In today’s truly inspired edition of Speak Up on Kotaku, commenter DunnCarnage shares with us five top-secret video game concepts he might have completely made up.
Through sources I’m unwilling to reveal (Brian Hetting is refusing to let me acknowledge him, he asked for anonymity in case he loses his job at EA) I am capable of revealing cutting floor concepts for games, titles which simply failed to live up to the high standards of a gaming landscape with triumphs such as Amy on the visible peninsular of excellence. Here are the top five games that never made it passed the conceptual table. (That is a table of concepts, not a table of a conceptual nature. The table is real. It is made of teak.)
1. Death of a Salesman
After the supposed success of the Black Friday simulator Dante’s Inferno, EA seeks to purge more classic literature in the hopes of confused and curious sales. After googling “popular tragic play” EA marketing executives pitched this greatly misjudged FPS, where you play Willie Loman, a depressed and suicidal salesman with a shotgun, a motorcycle and a badarse attitude. Play as Willie as he mows down those who made him feed his loyalty to a worthless cause. It was to be developed by DICE, but the project was abandoned when it was discovered that the original text still has copyright claims on it.
2. Wii-G!
After viewing the success of Monopoly, Scrabble and Space Marine, EA once again looked at popular table-top games for inspiration. Seeing the unparalleled interest caused by Paranormal Activity the idea to make a virtual Ouija board was conceived. With over 200 demonic forces to contact, Wii-G used a special skin to place over your balance board to make your family-friendly party machine into a conduit for the gates of Hell. The project was abandoned after the QA staff all died under mysterious circumstances.
3. Twitter Wars
An attempt by EA social to make Twitter an integrated part of some RPGs, the idea was that you got bonus experience every time you tweeted about the game you were playing. The idea was tested in a Pokemon-esque collectors RPG where characters each raised up their own whales and made them fight against other players. Unfortunately two of the testers got somewhat carried away and have since been tweeting, non-stop, about their whales. As a result EA has had to abandon the project as Twitter has threatened to sue EA on the grounds that those two people alone have crashed the site over 1000 times. The Twitter fail whale is a constant reminder to EA to resolve the war between these two testers before Twitter hires its own assassins.
4. Chatroullete Kinect!
Cancelled after a single test.
5. Perfect Fear: Reckoning of Man
An ambitious survival horror title developed by the then new studio Adren-a-leen, the concept consisted of creating a game that would literally drive the player to madness. After using every known horror trope in the book, lead designer Alexander Furor decided the game still failed to achieve its major goals of creating genuine terror in the player, and so began his search of the perfect solution. His research led him to discover the ancient texts of Sythorion, a medieval monk who found passage to Hell through an incantation that must be recited over a pool of virgins blood.
Killing the testing team, Alex begans the incantation, and discovered to his delight that the monk had been telling the truth. Calling upon the demons of Hell, Alex managed to convince Satan into forging a gaming code that would strike fear into any gamer. Sadly, however, the demons refused to work under crunch time conditions and the project was axed for taking too long. The original plan was to have crossover DLC with Wii-G, though the developers of Wii-G were unaware of this.
About Speak Up on Kotaku: Our readers have a lot to say, and sometimes what they have to say has nothing to do with the stories we run.
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