New-GTA-Game-Drug-Dealing

New GTA-Style Game Ideas.

A new years post for 2011. This is a bit of a re-write from Jan 2009 from an earlier post on another of my blogs, but I wanted to restate, that my version and vision of a new 'GTA-style' game is not just an old GTA game revamped. It is a different type of game.

The idea is that it is based on real life scenarios. I do however, really like the GTA4 location setting and for the purpose of getting my ideas across and not wanting to waste my time building another city (or islands), when a perfect example already exists for me, I like to think my ideas through as if they were to exist in the GTA4 game world.



Of course there is crime and illegal activity, and the closest game and the base inspiration for my ideas is the GTA series of games.

GTA (currently GTA4 at Jan 2011), is the greatest game in the world for free roaming, gangster crime style of game. It has the best vehicle handling and story lines of any game currently available bar none!

RockStar Kings of Gaming.
With my praise and appreciation for RockStar in place, I'll say that my ideal 'GTA-style' game, would work differently to the way the actual GTA missions and story-lines run. My game would be about trying to build your business empire with your criminal past in tow.

Your past associates, friends and enemies alike,  are constantly imposing on you to do work or favors for them.   You would progress in the game, by the amount of experience and money you have gained within the game.

Drug-Dealing.
Just as with real life, you cannot just take-over and run a business successfully without having some knowledge of how it works. CJ in GTA SA used to collect drugs money revenue from each of his owned territories, but there was never a proper drugs dealing mission in sight.

GTA nearly got this right, with the fantastic sneaky 'Burglary Missions' in CJ's GTA SA. Only that again, it is not paramount to completing the game, sure you may have to do one mission, but the rest is considered side missions.

In my version, you'd be called upon to do some kind of burglary similar to CJ's house breaking, in one phase of the game, in order to help out a friend. Perhaps - a consignment of diamonds have been hidden in a TV set. Not knowing which one, you literally have to steal them all back; or, impersonate a TV repair man and sabotage the house TV aerial to get a call-out.

Throughout the game there would be break and entry missions or jobs, that you cannot trust to anyone else, because you might be attacking a competing business, stealing printing plates, or retrieving delicate blackmail photos of you and a hooker that would harm your chances of getting back to your wife, etc. 

Tony Montana in Scarface, did do drug dealing and had to go around and visit dealers, but you could not delegate this activity to other gang members that you train-up.

My idea would be that you can take your men with you as security, and once you had completed a circuit, you could save that action to their jobs tasks schedule. You could then leave them to continue to do the job at a frequency that you set.

Imagine, you get three security men with you. The guy in the front passenger seat is your main 'shotgun', an he will become the main man that the others, (up to three men), will follow to protect him, just as they are currently protecting you.

You must do everything that you want your men to do. So you must start at your drugs stash or have drugs delivered to them on a street corner or in a back alley or hotel room or public toilet, etc.

When the main deliveries are complete, you take the cash back to a safe house safe, or one of your warehouse safes for safe-keeping, and the inevitable money laundering that takes place.

If your men are attacked, they can call you for backup and you can also call in extra back-up for them, from one of your businesses if it is closer. (This would leave your business temporarily without security cover). But I would also have it where you could decide how many men you want to commit to the back-up job.

Also, in the real world, I think that drugs dealing is often covered-up or fronted by another legal business, that hides the transactions or launders the cash from illegal activity. Like with the Ice-Cream business, dealing and distributing drugs from the Ice-Cream Vans in GTA Vice City. Or like the Banks laundering illegally made money in Scarface. 

I would have businesses that cover these points in my ideal version of the game. GTA nearly gets this right, with the car import and export missions; (where you steal cars to order), but the missions are just that, 'side-missions', and are not really an integral part of the game.

What do I mean? To be clear, the game's story line or outcome is not effected if you choose to do, or not to do the car grab missions.

'No-Win' Scenario.
In order to succeed (there would be no 'win' or 'loose' in the game), unless you could suggest a wealth challenge of getting to 1 million dollars in the bank in the shortest time or with the least innocents killed.

However, in my version of the game, the game would be open-ended. This may sound a bit strange, but an open-ended game makes sense. It will increase the games longevity and let you decide how long you want to take to play the game. I don't like to rush my game, I never get into any races with others to be the first to complete my games.

The only-thing that upsets me, is that others feel the need to want to tell me all about the things they have found in the game before me, (although I tell them not to tell me),  and they are so pleased with themselves that they have finished the game in one week-end. Look, I don't get it? If you want value for money, then doing all the side missions, watching all the cut-scenes, getting totally immersed in the game and exploring the whole game-world is where the true enjoyment lies.

My friend will ofter hammer missions in any game, even skipping the cut-scenes, so that he has no clue as to what the story line is about. Well, each to his own, he likes to play that way. He recorded a time in TBoGT and TLaTD without stopping, using taxis to and from missions, not watching cut-scenes etc. He completed both games in one Sunday playing session, then complained that the games were too short and that the story lines was crap! He's an idiot!

I'd like to see him complete my version of the game in any time-frame he chooses, because he won't be able to. Having an open-ended game, means that there literally is no-end to the game, except for what you choose or decide is that point where you have done everything you want to do and seen everything you want to see.

If you have played SIMS seriously and not just pottered around on the game for a few hours, then you will be more able to appreciate and understand what I am talking about.
You can have other gangs that target your businesses and interfere with the smooth running of your business empire from time to time. Different levels of income and wealth can trigger challenges and give you new battles to fight at greater levels. These battles will require more resources and quicker thinking on your part.

