And boy is he stretching that freedom, reeeeeeeeeaally far. =)

Back on topic though...
So you want a no-violence game. First ask yourself, why? What makes you not want a fragfest. Is it overdone? Mindless? Repetitive? Are you "bored of hand-eye coordinating"?
Use your own answer to determine what type of game you want to make.

Take Mr. Miyamoto for example, he''s extremely bent on making different games. He wants originality, games which totally stand out of the crowd. Pikmin, who woulda thought of that? Zelda cel-shaded! Luigi''s Mansion, you vacuum ghosts. Mario Sunshine, you walk around with a water squirter on your back!
Whether or not these ideas turn out well, the point is he doesn''t want to make "just another FPS", "just another platformer", "just another RPG".

How about the mindless factor now. Don''t like running around shooting people just to get a higher kill/death ratio? If you just totally ditch the violence, you''re not looking into things enough.
CTF. Still fairly simple, standard FPS gameplay. However it''s already a huge leap ahead, now (sometimes) you need a bit of strategic thinking.
Renegade. I''ve seen this game dismissed as being a half-done waste of time and effort. While the graphics may not be top notch, 1 on 1 may not be as tense as CS, the game has brought in a whole new breed or multiplayer killing. Sort of an extreme CTF, you get an entire base to protect. Different buildings cripple a team in different ways if they are blown up. Instead of just running for a flag, you "rush the Power Plant", "take out the obelisk to let the tanks in", "protect the refinery so we can buy tanks!".
While the game doesn''t push the limits of your mental prowress, it''s leaps and bounds ahead of a game like, Quake 3. *shudders at the mention*

So when you design your game, don''t just throw out violence completely. Just like you wouldn''t throw out puzzle elements completely (geez even Doom required you find keys =).

(and, as usual, I can''t find an elegant way to end my post, so i''ll end it [as usual] by saying how un-elegantly I ended it... =)

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http://aud.vze.com <-- Newbie alert, look at your own risk. Can induce severe laughing fits and other variations of hysterical outburst.

Welcome to Gamdev!

My personal opinion about your question is the following: The main reason people think games with violence are bad is because kids can''t tell the difference between the game and reality. If they are too stupid to do that, than they are probably too stupid to play the game in the first place.

Thanks everybody!

Well the reason that I dont want the violence is not that i dont like fragging. I sit everyday by my UT and frag 300-400 godlike bots instagib! Just that on a deeper level i thought about the violent world we live and tried to implement its oppsoite into a design that i have in my head of a world where no violence is tolerated or even brought up. The mission would instead be to go as a messenger from place to place in this BEAUTIFUL world telling the population about your masters predictions.

But I realised quite soon that running around looking at beautiful plants and animals wont satisfy a player very long. I wouldnt be satisfied by that either.


Then I have another design in my head where as someone said its more rewarding to live peacefully and INVESTIGATE then to go amok and shoot at everything that moves (wich would result in you getting killed).

The latter i have no problems with design-wise but the former is harder to go through with.


Richard "one68" Olsson
genoism_maxed@hotmail.com

It Stinks!

Nice mature anwser!

Richard "one68" Olsson
genoism_maxed@hotmail.com

quote: But I realised quite soon that running around looking at beautiful plants and animals wont satisfy a player very long. I wouldnt be satisfied by that either.

Yeah, exactly the reason there are veeeery few no-violence games around. Even pikmin has explosives =)

quote: The main reason people think games with violence are bad is because kids can''t tell the difference between the game and reality.

Wholeheartedly agree! If a kid can''t differenciate between the two, then something is seriously wrong with either a) the kid, or b) how the kid was raised. (I note these as 2 different things because of my experience with things such as ADD, the most common incarnation of pure evil. =)

quote: its more rewarding to live peacefully and INVESTIGATE

Small Baldur''s Gate 2 spoiler . I remember near the end of the game, you undergo a bit of a test of your personality. At one point a demon is telling you what you must do to proceed (get an item, currently held by someone). The demon starts by telling you to kill the being that holds the item, but if you keep resisting you eventually get responses like "I don''t just kill everything in my way". Turns out the being with the item is a dragon, and by playing a little "nicer" you don''t have to fight it. *huge sigh of relief*

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http://aud.vze.com <-- Newbie alert, look at your own risk. Can induce severe laughing fits and other variations of hysterical outburst.

There''s no reason why you can''t design a hundred games without violent principles, once you identify just how violence is meant to function symbolically within the game.

Why not design an FPS where you don''t shoot opponents you fling teammates over ledges? The object would be to get your team over an obstacle course as fast as possible or faster than another team. Simple eh?