The Con Game
Here’s an idea for a visual novel or dating sim. Might be a tad typical in the ways of Comic Party:
The events of the game revolve around not one, but two anime conventions. The themes of the game highlights how these cons are different than, say, a game con, in its party-hardy, group celebratory manner. The characters (girls, or/and guys) you flag up with are going to be associated with each of the two conventions in some way(s). One con is a very large, industry-oriented convention and the other con is somewhat smaller, but more by-fans-for-fans-non-profit kind of an operation. The roles of the characters potentially can run the whole gamut in respect to cons, from someone who’s a fan and does not go to con to the guy who chairs it. In between you have paid staff, volunteer staff, for-profit roles, “industry” reps, dealers, normal attendees, press, guests, non-fan staff, just a guy on the street walking by the con, cops and firefighters at the con, friend-of-staff who gets roped in to run crap at the con, people who run panels and submit AMV contests, artist alley types, cosplayers, glompers, people who get kicked out of cons, people who kick people out at cons, lawyers, minor celebrities, people who arrange con groups, the guy who runs the con website & IT stuff, 3rd party hired to run the game room, maids at a maid cafe, indie musicians playing at the karaoke, and much, much more.
The story will be something about you, the generic protagonist, who ends up going/not going to a con, with one or more people, and you end up participating in one or more events with any number of people depending on the events you participated. With the right flags you can trigger different combinations of those events, and by playing through once you gain information about each convention, and thus unlock more choices in subsequent playthrough.
Character and event flags are determined by choices which leans towards the specific philosophies the character in particular embodies. Furthermore, things like good or bad end can be determined through examining weaknesses in each philosophical position, both in execution and in technical/legal sense. Some topics can include the ups and downs of paying staff versus volunteer staff, or risk and reward of major changes on dealing with growth. Could be whatever. A good planner would work in some overarching perspective to provide a framework to fit in all these themes in a coherent way that demonstrates the interrelated aspects of all these considerations.
This pre-Anime Boston jibberish is brought to you by Katawa Shoujo, which is a better gag than I can ever come up with, and Chobipero for Shiki.
Some notes to look forward to:
- Kransom
- Crazy panel guy
- Kalafina
- Anime on DVD
- Some industry panels or some such
Crazy panel guy? =\
I don’t know, got some catchy name I can otherwise use?
Hmm, I like visual novel games, and I always wanted to go to a con, so I would love to see someone pick up this idea and do something spiffy with it. ^^