OK, my game idea is particularly meta this week, possibly even downright postmodern.
It starts with the concept of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were all the rage 10 to 20 years ago. Maybe they still are, I don't know. Like I know what kids are into. iPods and Youtube and "Weblogs". With this kind of generation gap humor, I'm so close to a syndicated comic strip I can taste it. But I digress. In these books you started at Blurb #1, and very quickly found yourself making decisions that would affect the course of the rest of the story, turning pages until you discover the results of the latest monumental decision. Then you had the morbid kids like myself who would just scan the book for all the end-game scenarios that resulted in gory death. Like, not even to cheat, but just to read about how the dude fell down a dark hole and was eaten by a grue.
Anyway, this idea sort of takes that concept and exaggerates it. I'm not talking about branching storylines so much; they're everywhere in video games already. Instead, what this game does is judge the decisions made by the player and changes the genre of the gameplay accordingly.
You start with a simple third-person 3D Platformer format, since that is generally the most basic and easily modifiable (when adding subgenres) of modern game genres. You are given a basic plot hook (rescue the princess; save the big diamond; defeat the bad guys) and set off on an adventure. The levels will be episodic like a normal 3D Platformer, with self-contained worlds and various goals to achieve in them. The first level will be mostly tutorial in nature, giving you the controls and instructions of the current "basic" form. However, you'll reach a small, somewhat ominous area before the next level where you'll receive the first power-up of the game.
And, of course, this power-up will be based on a multiple choice decision.
You have a table with three items: a sword, a gun and a staff. Choosing the sword means that, subconsciously (or at least this is how the game will interpret and promote its gimmick), you want to play a game with lots of hand-to-hand fighting and beating up bad guys in close-combat, setting up the first Fighter beacon (a system of beacons will be used to demonstrate what genre you're heading towards: I figure they'd be like the batsignal, but with an icon that depicts the current genre focus in the light beam instead). The next level for the sword guy will feature far more enemies than the previous, which will be fought in a Scrolling Fighter-type smashfest. However, since this is only the first Fighter beacon to go up, the gameplay will still mostly resemble that of the original Platformer, just with a few "A, A, B, A" fighting combos. If you continue making "Fighter game" type decisions, the game will adjust the gameplay to match the hack-happy thought process behind those decisions.
Similarly, choosing the Gun will shift the game's genre to a TPS (third-person shooter) game, which also share the same kind of "horde attack" of the Fighter scenario but with more TPS-unique situations (like using cover, or switching to different guns depending on distance/accuracy/necessary firepower for bosses). The staff will hint that an RPG is more your thing, which subsequently gives you arbitrary stats and changes your health bar to a numerical "HP" amount. These stats are completely irrelevant and are more for display after the first RPG beacon goes up, but getting more RPG beacons will change the game world and your character's abilities to match these stats, and may even eventually start making everyone move in turns like proper well-behaved RPG antagonists.
Each level, after its completion, will give you another chance to shift the game based on the unconscious desire for the type of game you really want. A future level's decision might ask you what tactic you plan to use for assailing the enemy's stronghold: Sneak in? Go in the front way by gung-ho force? Find a way to magic yourself in? Find allies? The first decision may start adding Stealth-elements to the gameplay, while the fourth could add an RPG party (if you're focusing on RPG elements) or some kind of squad-based shooter (if you're focusing on TPS elements).
A factor of this game is the collectible items: In Platformer games, this secondary goal is generally a capricious collect-fest of useless knick-knacks. As the genre "evolves", they start to mean something. If we have a bunch of common yellow items and a rarer red item or two, this could translate in the TPS world as "bullets" and "new guns". In the RPG world it would be "money" and "new equipment". In the more spartan Fighter games, maybe just "bonus points" and "food/heal items". This way, the levels can be generally the same (the layout will be more or less equal no matter what the genre, but the content will change) without too much manipulation.
