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Friday, 10 December 1999 - Hoony
Doing it Differently
Rather than create a game focused on an imaginary "tournament idea", why not create a multiplayer game focused on the real tournament idea?
Out there in the world we have $100,000 tournaments, and we have masses of "famous players" and teams with reputations and histories that go back for years.
Why not make Q3A more realistic? Instead of the "arena masters" running the show, why not make the show an imaginary $1 million dollar "pro-gaming" competition, run by the World Deathmatch Federation (WDF)? You would still have to work your way through all the tiers and the maps, but you would be competing to win imaginary prize money, awards and points, and to top a league of "realistic" players and teams. I'm thinking of something along the lines of those golfing/ soccer simulations. Of course, why not just go the whole hog and make it really real :P.
Why not make the tournaments focused on real people playing? Instead of making the focus all the fantastic models you can choose from, make the model choice secondary to you playing as yourself. You would then have a different design philosophy at work - the idea that a real person will be using this model when they sit at their computer and play competitively. You could still have all those fantastic models, but they would be used for FFA - purely for fun.
Why not take the focus of the tiers away from FFA and introduce a number of "Teams" that you have to beat in order to progress to the next round? You could include some of the famous teams from around the world (I'm sure they wouldn't mind). Imagine your next opponents are Deathrow, or Clan 9, or Dust2Dust, or Memento Mori.
Newbies who play this game could be introduced to the real life of multiplayer computer gaming. There could be information about these top-level teams, links to their web sites, even demos of their past successes. Before you play the four bots which are programmed to represent each team (yeah, yeah, I'm dreaming I know) you could even read about their team play strategy. Just like those soccer simulations where you have to work your way through all those national teams to win the World Cup.
And of course in the Tournament part of the game, you could play against a series of "famous players" - Blue, Hakeem, Immortal, Kane, LakermaN, Makevelli, Thresh, and Wombat. Wouldn't that make the game a lot more interesting and educational? Wouldn't that provide a much bigger injection of interest in the whole multiplayer gaming thing?
The maps would now be designed specifically for "real people" to play. Instead of weird maps designed for the inhabitants chosen by the arena masters, we would have some decent maps for team DM and tournament play. Id Software could even design the game so that as the community adds more maps you can drop them into the appropriate folder and they appear among the selection list. Much like the demos.
In fact, the entire design interface of Q3A would change if this were the game that id Software made. Instead of the devilish imagery of monsters and mayhem that Lt. Grossman might object to, the interface would reflect something more like a team locker-room. You might even choose to use the game interface as your primary organiser for real-life team and tournament play. Think of it as your "personal organiser". With a little imagination, id Software could have designed a range of utilities designed for today's competitive Quake player.
Conclusion - Next page please