Today's idea seemed like such an obvious and fun way to combat the omnipresent irritation of spam email that I was surprised that some shareware game developer hasn't come up with it yet. Perhaps they have, though I did do a bit of checking prior to writing this entry (as I do with all my game ideas, before someone suggests otherwise).
The idea is simply thus: An anti-spam program, which you can program to check Outlook or internet e-mail accounts like any other anti-spam tool, configured with three different game modes to defeat the evil spam messages personally. Since spam is often encoded with bizarre information - if you've ever read one, they tend to have very creative means to avoid word-filters and the like, sometimes ending with several lines of bizarre idioms and passages from Great Expectations - they're ripe for being turned into a sufficiently unique set of numbers to use to create simple game environments. What this program will do is intercept the spam mail from your spam folder or what have you (after you check the email in case they're not spam first, of course) and then generate a game environment using passages from the oft text-heavy spams - using bits and pieces from the email text to create parameters and the like - and the player will have the aforementioned three game modes to "fight" the spam head-on, rather than simply (and boringly) delete them. This way, you might actually start to anticipate the next wave of "S0ft C1ali$!" and "want cheap mortgage?!" emails.
Mode 1 is simply the Barcode Battler mode, made up of RPG-ish one-on-one fights. The spam email selected will randomly generate a fighter complete with HP, Speed, Strength and Defence stats and it'll be up to your guy (which you can generate with a different spam e-mail, or simply create your own from scratch) to take it down. You can save your fighter's progress after every battle and the program can even hold onto spam emails which create fighters that are too tough for you to beat for a later rematch.
Mode 2 is a little more complex, and will need a seasoned programmer to properly come up with the right kind of generator model. It'll be an R-Type like stage with the enemy waves generated by the spam email, including the direction they fly in on and the type and difficulty of the enemy fighters. Alternatively, the spam email can be turned into some kind of big gunship boss (sort of like Panzer Dragoon's bosses, or the bosses in most rail shooters) which you take down in parts and the generated stats can be used to create all the gun turrets and weak spots for you to aim at. Perhaps the gunship can be comprised of several junk emails, and once you've destroyed one "side" of the gunship you can move onto the next.
Mode 3 is a lot like the previous mode, only instead of it being your spaceship versus a bunch of enemy ships it'll be a scrolling beat-em-up like Double Dragon. The actual stages will be pre-created for the program and be randomly selected for use. So you might get a city level, a forest level, a warehouse level and so forth, all of which will be in the program already. The enemies that show up will be generated by the email, perhaps using the generated values to make several "grunts" and one "boss", selected from existing sprites/AI in the program. The order you fight these guys, plus how many you take on in one area before moving onto the next, will also be derived from generated stats from the email.
For the rest of this update, I'll take a control email (taken from my inundated Gmail spam folder) and give examples of how it would translate into the three modes. Of course, this is prior to actually creating some kind of stat generator and the program itself, so I'm just making up stuff for the purposes of this exercise.
The email (I used one of the less pornography-related ones):
"Buy Canad1an m.e.d.l.c.a.t.i.o.n.s. Same High-Quality m e d i c a t l 0 n s as US meds do but lower prices!
Don't go to your local drug store, don't strain yourself with unnecessary prescriptions.
Everything you need at High Quality here: [link deleted]
Instant shipping, secure purchase, friendly support!
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claudia t afghan codify 7 birch
cholesterol dive b chartreuse carey bmw
castor chordata athletic 5 carboxylic clifton chevy"
So, a few things to note before we start:
1) See that bit at the end? About Claudia T Afghan? That's the sort of random variable I was talking about that's added to these spam mails when they're created. Don't ask me what the purpose of it is. Maybe a form of identification or some kind of cryptogram, I have no idea. And don't really care. But they're on a lot of these spam emails and they're perfect for making some semi-unique generated models.
2) Any links or the email sender will be ignored by the program. Simply to be wary of viruses and spyware and the fact that the sender account probably belongs to a real person who's computer has been infected with spyware. Obviously this program will take great measures to delete anything with any malicious viruses attached instead of using them to generate game stuff and allowing it onto the player's PC.
So, for Mode 1:
The frequent use of the letter C will make the opponent a prolific fire magic-user (pulling this out of my ass incidentally, the generator'll probably be a lot more complex than simply how many letter Cs are in the email). It'll have high Strength also but low HP, so it shouldn't be too problematic if you hit it hard and fast.
Mode 2: It's a short email, so it won't create a very long stage or particularly complex gunship boss. Perhaps the frequent letter Cs will create some kind of crescent wave weapon the boss would use on you.
Mode 3: The very first letter of the email is a B (as in "Buy Canad1an...") so it'll use stage B, an underground nightclub stage. The Cs in this case could be used to create a bunch of thugs with chain whips? The boss will be a helicopter you have to fight, simply because helicopter bosses are a running joke for me whenever I play a new game and, lo and surprise, one shows up. Even if the stage is underground. Has anyone noticed how tough they tend to be?
In closing, I'm guessing there are various other game modes that could be programmed to accept these generated stats and turn them into some kind of short, fun arcade-like game to play during lunch breaks when you're checking your email (which is where you'll find a new batch of "levels" to play with). I simply picked these three modes because I know Mode 1 already exists for numbers generated off barcodes and I figure Mode 2 and Mode 3 aren't particularly complex genres that require much design work that may easily run off a system based on randomly generated numbers from a spam email (though I may be erroneous in that belief).
If this game is going to be a relatively inexpensive shareware game that won't take up much resources (since you'll want to open it on the PC checking the email and only play it for 15 minutes or so), the stages and graphics will probably be sort of basic. I don't know whether using models and stage backgrounds from existing games (like Streets of Rage stages for Mode 3 or models from Super R-Type for Mode 2) would be the way to go, since there would be problems with copyright. Probably a better idea to just make them from scratch.
