I recently went on a road trip from Portland to Phoenix, and along the way I thought of a really cool idea for a new game.  I bought a new [used] car to take me on my driving adventure; a sweet little VW Jetta.  It’s manual!  I forgot how fun it is to drive stick. Automatics are so boring in comparison.  After about an hour or so of driving, it started making a really loud noise which turned out to be a problem with my muffler.  So although my brain was overwhelmed with the racket of a broken exhaust pipe for 1,374 miles, I still managed to have some level of creative thinking power.  But if it turns out that my idea for a game isn’t as great as I thought it was, I blame the deafening clatter drowning my mind the entire trip. 

Three hours into the journey my GPS, Sheila, which was plugged into my cigarette lighter, died.  Turns out, the cigarette lighter was broken all along and Sheila had gone into battery mode without me knowing.  She’s such a jerk sometimes!  Luckily, there’s a power outlet in the trunk of my car, and the GPS cord stretched just far enough that I was able to mount it on the passenger window.  Not the most convenient or safest method, but it worked.  Also, I guess I didn’t plan the trip as well as I thought I had because I forgot to pack CDs in my car.  Can you believe that?! Once I was out of range of any radio stations, I found a single CD (Two Gallants) which I listened to until I started hating the band.  This definitely falls under the ‘too much of a good thing’ category.  I’m sure with time I’ll be able to love them again. 

When the annoyance of repeatedly listening to the same songs got to me, I was left alone with the shouting car and my imagination.  This was the point when the gamer inside of me pulled through to entertain me on the road.  Each time I changed freeways or passed up a set mark of miles, Sheila would give me a new amount of miles to drive.  Ah ha!  I drew the connection between driving these amounts of miles and leveling up or completing quests in RPGs.  Whenever my mind would get bored, I’d just glance over at my GPS screen and see how many more miles I had to beat in order to level up.  This time-killing technique not only made the days go by faster, but also made the drive a lot of fun.  I got a little achievement in my heart with each major driving accomplishment.

So, my idea for a video game is a driving RPG road trip game!  Say they used Google Earth to map out certain parts of the world, and make it open-ended so the player decides where they want to travel.  Customize your vehicle, make sure you make pit stops for gas, pee breaks and food. And of course, it’s definitely fun to drive off the road and maybe hit a cow or something. 

Strangely enough, I now have a sick little obsession with putting miles on my car, as if I’m increasing my gamerscore and the higher it is the better.  My goal: One million miles.