randomly off into la-la land with all this, just wanted to record a suggestion that will almost certainly go no-where. Because it got me excited).
The trailer doesn’t look to far off from a Alphane Moon game to me. Contemporary people love to infantilize themselves by wrapping themselves up in their mental maladies, so I think it’d hit.Wouldn’t it be easier to make big changes in the characters than the environments? Having “clans” based on DVSM-IV types seems more important than matching the setting from the book.
I was thinking of just claiming the characters were parts of factions (not changing character models or environs). basically just changing some menus.
they could claim these people were so “insane” they recreated parts of earth on their planet.
i think changing the sound effects, and “mood”, would be the hardest thing that MUST be done. and won’t be done. kinda baffled anyone thought they were going down a good path.
don’t really follow your note on people loving to infantilze themselves by wrapping mental maladies. you mean in general? or in games? is this a knock on women who say “they so crazy”? is this a knock on me saying “me so neurotic”? or something else?
ain’t we all wild crazed?
(…have this small forming thought that we enjoy “drama” in our movies, because we enjoying seeing identity masks being torn down and reformed into something new)
My comments were not directed at any individual or gender. If anything I was picking on the profession of psychology, and the DVSM-IV in particular. Like any good novel’s, Clans’s protagonist goes through some big changes by the end of the book. The hero realizes his ex-wife had been making him more controllable for years by convincing him he was insane, actually he is well-adjusted. His wife was bonkers it turns out, but clever.
Back to picking on psychology, the incidence of mental illness in primitive societies is almost nil. It is a fact that civilization causes the disorders we call schizophrenia, depression, bi-polar, ect. Yes they have biochemical mechanisms too, but no head shrinker has ever been able to explain away the lack of these disorders in hunter-gatherer societies. I’m sure u r now sorry u asked.
Yr point about people enjoying the unmasking and reformation of drama is well put, and applies to Clans in spades.
Since u love meat and r apparently on some sort of feminism kick, I highly recommend this book by a radical feminist former vegan Kieth Lierre title The Vegitarian Myth. Entertaining.
By the way, I think it is silly to be a feminist or a masculinist (aka fascist). Not that u have claimed any such thing. On second though maybe I am a fascist sometimes, when the mask is off….
Regards,
Shawn