My Hindu Shooter
The Escapist has posted a fascinating tale of game development gone wrong. The new article by writer and game designer Allen Varney covers his attempt to use the Unreal Engine to create a non-violent first-person shooter, which “turned out to be a bad idea.”
Make the jump to check out some of the insanity:
The Escapist has posted a fascinating tale of game development gone wrong. The new article by writer and game designer Allen Varney covers his attempt to use the Unreal Engine to create a non-violent first-person shooter, which “turned out to be a bad idea.” Check out some of the insanity:
This Hindu non-shooter was conceived and produced entirely by – nobody ever believes this part – recent graduates of the Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. Yes, really. In early 2000, a gaggle of upscale white American 20-somethings with fresh MUM animation and graphics degrees thought it would be fun to create a computer game based on Hindu teachings. Funded by the young heir to a chain of furniture stores, who scraped by on a parental allowance of half a million dollars a year, they licensed Epic Games’ hotly anticipated Unreal Warfare engine – six months’ allowance right there – and set to work.
Somehow, Varney parlayed the venture into a game about a monkey on a search for enlightenment, where each level of the game is a progressively higher state of consciousness. Sounds exactly like my real life. This astral monkey encounters gurus and demons and such, faces ethical choices wherein, presumably, the option that is not bloody and horrible should be chosen. There was more:
Your karma at the time of death determines your next incarnation. If you have purified yourself and spread enlightenment, you may return as a rich merchant or Brahmin priest; if you have defiled yourself with violent actions, you may instead become a lowly peasant or even a pig, dog or worm.
Wait, so I’m not a monkey? Tarnation! Need I say, the game never went gold? Read the whole article for a lot more weirdo twists and turns in a story where game designers took breaks for Transcendental Meditation (in Fairfield, Ohio, mind you) instead of smoke breaks.
Via GameSetWatch.
tiny dancer
Posted to Video Games on 15 October 2006
· Comments (2)
Other stuff like this: allen varney, my hindu shooter
pass the bong, dude
I can’t explain it, but we have a large Indian population around here (in Ohio). The idea of Transcendental experts in Fairfield doesn’t seem that odd to me…