My Ideal Game: An esports RPG
I can't believe I have not heard of a single high-profile game about esports. Not an esport itself, but rather a game where you play into the fantasy of becoming a pro-gamer.
I would love to make a game like this - if I did it would probably look like this:
- Based in the real world / a realistic setting. Not something like yu-gi-oh where the fate of the world rests on playing cards or anything like that. Instead, you're just some regular dude trying to be a progamer, in a world like ours that doesn't care that much about progaming. You would travel around the country, entering different tournaments. Maybe money would be something you have to worry about. There will be drama in the rivalries, but at the end of the day everyone realizes you're just some person playing video games.
- A simplified esport in the game. Think of the esport being the "combat" of a more traditional RPG. I loved all the handheld RPG games about tennis or yu-gi-oh. I like when a story-heavy RPG can deviate from conventional turn-based fights. I say "simplified" cause I imagine it would be difficult to essentially create 2 games in 1: an RPG and a ground-up, perfectly balanced esport. So I'd probably borrow heavily from other games for inspiration for this "esport".
- Feed into the fantasy of amateur turning pro. I love basketball, and as a kid I used to dream of making it into the NBA. And so it always annoyed me that every NBA 2k story mode had to come up with some crazy alternative path for your character to make the NBA (remember NBA 2k18, where you were a DJ who got discovered in a made-up pro-am tournament?). That, or they gloss over that rise from nobody, to notable prospect, to NBA draftee, to bench player, to starter, etc., etc. I want to actively be a part of that rise.
- Relatively linear story. It would be a crafted narrative with a set ending rather than something more open-world. Think something like Pokemon or Inazuma Eleven - maybe parts of the adventure have some exploration/customizability. But at the end of the day you're gonna have to get through a set group of opponents and rivals to beat the game. In general I like stories in games, and I think that esports (and actually all sports for that matter) are a great stage for drama.