Making the Game

Scott Hardie | August 16, 2006
In the news: Make your own Xbox 360 game. Essentially, pay Microsoft $99 for the basic developer toolkit, and they'll publish your game on Xbox Live and let you keep the rights. This isn't the same thing as the professional toolkit which costs thousands, but it's a pretty big innovation, and perhaps inevitable.

If you could make any video game, using the professional toolkit for sake of argument, what kind of game would you make?

Me: My only real answer is that I'd make a less textual version of FIN, but I'm quite pleased with the version I already have now. That said, whenever I play an X-Men game (I just gave up on the vastly overrated X-Men Legends), I'm always frustrated by the lack of depth it provides: The X comics are a universe of super-heroes unto themselves, and yet you get to play, what, eight of them? Matt and I once agreed that if we had a major game-development firm and the comics license, we'd turn out an X-Men game for fans: No story, just a fighting game, but it would include every conceivable character from the comics, hundreds of them. And they'd all have the power levels from the comics; Unlockable bonus character Juggernaut would be invincible, while Wolverine would heal almost immediately, and Jubilee would be useless. Oh sure, there'd be an option to "balance" the game by turning off these abilities, but I hate seeing "balance" throw off the license with inappropriate sights like Jean Grey beating up Blob.

Aaron Shurtleff | August 16, 2006
Gee, Scott, would some characters be unlockable with different power levels, since I knoiw some characters had different powers at different times. If you put Speedball in your game, I'd buy the 360 just to play as him, and that's a promise! ;)

I'd probably make some sort of RPG, since that's my favorite type of game! The genre has been done and done again, so I'm not sure how I'd differentiate my game, but that's what I'd do.

Kris Weberg | August 16, 2006
[pedantic comics nerd] Actually, Jean's telepathy would allow her to drop the Blob with a thought, and her telekinesis could do the same by, say, stopping his blood from flowing for a little while or blocking his windpipe.[/pedantic comics nerd]

As to games, I've always wanted to produce a sprawling Zelda-style adventure that rewards adventuring with a shifting game environment that changes in real time based on how long you've been playing it. Basically, it'd blend a humorously-rendered "Earth" with an adventure-RPG universe which is slowly bleeding into the normal world, and as the game progressed the real world would be gradually fusing with the fantasy universe, siumulataneously making available new and more powerful weapons and sklls while also making more and more dangerous monsters and environments increasingly common. It'd also have a comparatively open goals structure/hierarchy, with two "end boss" villains -- one of them Earthly, one fantasty-based -- both of whom require much work and effort to stop and whose respective defeats and setbacks would also affect game events and the "fusion" effect.

Ultimately, no two runs through would be the same so long as the player made different choices as to what to do next here and there.