Perhaps the closest thing I can use to demonstrate this idea to you is, in San-Andraeus, where CJ is earning new turf. When you have only one turf owned and are set to fight for the second, just as you get settled, one is attacked. Likewise, when you control three or four or more turfs, different ones are being attacked randomly and it becomes more of a challenge to keep everything under control. Especially like if you are trying to go off and do other missions whilst turf-wars are springing up all over the place.

Imagine having all the businesses owned and running fine. Thousands are flooding in on a daily basis. Then, you are called away on one of your regular business trips to seal a big business deal, it could be a drugs-buy or a land purchase deal.

Whilst you are away, a few of your top men have got together to try and take-over your operation from the inside. It all comes down to a careful balancing of keeping your men in check, paying them enough so that they don't get too discontent with their lot, and paying them not too much, that they start to get greedy and want a bigger slice of your cake too.

When you return, you'd have a lot of repair work to do and a few vendettas to repay. Including promoting new bosses to the positions of trust, where you have had to execute and dispose of those who went against you.

Challenges in New GTA Game.
These 'challenges', (what I would say, used to be called 'missions' in GTA4), are triggered by various factors like stock tolerances and income in a particular business.

Also things like the amount of money in the safe, the level of security available, the number of police in the vicinity of the business, number of pedestrians, time of day or night, amount of vehicles on the business premises and ammo stock levels at the business premises.

I will keep the exact details a secret, but it could be any one of any number of combination's of any of these factors that trigger; if, or when, an attack will happen.

e.g. If the security guards level is only 3 men, or if there is between $1,000 & $1,500 in the safe. (So - you would not know it, but say, if you had $1,501 in the safe or more, then your business won't be attacked).

There may be two or even more triggers on a business also. So for instance, you may have $3,500 or more in the safe, this would then make an attack more likely:- because of other factors like guard levels or no police available at certain times.

FBI - Flipping Big Indians!
There could even be a time consideration, for if your business has not been attacked for a period of time, with each business having its own different time settings. So that you know an attack will come at some point, it's just that you don't know when, or the strength or number of attackers, or even whether it is a police drugs raid, FBI crime-ring-busting-raid, customs contraband-raid or just an attacking gang attempting a take-over or even just common thieves trying to loot your business.

Imagine, that once you get all of your businesses up and running and fully expanded to the limit, that you can still carry on earning money and banking it! Make a challenge with friends to be the first to get to five million or ten million dollars!

There may even be massive attacks to survive at those higher limits. e.g. Hit 2.5 million dollars and you get hammered by attacking gangs at all of your businesses or something like that!

Perhaps a new business type emerges or another business goes into decline! All these things can also be carried over to the next game disk, (the next game in the series), - instead of being a BOGT or TLaTD, perhaps we can have proper add-on expansion packs, like we see in the SIMS.

These expansion packs could give us access to more building plots and the chance to convert a disused building into apartments and- or even take over other apartment blocks and a whole host of new missions and possibilities that go with it, as well as still looking after our previous businesses built up in the first version of the game! 

Maybe, our character becomes old or dies and has to pass the reins of the business empire to another family member, like a son or daughter to run the family business.

Going back to things I would have in my perfect GTA-style game.

Police Vigilante.
On the police vigilante missions, (GTA4's vigilante missions are great) but; you should have a police uniform and it should be possible to arrest suspects and take them back to the police station yourself, or have them picked up from the arrest scene by calling in for pick-up-van or car, (rather than just killing the suspect as we do currently. (We don't want to be Judge Judy an Executioner - do we? - 'Hot-Fuzz' anyone?)).

Also, we want the police backup to actually work! Currently in GTA4 when you call for police back-up, extra police units come, but the stupid cops shoot you if you start shooting the perps! Whats that all about?

Wearing the police uniform should protect you from other police units shooting you, unless you shoot or run down a pedestrian, or other police officer; then you become a rogue cop and the other police attack you to try to arrest you as if you were a criminal.

Police Harassment.
Police behavior; The fact is, we know that the GTA4 police units currently; often run bi-peds over or shoot the public and even the police themselves get caught in friendly fire or get run over by their own units; and yet they do not attack or arrest each other for these crimes, (So there is no rogue-cop issue between police units, it only happens to you), but this should be ignored.

Police injuring other police units or the bi-peds has nothing to do with us, we should leave this situation as it currently is. This is because we are already asking for a lot from the game developers and we do not need to worry about this aspect as it will only delay and complicate the game unnecessarily.

Odds and Ends.
I would have a more varied pedestrian street, kids and dog walkers, women with prams, old people with zimmer-frames or sit-and-ride-on scooters. (Depending, of course, on time period setting).

Cyclist-bi-peds and the return of the BMX & missions and Police motorbike from CJ's GTA SA.

Trivia - I am sat watching a film. 'Driven To Kill' - 2006 -starring- Steven Seagal and Laura Mennell. Seagal plays this Niko character that is so much like Niko, that I am just a rush with ideas for missions. Like a multi-story-car-park shoot-out, that also has elements of a mission I played in Mafia2. (Maybe Later). But it is a film to see, especially if you like Steven Seagal.

Steven 'Niko' Seagal.

Seagal, Like Tony Montana, (and I think like Niko would be), won't harm innocents and is very cool as he deals with a multiple knife-fighting style and karate mix of attackers. He's his own man, like Niko, although whilst working for others, like in the Vlad missions, he won't take any shit from anyone. Even his employer could end-up in a body-bag!

This film could have easily been based on GTA4 if only it hadn't have been out before GTA4 (2008), maybe its the other way round? Still, its one to see! "Driven To Kill".  (Good music too).

Niko.
New GTA Game Ideas from 2009-01-01
TAGS:- New Year Post, New GTA Style of Game, Seagal, Steven 'Niko' Seagal,GTA,GTA4,GTA5,

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