A post-apocalyptic, persistant Arma

Today, it occurred to me how much better games have become over time. Game graphics are getting closer to photo-realism. Who could suspect even 2 years ago that the photo on the right would be an in-game screen capture?
The whole gaming experience has grown enormously. It has deepened with improving graphics but also better controls. Ever flown a helicopter and kept an eye out for enemy infantry wearing TrackIR? Or experienced the potential of the Occulus Rift? You'll know how things have changed the last couple of years!


When I was in high school we played Play-By-Mail games (but yes, also Bomberman and Commander Keen) and later we experimented with Role-playing games, Dungeons & Dragons and Twilight: 2000.
Now, you may have heard of D&D, but I'm pretty sure Twilight 2000 is not know to you. Let me explain.

Twilight: 2000 is an old-school, pen-and-paper role-playing game. The set-up is to survive as a group of trained US soldiers in a world that got destroyed by a full-scale World War III. The players have to survive in the year 2000, 4 years after the initial war and subsequent small-scale nuclear war. It's a military role-playing game that concentrates on realistic military equipment and survival in a world that has fallen into anarchy.
People are playing role-playing games to experience scenario's in a world of their own imagination. So all the imagination of the player and game master, is channelled in a sandbox game where they can play and follow rules they themselves (or the RPG's publisher) create.
Twilight: 2000 allows people to play in a post WW3 sandbox, with cold-war equipment and a world that requires them survive under harsh circumstances.

Now I like simulators, I like a large amount of realism in my games and my favourite game at the moment is Arma 3. Arma is a military simulation game that pushes the boundaries of the regular 'shooter' game.
Not just the graphics, but the game experience. It's complex, I grant you that, but that level of complexity required also makes it more real!

And precisely that level of realism is what attracts me to both Arma and Twilight: 2000.
So I think the time is near for a fusion between the two.
What I envision is running missions in a persistent world (a bit like the Arma single player campaign), where the results have an effect on the game world. Where gasoline and ammo are recorded, so if you get your hands on an APC and stock it up, that mine you encountered destroyed not only the precious APC, but also the ammo and fuel. When bringing supplies to a town this town grows and is grateful, but when you keep the supplies for yourself to sell they are hostile and don't like you any more. And a persistent world means that there are only limited numbers of ammo, fuel and APC's.

In summery, I'd like to see a game where the persistent world and economics of EVE Online will be combined with the Arma military debt. And all that in a post-WW3 setting?
- Yes please!

Evil Genius, the Tower Defense game

Who remembers the game Evil Genius?

An awesome game concept, great graphics and a brilliant score.
Evil Genius was wat everyone wants: be the bad guy, make tons of money - hell, get your own island, with secret lair and money printing press - and defeat James Bond!
I can go on a very long time, but fact of the matter is that this was one of the last truly inventive games. To bad there never was a sequel.

But what I was thinking, one could make a Tower Defense game out of it...

Build a base, with hallways and rooms. Fill it with traps, just like you could do it with the original game. And watch how the waves of Thieves, Saboteurs, Assassins and Investigators come into your base and try to knock you down!

My view of the game's mechanics:


Attackers
Agents that come into your base with the purpose of defeating you. Get money for destroying them. The higher level unit, the more skilled it is.

Investigators
They roam about the place and collect intel on your base. Find the entrances, crack them open and investigate the inside. If they find the strongroom (or treasure room), or any treasure items, the thieves will start to show up. If they see you -mr. Evil Genius-, the assassins will start to come. And if they find any special purpose room, the Saboteurs will come.
Killing them will produce little cash.
The higher the agent level, the easier it'll crack your doors and the higher level doors he will be able to crack.

Thieves
They steal money from the strongroom or special Loot items (achievements of some sort).
Door cracking skills will increase with level also. They can also avoid traps.




Saboteurs
Agents that attack traps and doors. You will need to repair or rebuild the traps if these guy's are finished with them.
The amount of damage increases per level.

Assassins
The most dangerous of intruders. Their goal is to eliminate you, the Evil Genius!
They skip by lower level doors and traps and will do damage based on their level.




Boss agents
Stronger agent. Can do all of the above. Will get you an awful lot of cash if you kill them!

Tablets and tabletop gaming

Recently I watched The Social Network and it got me all inspired again. 
How about combining the smartphone's camera, QR Code and tabletop or roleplaying games. You could make a great application for running a game like Warhammer, or keeping track your character while playing Dungeons & Dragons. 
I thougth about the use of QR code. You can store data in the code, but only a small amount; and it's static information, while a characters attributes changes a lot during any game. Not usefull then. 
What sort of information would be usefull while playing tabletop/pen-and-paper RPG?


Pen and paper RPG
The tablet is the perfect device for the game master. Although I found some great software (Fantasy Grounds seems to be very close to my ideas), I think time is right for the tablet assisted RPG.
Especially traveling and the 'day to day' stuff can be calculated by apps on the gamemaster's tablet. 
The players can keep track of their character on a smartphone app as well. How much stuff is my character hauling, things like sleep, food consumption, health and experience can be recorded. 
Combine these two by building a portal where the player app as well as the gamemaster's app can get their information from, so that -after an encounter for instance- the stats/inventory etc. of the player will be updated through the portal. Hell, the player's app could even contain the required dice for the specific encounter and shake his phone to roll the dice, upload the results via the portal to the gamemaster... (although dice-rolling apps are not cool in my opinion...)


Tabletop  game

A tabletop game, like warhammer, could also benefit greatly from new technologies. Although microsoft's Surface allows games to be played on a touchscreen table, it is to expensive and too immature to replace a tabletop game.
Also, a lot of software is already available to support tabletops, notably Lone Wolf's Army Builder, but that's just for setting up a game. 


I was thinking. You have an iPad (for example). A Warhammer application, created by Games Workshop. The app shows the armies, icons and pictures comming from the Warhammer portal.
When you use a unit to attack, select it and provide the necessary parameters and the app will show you the number of dices to throw (or use the app to throw the dices as well). The app will provide Games Workshop with an advertising platform.
But the best thing? 
Ever used Nike+ or Runkeeper? It's a portal where users track their running workouts. They share routes and compete on set goals like how many kilometers group A ran compared with group B. 
When Games Workshop, or any tabletop company for that matter, creates an app and a community website, they would have tons of information about where players live, what type of units they play. It allows for targeted advertising and promotions. The community would recieve a boost because they can now compete with other players all over the globe on a whole new level. A scoreboard displaying victories for Good compared to Evil, or by faction or race? That would be cool!

Dice recognition?
Next to the units themselves, the most important thing of the tabletop game is the roll of the dice. I personally don't see a dice-roll application working in this environment. It's just boring!
What would be nice is an app that just allows your camera to read the numbers from the dice and returns the info to the parent application, thus removing the need to type the dice-roll in whatever app your running, because that's uncool too...






So a company could spend a lot of time creating software for a tablet to assist a game, create an advertisement platform and boost the gaming community. The gaming community could create tools or whole platforms to help game-masters and process 'the boring stuff'...
Wouldn't that bring tabletop gaming back somewhat?