02.16.2007 HIDEO KOJIMA'S NEW ZOMBIE MMO GAME IDEA

It'll still be a while until Hideo Kojima's Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots is out for PlayStation 3, but he's already talking about another game idea he'd like to do. It doesn't sound like he's serious about making this game, but the gameplay idea is definitely as weird as it is creative. It's an online zombie game where you pay to play, except you're really paying to not play your character, you're paying to save them from zombie doom. Here's how it works:

"The zombie idea I have is a bit different. Imagine a large town where half the inhabitants are zombies. Users would subscribe, get inside the town and get bitten. At that stage they become undead and can't control their character - all they can do is modify the camera angles... They'd see their character attacking humans and have to pay just to watch! The only way they could end it is by opening another account, hunting themselves down and killing themselves. Of course, the problem is that your second character can get bitten as well."

Reminds me of those dropped call cell phone commercials - if you cut that quote in half you'd have the worst game idea ever, but adding the alternate accounts to save your original character is something I haven't seen or heard of before. I hate any zombie movies, games, etc that take themselves seriously (pretty much every zombie movie and game ever except for Shaun of the Dead and Dead Rising), but I'd pay to give this game a try. Hopefully this game goes further than just a conceptual phase, I'd like to see how they'd handle the environments to keep the game fresh for more than a day or two of gameplay.

On a related note - something I've been wanting to see for a while now is a gaming TV station that pulls a Truman Show on various professional players' accounts. I know paying to watch people play games sounds incredibly lame, but several times throughout the week when I'm on the computer I put on some random DVD and just listen to it for a few hours while I'm working on stuff. I'd love to be able to watch and listen to the best World of Warcraft players live as they go on raids. I've heard that in Korea there's a StarCraft channel that does, or did exist once. I really wish someone would do this in America for a few games. Imagine your Wii channels filled with rows of live video feeds from awesome players, and you can tag along with any of them for the ride. I can see TV adopting this approach to gaming eventually, but not any time soon sadly. Would you pay for a service like this? Or is it as retarded sounding as mircotransactions and the rest of the money making schemes?