The best idea I have ever had

**Escape_Driver** · January 11th, 2005, 04:10 PM

Well I have been running an idea through my head for the better part of a year now and you guys are going to tell me if it is a good one.

My Idea is for an online driving game.

Think of need for speed underground II graphics with every car sold in North America in the last 55 Years, with custom parts, engines, tires, and even radar detectors. Then you race across America from city to city kind of like cannon ball run.

The topper is that the game would be a free down load.

You pay for your cars, parts, and gas online 1 real dollar = 1000 on line that how you can give that game away. This has the side effect of making game copying work for you not against you.

You would also have to pay to enter a race, for gas, speeding tickets, blown tires and any number of other cost that you would incur driving cross-country.

The race would be real time over a month you can start or stop at any time and your time would stop. Races between different cities would take different amount of time. I.e. New York to LA would take up to 48 hours non-stop. But a short race from New York to Boston would only be a sub 4-hour race. But you could race for an hour and stop for the day.

Another thing I was thinking about was being pulled over by police. If you drive a really flashy car then you would attract more attention and would be more likely to be pulled over.

I know this would be a HUGE game.

Well that’s it…. I don’t know if you guys would like to play this game or whether it is a bad idea. Any one got any other ideas to go with this. ???

**Ya_know** · January 11th, 2005, 04:29 PM

Out of the gates I think it's a great Idea. Implementation and advertisement are going to be what makes or breaks the whole thing.

What I don't like, is the need to race online, meaning I can't do it without the Internet. That's not necessarily a bad thing; it's just the one thing I personally don't enjoy.

But it's definitely an Idea with extremely great potential!!!

**Escape_Driver** · January 11th, 2005, 04:33 PM

What if you just bought your car and parts online ???

**Outcoded** · January 11th, 2005, 06:28 PM

The only downside I can see is the "any car sold in america bit". How about some decent cars? :butt:

**meatwad** · January 11th, 2005, 06:38 PM

Originally Posted by Outcoded

The only downside I can see is the "any car sold in america bit". How about some decent cars? :butt:

**craigmodius** · January 11th, 2005, 08:14 PM

That pic just gave me flashback of playing Burnout3 for the PS2 against people online. I was racing something like a Mini Cooper or VW Bug against everyone else with Ferraris.

Despite the fact that there's online racing games already. I see 3 potential problems with relying on people to pay real money for upgrades:

1- cheaters

2- cheaters

3- cheaters

Sorry, I'm a killjoy, I know

**pmetal** · January 12th, 2005, 08:05 AM

I like the idea.

Needs some tweaking, but the foundation is there.

How about charging a small fee for the game, and then perhaps let people earn "credits" based on driving hours/miles in the game? Just a thought.

Also agree 100% with craigmodius, cheating is gonna be the biggest problem.

Keep going with it.

**TechZ** · January 12th, 2005, 08:24 AM

Its a great idea, kinda like NFS U2, but unique in its own way.

Cons, i think are:
It might get to become expensive for some players
Restricting to just NA cars
Game will be huge
Some of us have not so unlimited internet
Real money? Its a bit, well, not so reassuring, I'd still rather just buy the game once off.

Pros
Unlimited fun
Huge number of players
A hugely popular idea

Keep going and make me a beta tester!

**iceman** · January 12th, 2005, 08:49 AM

Originally Posted by meatwad

Is that yours meatwad? I'm a big VW fan.... I'll say a 72-73 superbeetle.

**Khazad** · January 12th, 2005, 08:59 AM

I'll just post what i've told driver on this before. It is an excellent idea, the problem is implementation. The server farm required to run this kind of environment would be huge, so to actually get this up and running you would beed some backers with deep pockets.These will be very difficult to find without a working concept model in place unlsee you simply pitch the idea to a company like EA, who would give you pittances for your idea and make a killing off of it. The idea of cheating would be easily stopped by having all race and car information stored on the server (for offline practicing you could store the information offline, but when they go online to race, all the information is reset if there is a descrepency), but this too will put extra load on the servers and network bandwidth.

All in all, a good idea, but it willl need an extremely concrete business plan to get off the ground.

**Escape_Driver** · January 12th, 2005, 10:16 AM

Any one with a few million to invest please feel free to contact me any time !!

**thirdfey** · January 13th, 2005, 05:06 PM

Originally Posted by Escape_Driver

You pay for your cars, parts, and gas online 1 real dollar = 1000 on line that how you can give that game away. This has the side effect of making game copying work for you not against you.

Everything else is cool about this idea except that part. Although it would depend on how much you earn competing in a race. I mean, think about it, if you want a Ferrari you are gonna be spending some cash so the races gotta pay out.

How realistic do you plan to make it in respect to parts upgrading? Are you planning on doing something similiar to Gran Turismo or trying to do actual brand name parts? The Gran Turismo way would be less costly for the development of the game. Just think of all the development involved for getting the look and feel of the cars right.

The scope of this project is hard to imagine and if you think it's gonna cost a few million