Extreme Librarian
by Joshua Dallman · in Game Design and Creative Issues · 12/10/2004 (11:05 am) · 6 replies
You've delivered papers on a bicycle. You've delivered passengers in your car. Now, from the makers of MMORPG Tycoon, it's time for the ultimate madcap career game!
Extreme Librarian
Beat up patrons asking for dumb information, destroy internet terminals as they try to spread through the library taking more and more room away from actual books, chase homeless people and drug users out of the bathrooms, and and check patron books in and out with heart-stopping pulse-pounding laser barcode reading action! It's the librarian like you've never seen her before. Check it out!
Platform: Windows/Macintosh
ESRB Rating: Teen
Coming Soon
Extreme Librarian
Beat up patrons asking for dumb information, destroy internet terminals as they try to spread through the library taking more and more room away from actual books, chase homeless people and drug users out of the bathrooms, and and check patron books in and out with heart-stopping pulse-pounding laser barcode reading action! It's the librarian like you've never seen her before. Check it out!
Platform: Windows/Macintosh
ESRB Rating: Teen
Coming Soon
About the author
#2
12/10/2004 (11:26 am)
I have a right to use the bathroom :P
#3
12/14/2004 (10:41 am)
Teach people the dewey-decimal system!
#4
12/14/2004 (12:03 pm)
Let's run with it baby!!! This is gonna be a smash hit! GRAND THEFT WHO!!?? I'm going down to the library with boxing gloves, some mace, and a tazer right now to do some...research.
#5
12/14/2004 (12:06 pm)
Haha, as a librarian myself, I can say this would not be that great of a seller :P It's possibly the most boring job there is, you check in books, and sit around, you check out books, and sit around some more... :P AND if your really lucky, you set up a fake christmas tree once a year, but get this, you don't even get to decorate it! Also, opposed to popular belief there is no beating of patrons :( We couldn't even throw out the guy who was selling porn magazines to the kiddies.
#6
Image a situation not dissimilar to the computer systems in Disclosure by Michael Crichton [the book, not the movie which sucked]. You can walk around in a big library-looking thing. Pull out books, look at them. They represent [vaguely] files in the book, but theren't no reason they couldn't represent real books or real content in your game.
The game wouldn't be so much a game as a learning experience. Try and make a TGE-based UI onto wikipedia, and any other big online many-text reference. You walk around, walk up to a dewey-derived position, and thar! Content, drawn from wikipedia. Or that other online thing with lots of books in electronic form.
Disturbingly, I'm already thinking of ways of implementing this. Abusing http is one of my favorite [geeky/work-related] pastimes, and this is a fantastic opportunity.
somewhat less serious
The R-rated game would include a large porn section, also dynamically grabbed from the internet. You'd have to go through a little curtained-off area to get to it, which you'd need a password for [to make it kid-safe, of course]. There'd be no windows, and the light would be low and red. For ultra realism, sometimes the pages of the magazines would be stuck together. Only magazines, in here. No books.
There'd also be a special UI once you go in, that only needs you to use one hand to "play" the game. Maybe the Apple HIG would be a helpful reference?
other concepts
There'd be a "librarian mode" where you'd have one of those little book trolly things, and you have to go around and put books back on the shelf. Other modes of play could include "random mode", where you're teleported around the library at random, and shown random books. There's a quiz at the end based on what you've seen. "expert mode" wouldn't have any text on the pages. "skilled mode" would just contain the vowels. [not that I just stole that idea from Pat Wilson or anything]
Wooo. I can hardly contain my excitment at such an enthralling-sounding game.
EXTREME edition: Your only weapon in the game would be a cattle-prod, which can be remotely enabled or disabled by the librarian. Every time a mobile phone goes off, it's enabled for exactly 30 seconds during which you go into stealthy "hunter" mode. It's open-season, and the taser feedback device in the mouse that comes in the box with the game is directly linked.
