The problem with hacker games is that everyone seems to think about them on a menu system basis. Instead a better approach would be to think of them on a "what goes on in your mind" or "what may it look like if you were a digital being" while hacking. William Gibson wrote great books transferring the great cyber punk hacking aspect to visually descriptive words on a page, and thinking outside the box creating a hacker game could be quite interesting.

I guess my point is to try not to single it out to being a puzzle-based game, or menu navigation based game, but instead think of it as just a "theme" for a game instead of basing it on what you actually do as a hacker. Because lets be honest, hacking is not that interesting.

My example would be a 3rd person game, (systemic engine like GTA) where you have to get access to computers using "social engineering" which is for example walking into a company and lying to the secretary by telling her your a network repairman. Then logging on to the server inside the building in the main office where the game would switch to a different style game play, maybe puzzle, exploration to find files, and can be visualized in a different way then just menu's like most the games in this theme.

This is a ruff example, but instead of basing the game as your are a hacker constrained to a terminal, think of it as your a hacker... who can walk around... explore a world, without menus, while progressing through the game.

(Note: social engineering is the number one hacker skill that all of the great hackers have used the most. In addition, it does not even take a computer, yet it also helps make the game somewhat more realistic)

Just throwing out some ideas...

Derek Warner
Art Institute of Phoenix
Video Game Art and Design

[edited by - derekwarner on March 16, 2003 10:41:45 AM]

How''s this for a (very) vague implementation idea? Some device abstracts the hacked system into a symbolic form. There are pieces of information which, when used together at the player''s decision, either reveal more information or solve part of the hacked system. The process of hacking involves incremently focusing in on the correct set of information.

There will be fuzzy feedback on how good the current set of choices is, which can be used to better-guess the correct combination(s).

Whatever the puzzle is, it should be solveable with pure intellectual analysis but for the lazy/stupid/desperate people, dumb luck should still be useable with a risk of a minor penalty.

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A Problem Worthy of Attack
Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back

Paradroid had a bit of hacking in it. In order to possess another droid on take over you had to defeat its defence circuitry. It was a game in a game. A classic too, one of Andrew Braybrooks best on the old C64. When Paradroid 90 came out on the Amiga they allowed you to ignore that option in order to give it a more arcade feel imo.

Try getting hold of Neuromancer (either the book or the game),it will inspire you. The game was a fantastic graphic adventure which had you jacking in to nerual nets, hacking corpoarations, trading in ICE and ICE breaker programs. You could even trade in your own body parts for money. Oh and the story was great too. If I could get my hands on it, I''d play it today.

You''d need more than a 1-word description to make a game out of it, good or bad... So if that''s all you''ve got, I''d say it''s a bad idea...
But I''d be happy to reconsider if we can get some more info on the game