Sniper Game Idea

08/19/14

You know what would be cool? A true-to-life snipers-only game.

Actually, it would be slow and possibly boring. Hours/days staying hidden while hunting for another human being who's trying to stay hidden while they hunt you. It could be pretty suspenseful, but the majority of the time would be dull.

Currently, shooters solve this problem by controlling the setting such that finding and shooting your opponent is streamlined, and hiding is made more difficult. But perhaps we can make a sniper-based mechanic interesting without simplifying and streamlining the shooting.

How about instead we alter the resources available to the players.

The setting:

• One giant area
• Two well-camoflauged, opposing snipers
• Equipped with a sniper-rifle and a radio for communication with the each other

Why give the snipers radio communication with each other? It adds an entirely different dynamic to the game. A player will have a long period of time to talk with the other player about anything. And let's make it so this game only lets you play strangers. This could lead to mind games, where players try to coax information out of each to easier find and shoot their enemy, or it could lead to a broad conversation with someone that ends with one player killing the other, severing the connection forever.

Of course, there are problems with this idealized setup. Players wouldn't use dialog with an opponent purely in a friendly or game-focused manner. There'd be trolls, as well as generally toxic behaivior from people who should know better.

So, we need a good ban system. No punishment for ever ending the game, and the ban will tell the game what kind of game you're not interested in and what kind of game your opponent seems to be interested in.

What kind of games am I talking about? I think some naturally emergent meta-game would include:

• Just play the game
  • Silently
  • With dialog mind-games
• General conversation
• Romance-oriented and/or sexist BS
• Insult-oriented (aka troll behaivior)

I'm sure it can be more varied and more specific than the above, but it's a good quick hypothesis. So, to solve the problem, games can be ended at any point by either party, and they just state the reason(s) they ended the game (and the other player will not be aware of this decision).

This serves two purposes:

• The unsatisfied user is incentivized to tell the game what they don't want out of the game as soon as they become unsatisfied
• The game learns more about what users perceive the other user is trying to get out of the game

The game can get the information it needs to match-make the user to an ideal game. As such, I don't think there should be any penalty for ending a game. Important to incentivize ending unfun games to help game find the enjoyable experience.

But that can easily be abused. Trolls could of course immediately end a game for superfluous reasons. The match-making system would definitely need a lot of work. But let's get back to what I'm trying to do.

So, players could talk to each other. Players are strangers to each other, though, that's necessary. It's part of the illusion of fighting an enemy sniper (I would assume that usually they are strangers to each other). But where we break the simulation hopefully allows interesting things to the dynamic.

I would assume (or perhaps hope) that most players are interested in light-hearted conversation. And now, that enemy you're hunting down is a human being. Someone whom you're only interacting with through a competition that ends with neither of you able to talk to each other again.

Well, unless the players share contact info before ending the game....

Let's add a fourth end condition (the three so far: quitting for conflict of interests, shooting enemy player, getting shot by enemy player): friendship. An in-game way of sharing contact information which ends the game with neither party killing the other.

Here's how it works:

• One of the players activates the friendship option
• Their location is revealed to the other player
• The other player
  • can easily kill the friendship player
  • can also activate his friendship option
• They travel to each other
• The game ends with them shaking hands
• Friendships and stuff can be established in-game

Now, if the players want to share contact info, there's an in-game option that adds an illusionary vulnerability. This would hopefully incentivize against just telling each other contact info, and also allows a non-violent resolution to the game (a rare option in shooters).

Perhaps this idea allows some means of the player to consider the actual horror of what's going on with real sniper battles, and they will take the opportunity/risk of befriending an enemy instead of killing them.

But I suppose the game actually needs incentive to distrust and/or kill the other player. Now, the incentive doesn't need to be high, as the fact that it's all not real will lead many people to reasonably not care that they are simulating something that in reality is horrifying (which is perfectly reasonable, I think). Just a small push, to maybe make the friending a special event....

Got it.

If the game makes it to the end, and it ends with one player killing the other, then it is added to a win/loss record. Stupid reasons to sever a connection to a real human being instead of befriending them.

I like it.

Added to Someday/Maybe