Yes, this game idea is disturbing enough for it to need a trigger warning.

The game is a 3D shooter. In this game, you control a character who has a gun, and the goal is, of course, to shoot something.

The twist: That *something* is the player. Through the use of cameras or VR, the game knows where the player is, and the goal of the game is to get the PC to shoot the player. The better your aim, the better your score; the highest scores are obtained by shooting you in the face.

So, what do you think of this game idea? Does it sound disturbing? Does it sound like something you would be interested in trying if it existed?

Your thoughts?

This game idea was inspired by this article:
https://thehardtimes.net/harddrive/second-person-shooter-game-raises-many-philosophical-questions/

It might be an interesting game for half an hour. Then it would quickly get old.

Yes, I did think of that thought; it would probably be the sort of small game that would be made only to make a point, and didn't seem like it would have much staying power. With that said, not every game needs to be long; short games have their role as well. (See, for example, the games at https://clickventures.clickhole.com/ which tend to be short adventure games that are not meant to be long running epics.)

Or, there's games like this example of political satire:
https://interactives.clickhole.com/games/protect-your-gold-from-barack-obama/

I have also heard of a game called Super Columbine Massacre RPG (which re-enacts a school shooting, where you play as the shooters), or JFK Reloaded (which re-enacts the infamous murder of a certain US president); I would put those two games in the "disturbing" category (though I haven't actually *played* either, though I'm not sure I would want to).

By the way, I thought of an idea to make the game more disturbing: When your character hits you, the game shows you a picture of you, all bloody. (This would work best for the camera version, as it might not be feasible to implement
on the VR version.)

super
hot
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I agree with what the users above me have mentioned; low replayability.

How about a game where you have to find someone and then force that person to kill you. Then, since it's obviously likely that the person you find won't agree with what you're asking him/her to do, you'll be given the options to either force the person to kill you using the knife you've brought, or find someone else who will do it willingly. If you chose the former, that person would first try to run away from you (which you have to pursue) as his/her friends would also try to catch you and take you to the police for chasing after their friend. However, if you chose the latter, then you better hurry, since you'd be racing with a time limit.

Now, it's time for some background story for the time limit which I have just mentioned. At the beginning of the game, the game will play a short cutscene, showing how you, as the main character of the game, tried to make a deal with God for you to die as soon as possible but still somehow go to heaven at the end of the day. Then, God gave you an offer with that same outcome as long as it was not you who tried or attempted the killing. The time limit would just be the duration to how long will the offer stand.

What do you think?

Actually, there is a series of games called Karoshi (a Japanese word that translates as something like "death by overwork") in which the goal, in each level, is to die. (Of course, they don't make it easy to die, especially in later levels.)

There's also a Super Mario World hack called Karoshi Mario, which works on the same principle.

These games are 2D platformers, but the idea could be extended to other genres, like 3D platformers, overhead view puzzle games, and perhaps even pure adventure games or visual novels. (In classic sierra games, you get a unique death message for each cause of death; I have seen a similar feature in roguelikes, including Nethack and Shiren the Wanderer.)

my thoughts exactly

Call it "Ego Sniper" and there will be enuff people who`ll buy it!

on second thought, no

I like the idea but in my opinion you need to justify the player wanting to get killed. I am not sure what you're "aiming" for here but if you want to design a disturbing experience I think you'd be better off by contextualizing the action somehow, if the goal is just to score higher on the action of shooting yourself in the face then there's nothing to it.

The situation is really interesting to begin with, you would just need to wrap it around something that can actually make you feel disturbed. For example, what if the character holding a gun is a woman and you only realise at the end she's shooting a baby? What if you embody a woman and there's a man abusing you and the only thing that you want is for him to end you? What if there's an option to make the other character kill him/herself before he/she kills you? If this is for VR I think it's more interesting to play with the idea of feeling restricted as it suits the technology better.

On the other hand, maybe you could turn the game into a first-person situation where you have to kill yourself but don't want to. For example, make the virtual hands of the player tremble (real ones rumble) increasingly as they approach the head for example, put the player in a room with pictures of his/her past, tell a story through objects and the environment. Maybe the only way to end that game is to shoot the gun (you could say here that the requirement is to shoot, doesn't matter where and see how many people would actually shoot themselves), that way you're already suggesting something and your game has an intention.

Anyway, if you end up designing this for realsies let us know, it seems very promising :)

Dang, the resolution is so small, I had to scroll up a few times before realizing.

Concept reminds me a bit one "game" which made a commotion a couple of years ago, where you "had" to shoot to man tied to pole on execution field. In fact you couldn't do anything else (could shoot in other place, but it didn't brought any effect), and when you did - then there was some message, something like "you lost, you killed innocent" or something like that. When you've exit the game and got back to it - there was stil this killed man and this message.

But I personally have negative attitude toward all such "game-experiments". because:

1.They're hardly a games(surely your idea has some elements of actual gameplay, but it's still basing on the similar premises), rather some sort of slightly interactive "gimmick".
2.I don't like when anything is basing on some simple emotions, lack of context etc.

In my opinion, if someone wants to give us something to think/consider, then I would rather expect some good game with interesting plot, well introduced characters etc. But only under those two conditions:

1.Game must be at least good. Quite trivial thing, but I personally believe that if you want to make people interested in anything (book, movie, game etc), it must be good. If it's not - all content, dillemas, questions etc have no influence. Or rather minimal.
2.No political propaganda (extremelly hard condition) - I don't buy games to be feed with some leftist/liberal/LGBT/etc ranting. If someone is putting such stuff inside the game - no matter what else he put there, it's a wasted opportunity.

I take issue with this requirement of yours, specifically the LGBT part of it. We need more queer representation in games, not less. (And it needs to be *good* queer representation.)

Remember, many games have straight romances, and nobody screams "politics", yet as soon as there's a gay romance, all of the sudden people see it as political. (Of note, I find that straight romances are overdone in all forms of media, sometimes even being put into works they don't belong in (like the movie Hercules).)

Also, some games, particularly of the sort we're discussing in this thread, exist solely to make a political point. Removing politics from such a game would result in there being nothing left. (Consider, for example, the "Protect Your Gold from Barack Obama" game I mentioned; if you removed all politics from that political satire, you'd have nothing left!)

Anyway, this is getting a bit off-topic.

Incidentally, if I were to make the game described in the original post, I would probably give it away for free; it would probably not be commercially viable anyway due to its lack of staying power. The point of the game is really the initial impression it has on the player.

With no spoilers, tell me how it ends?

Also you could expand the theme to a sort of mousetrap game where you get extra points for stunts, bounce the bullet of two surfaces for example, or trigger other guns with yours in a trick shot.