Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Ubisoft's Imagine Series

I'm at a conference this week, but it ain't GDC. It's something I have to do to get my lawyer license so it's not exactly a riveting intellectual experience. Lots of people telling awful disbarment stories, ominous reminders of how my entire lifestyle will soon be changing, and the very ugly reality that the legal business is not doing well.

I explain how this post came about in the beginning just because it's such an odd thing. There are different posts about these games but most of them are content breakdowns. The games are so blatantly stereotyping young girls that I just did a quick recap of how that works and instead focused on the actual mechanics themselves. How do these things play? Are they any different from games targeting other groups?

The final answer is up for debate but most of this stuff is just RPG mechanics set in different content. Instead of kill things you perform some other grind activity, money buys decorations or equipment, and you nicely progress along a reward scheme towards a final goal. Even decorating stuff, the one consistent design across all 3 games, is located in plenty of other titles. It's odd to me because it really shows how much an activity is defined by the content rather than what you're actually doing.

I still kinda want to play the one about being a Music Festival Organizer. Loved those things back when I was younger.

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