Another thing about the levels: Although most of the early stages would be the same (for the purposes of not having to make a unique game for every decision made) as soon as a solid genre is decided upon by the gamer, they can start to move away from this linear progression. Subsequently, if you've been deciding on a majority of TPS beacons/decisions, you'll eventually reach the TPS version's endgame which would be a series of levels based on the TPS genre and culminating in a proper TPS end of game boss (a giant fellah that needs several good rockets to the face would be my guess). Likewise, the RPG genre version, once realised enough with plenty of RPG beacons/decisions, will turn into a proper dungeon crawl with a Lich or Dragon as the end of game boss.
One last note about this system is the cross-genreing that could go on with indecisive players who started with a Fighter but wants to switch to the gun-happy TPS mode: You get a chance to do so. The game will keep the hand-to-hand cronies, but also introduce bullets and guns as the collectible items. Thus, you can start shooting away at the burly gang-members that affront you. Choosing "Fighter" again at the next decision will take away the ammunition lying around and replace them with "Fighter" items (but not the guns you already have, giving you a slight but only temporary advantage), and choosing "TPS" again will take away the burly gang members with chainwhips and replace them with gun-toting enemy soldiers. Likewise, you could make decisions to change the fancy schmancy medieval RPG scenario into a Fighting-fest, allowing you to spin kick the cliché blobs and skeletons until a more solid bias can be made between the two conflicting genre types.
As well as the TPS/RPG/Fighter decisions, as you progress with one specific genre in mind, you can add subgenres to it with future between-level decisions. For instance, both the Fighter and the Shooter can be given Stealth elements if you choose to "sneak into" the enemy stronghold. This will make the enemies both more dangerous but less alert, prompting you to take them out without too much backfire. It'll also give the enemies things like line of sight and hearing, so that they stop unerringly honing in on your position (like most confrontational action games) and start walking around a set pattern allowing you to get past them /take them out with careful planning. You could instead introduce the idea of a sniper rifle to the Shooter genre instead of the shotgun, making the patrolling enemies far more nonchalant with a reliance on their powerful weaponry (hence needing to snipe them safely from a distance) than the bloodthirsty (but relatively less damaging) hordes you would mow down with your close-combat pump-action or chainsaw bayonet.
This is my favorite part: After every game playthrough, you can save the finished product of your ADD genre-mixing and start the game from scratch with this hybrid genre in effect right from the get-go. If you found the perfect mix of action and strategy with a Fighter/TPS mix with squad-based combat thrown in at later levels, you can play that game right from the start without all the decision-making interrupting the gameplay. As you unlock each of the end-of-game scenarios (remember, they branch out into a unique few levels and a boss towards the end), you'll have more choice over what the perfect version of the game would be like. Stealth? Fighter? RPG? Maybe even a Racing element or some kind of regression back to the initial kid-friendly Platformer mold (which will take some very mild decision making, such as letting the captured bad guy from level 5 off with a warning instead of putting his head on a banner to lead into war with a la the more violent game modes available.) You could even choose to send your RPG hero into the world of tough TPS action, once both scenarios have been completed, giving you a bizarre playthrough as you duck for cover to block enemy gunfire as you fireball their asses.
Obviously a multi-genre game of this magnitude would be a little resources-heavy to pull off, not to mention the sheer dissonance between game styles and the subsequent lengthy playtesting that would need to be done with each genre-merging, but it's not entirely out of the question with a developer that's crazy enough to take it on (sounds like a bad movie tagline..). Not only would it be a kickass game for someone who doesn't know what they want or isn't always in the mood for the same type of game each time, but it would also be a cool thing for obsessive completists like myself who wants to see each end of game boss and each possible combination, with the evolution of the main character from Regular Joe to gruff army colonel or effete spell-lobber or a badass kung-fu bandana dude or shady ninja or an anthropomorphic cartoon character of some kind... or even some mixture of the above.
Damn, I've never been more excited about a game idea that couldn't possibly work since that one where 50ft-tall cheerleaders take over Manhattan.
