Monday, February 8, 2010

Video Games: Reverse Scoring

I'm not one for video games save the occasional round of Rock Band or Guitar Hero at a party. I used to play all the time, in arcades and at home when I was a teenager, but over the years I grew out of them. There are some great games and some really bad ones but one thing that they all share is that the scoring usually starts at zero and you have to earn points and the person with the most amount of points wins. I thought about reversing that and the game was to see how many points you can lose. The least amount lost wins. One would ask, well, is it possible to 'earn' so many points to the point where you go all the way down to zero? I say no, because you reduce points by doing good but you can just as easily add points by doing bad things. Now, what is this game you ask? I was thinking of a role-playing game, say, you start off as a billionaire and through trades, marriages, divorces, natural disasters, you start to lose the things you had in the first place. The trick is to minimize the damage and test your problem solving skills. Say in the game, you get a divorce and your spouse wants half your earnings, you can 'hire' a lawyer to help reduce alimony, thereby only having to give up a smaller portion and thus, not losing as many points. Make sense? Sound silly? I think it'd be much more interesting to play a game as someone who has it all and has to fight tooth and nail keep it, rather than someone who has nothing and has to struggle for it.

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