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Game Proposal

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Game Type

Gang Land is a turn based strategy game similar to Risk, Gangsters and Civilization. It contains themes of conquest and exploration, but doesn’t include any trade with other rival gangs due to development restrictions.

It’s a game that is predominantly aimed for an age demographic of 15 – 35. Any younger than this and the content isn’t suitable for the audience. Note that concrete statistics on this age rang could not be sourced, but an estimate was gauged from a small verbal survey.

Since the game is turn based it also appeals to the older age bracket as they will not be disadvantaged by their slower reaction times, that is compared to a sugar induced hyperactive teenager which would have an extra advantage in real time strategy games.

Location in Game History

Gang Land is developed around a strategy based concept that has been present from around the early 1950s (or earlier) in board games like Risk and up until the current age with the latest version of Civilization only coming out half a year ago. The idea of domination is always one that seems to surpass time as power is a common theme in all ages of the human race. The main difference between all of these different versions of the game style is in their implementation. Gang Land sits a few years behind the latest generation for it will implement the older style 2D isometric graphics and its artificial intelligence is limited compared to current implementations. These limitations are primarily due to development time, budget and availability of expertise. Despite these limitation, the game has the potential to be both engaging and enjoyable if it is delivered well.

Game Storytelling

Storytelling in Gang Land isn’t a prime component. Its story line is purely a back story which provides some motivation for the player to engage in the game, but like Civilization and many other turn based strategy games the back story doesn’t add much to the overall game play (Adams and Rollings 2003). Though it must be mentioned that the game play itself in these games actually provides a historically improvised story, but is in no way comparable in quality to a well designed Role Playing Game.

There are two main reasons for not including a well developed plot that is unveiled throughout play. Firstly the game is designed within time constraints which would prohibit this. Secondly, adding storytelling to the game would detract from the original purpose of the game described in the marketing section – that of multiplayer strategic conflict.

If more time was available a story could be woven into the single player play by modifying the win conditions so that the game revolved more around mission based situations that furthered the overtaking of the city of Gomorrha. But again this would modify the game from  a purely strategy based to that more of a role playing game. This isn’t necessarily a detraction, but a change nevertheless which requires more resources; money, time, testing, experimentation etc…

On another note, some of the biggest games, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Civilization and The Sims do not contain a significant story element (Crawford 2003). The Sims 2: Seasons is currently, as of 13th May 2007, ranked 4th on the total number of PC game sales (GfK 2007).

Game Play & Challenges

By nature Gang Land is predominately a game that relies on logic and inference challengers with the player having to manage resources, decide on the best place to explore and place new gang bases, as well as mount strategic attacks on rival gangs.

The imperfect information, through a “fog of war”, and a few elements of chance (possibly being arrested during attacks and extortion efforts) allows Gang Land to be pitched at a wider audience as perfect information games can sometimes alienate an audience for its difficulty – chess for instance (Adams and Rollings 2003). The inclusion of imperfect information also opens up the avenue of tactics during game play as a proposed strategy won’t always go according to plan during execution due to these unknowns.

The “fog of war” also serves the purpose of enabling a small amount of exploration game play. Not that it will compare to Role Playing Games, but does provide intrigue into what a new sector within the city will contain; will it be another rival gang base, will it contain a wealth of shops to extort.

A limited economy is implemented in Gang Land that adds an extra challenge to the mix. The extortion of shops provides income to recruit new gang members and also helps fund the sourcing of new arm suppliers, and in turn better weapons for your gangsters during game play. Finding a logistical balance between this research and recruiting new members also opens up different strategies.

It is true that weaving an emotional aspect within the game would provide a more enjoyable and engaging experience for the player, but this concept would require a considerable more thought to be considered. If this type of game play is implemented, but badly it could detract from the game considerably.

Overall it is believed that there is enough interaction, and challenging game play elements to provide a fun and appealing game to players.

Artificial Intelligence

Gang Land will be developed with several different types of computer gangs each shall have a different style of playing. When each game starts in single player mode, three gangs will be selected from the following list and randomly placed within the City:

  1. Obsidian Rule (Black Gang)
  2. Vermillion Syndicate (Red Gang)
  3. Lost Kids (Green Gang)
  4. Prussian Pos (Blue Gang)
  5. Vixen’s Vice (Pink Gang)
  6. Phalos Fem (White Gang)

The idea behind this concept is that each time the player starts a game they should be presented with a different offensive or defensive tactic from the rival gangs and diversify the game play. This in turn should increase the games play life.

Victory Conditions

There are several ways that a player can successfully complete Gang Land. Two are based on overpowering all the rival gangs by eliminating their gang lord, or by taking over all their controlled sectors of the city. The third is based on a mission assignment. These mission assignments can be enabled before starting a game. If mission assignments are enabled, one mission assignment is given to every player with one of the flowing conditions:

  1. Extort all businesses on the map.
  2. Assassinate Opponent x’s Gang Lord
  3. Capture whole suburb x

Where “x” is a predetermined suburb or player. Once a player has successfully completed their mission the game is finished. If a rival gang successfully completes their mission then they win the game and play ends. The missions of the rival gangs are unknown to make their tactics harder to interpret.

The primary reason for adding the mission style play over the standard domination is, like the different playing styles for each gang, to diversify the game play and entice the player to play more games – and hence a more enjoyable experience.

Loss Conditions

Gang Land provides a few ways of losing to the hand of the rival gangs in the city. The first is through the death or capture of the player’s gang lord. Once this happens the player’s gang is dissolved and they’ve lost the game. Another way is if all their sectors have been taken over. This can happen while they still have gangsters roaming the map and their gang lord is still alive. The last way to loose as previously mentioned is to have a rival gang complete their mission before the player.