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Peaceful video game.
Copyright, 2004. Justin Pappas
Statement of purpose: To create a game that employs peaceful means to resolve conflict, but in a way that still remains exciting and engaging to today’s gaming audience.
“Uncertain Epoch” is a game of “Adventure diplomacy”, in which players must face intense and exciting circumstances in order to complete the work of a “field stabilizer” in an uncertain future of severe environmentally affected earth.
-”Uncertain Epoch” would work best as a downloadable episodic series. Which would give “Uncertain Epoch” time to develop in the face of user feedback.
Story –
-Oil has run out, but a process has been developed to convert water into fuel.
-Trouble is, the water, once used is converted into a foul smelling black paste that takes centuries to bio-degrade.
- Because of the over use of water as fuel, oceans have receded and many new land masses have made themselves visible.
-Original land masses are polluted and covered in this black paste. So the new land masses are very appealing.
-Ownership of these land masses is shaky and unstable and much fighting has broken out, from the national level to the suburban. The land masses have maintained an “old west” sensibility and many minor conflicts there have reverberated into larger ones between the homeland nations.
-A group of leaders has come together to form a coalition of peace. This coalition has dispatched many “Field Stabilizers” onto these new landmasses.
-The role of the “Field Stabilizer” is to blend into the environment in order to understand the mindset of the people living on these landmasses and use that knowledge to promote peaceful compromise in hopes of easing tensions in the homelands.
Game play –
-The player takes on the role of one of these “Field Stabilizers” and with each installment of the game receives a new mission of peaceful diplomacy on the near-anarchistic land masses that have begun to appear on the surface of the earth.
-The game is first person so the player takes on the persona of the stabilizer.
-The player gets to choose which land mass to be dispatched to
-Each land mass has its own “personality”.
-Each mission challenges the player‘s instincts and occasionally their reflexes.
-As the player progresses, they gain rank and rise in position among the stabilizers, eventually becoming head of their own unit, dispatching and giving orders to other stabilizers.
-The player is given a small weapon which they are to use only in the most dire of circumstances. If the player’s use of the weapon is not approved by headquarters, they loose their rank and must begin the game again.
-Sample Missions-
1-The player is dispatched to an easternmost section of a land mass in the Mediterranean Sea. This land mass is newly populated by Israeli’s escaping the Lebanese/ Israeli conflict. But their claim on the land is challenged by a society of Sudanese refugees. Both sides have used violent means to get their point across. Your role is to infiltrate both of the militaries of each side, risking accusation of being a spy or enemy in order to sabotage violent attacks while promoting peace subversively.
2- A former “field stabilizer” has been tempted by a tribal leader to help him govern the entire coast of a prominent land mass in order to control the trade borders and basically charge whatever he wants in tax to the land mass residents. Your role is to infiltrate this group and inform the inhabitants of the land mass on what is going on and encourage them to fight it via simple acts of civil unrest. Unfortunately you are discovered by the renegade Field Stabilizer and arrested. You must then orchestrate a non violent prison protest, and escape to lead a band of determined individuals that fight to maintain an open connection to the coast in order to conserve fair trade