Your computer's microphone is placed near your mobile phone for extra "real-life" feel. How modern! Very few games can actually broach the real world with such tangible effectiveness.
In combination with the R-rated version, for anyone out there with "alternative" tastes, the taser device can be hooked into other online features. When the girl gets a supposed "shock", you get one too. It's all part of the experience. What disturbs me is that some people probably really go for that.
Gary (-;
PS As an aside, it's just occurred to me that almost everything here has been done in one form or another in real games or movies; obviously Disclosure, but there's also a whole horde of crappy porno games out there, and [I'm sure I'll get railed on for this] Postal2 is a pretty good example of a game that you can play peacefully all the way through [if you want], with silly weapons you can use once in a while when someone really pisses you off. There was that xbox taser mod a while ago [x-shock or something].
PPS. Yes, some of my least favorite things in the whole world are mobile phones and the antisocial behaviour they encourage.
PPPS. Well, that's about half an hour of my workday wasted thinking about that.
12/14/2004 (12:46 pm)
mildly seriousImage a situation not dissimilar to the computer systems in Disclosure by Michael Crichton [the book, not the movie which sucked]. You can walk around in a big library-looking thing. Pull out books, look at them. They represent [vaguely] files in the book, but theren't no reason they couldn't represent real books or real content in your game.
The game wouldn't be so much a game as a learning experience. Try and make a TGE-based UI onto wikipedia, and any other big online many-text reference. You walk around, walk up to a dewey-derived position, and thar! Content, drawn from wikipedia. Or that other online thing with lots of books in electronic form.
Disturbingly, I'm already thinking of ways of implementing this. Abusing http is one of my favorite [geeky/work-related] pastimes, and this is a fantastic opportunity.
somewhat less serious
The R-rated game would include a large porn section, also dynamically grabbed from the internet. You'd have to go through a little curtained-off area to get to it, which you'd need a password for [to make it kid-safe, of course]. There'd be no windows, and the light would be low and red. For ultra realism, sometimes the pages of the magazines would be stuck together. Only magazines, in here. No books.
There'd also be a special UI once you go in, that only needs you to use one hand to "play" the game. Maybe the Apple HIG would be a helpful reference?
other concepts
There'd be a "librarian mode" where you'd have one of those little book trolly things, and you have to go around and put books back on the shelf. Other modes of play could include "random mode", where you're teleported around the library at random, and shown random books. There's a quiz at the end based on what you've seen. "expert mode" wouldn't have any text on the pages. "skilled mode" would just contain the vowels. [not that I just stole that idea from Pat Wilson or anything]
Wooo. I can hardly contain my excitment at such an enthralling-sounding game.
EXTREME edition: Your only weapon in the game would be a cattle-prod, which can be remotely enabled or disabled by the librarian. Every time a mobile phone goes off, it's enabled for exactly 30 seconds during which you go into stealthy "hunter" mode. It's open-season, and the taser feedback device in the mouse that comes in the box with the game is directly linked.
Your computer's microphone is placed near your mobile phone for extra "real-life" feel. How modern! Very few games can actually broach the real world with such tangible effectiveness.
In combination with the R-rated version, for anyone out there with "alternative" tastes, the taser device can be hooked into other online features. When the girl gets a supposed "shock", you get one too. It's all part of the experience. What disturbs me is that some people probably really go for that.
Gary (-;
PS As an aside, it's just occurred to me that almost everything here has been done in one form or another in real games or movies; obviously Disclosure, but there's also a whole horde of crappy porno games out there, and [I'm sure I'll get railed on for this] Postal2 is a pretty good example of a game that you can play peacefully all the way through [if you want], with silly weapons you can use once in a while when someone really pisses you off. There was that xbox taser mod a while ago [x-shock or something].
PPS. Yes, some of my least favorite things in the whole world are mobile phones and the antisocial behaviour they encourage.
PPPS. Well, that's about half an hour of my workday wasted thinking about that.
Torque Owner Clint S. Brewer