What’s a lesser known American time/place that would be a great setting for a video game?

30 comments

1. Not sure if this counts, but I think an update to *Oregon Trail* that’s like…half OT, half *Red Dead Redemption 2* would be pretty neat. Open-ish world; like you’re continually travelling down a very wide corridor moving East to West, maybe stopping in specific areas for extended periods.

   It’s been done in a sense, but redoing OT so that you’re actually doing all the activities it described in text while exploring the scenery would be cool.

2. Kidd Brewer Stadium, Bridgeforth Stadium, McLane Stadium….I really want a new NCAA game

3. That time when Chicago lifted up a city block and rolled some of the buildings away on giant rollers while the buildings were still occupied would be a cool setting for a game that has a lot of traversing urban areas and climbing buildings. I think it was called the Raising of Chicago and was done with only manual labor in the middle of the 19th century.

4. Beringia, 21,000 years ago. It’s a survival game.

5. Assassins Creed: Philadelphia

   The Assassin gets fucked up within 5 minutes

6. A spy game almost like splintercell, set in either 1850s or 1900s would be dope.

7. Making your own religion during the 2nd Great Awakening would be fun. “Hard mode” would be an apocalyptic religion that has to survive nothing happening on their promised doomsday.

8. Rocky Mountain National Park would be great for an open world something. Hunting game? Camera shooter? Fantasy game? Edutainment?

9. Open world, red dead redemption style underground railroad game where you get bonus points for killing racists and rescuing slaves then transporting them north. You could add tons of side missions.

10. Hells half acre, it’s where they filmed starship troopers.

    Obvs the game would be fighting space bugs.

    Ope just looked on steam and there is a starship troopers game, ok well make it actually in Wyoming fighting spacebugs like cowboys vs alien (spacebugs)

11. Maybe I don’t understand the assignment, but I think it would be cool to be a Dust Bowl open world game. The point of the game is to do whatever it take to keep your family alive. I think a downside would be the distance between everything, but honestly, I feel like it would make it more realistic.

12. Spanish-American war, Oregon Territory 1830s

13. I just learned the other day about D. P. Upham, an Arkansas state militia commander during Reconstruction who led a “militia war” again the KKK in the state, and I absolutely want a video game about him.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Phillips_Upham

14. RDR2 style, but Arthur Morgan takes down a drug cartel in his redemption arc

15. The Mexican-American war would be interesting to explore as a Medal of Honor game

16. I know it’s a lot more complicated but I still think an adaptation of the Lewis and Clark expedition would be amazing.

    Mostly it would be P v E, with the landscape and terrain presenting the majority of the challenge

17. A racing sim focusing on early auto racing would be kind of cool. Also, an updated version of Streed Rod focusing on 1950’s-1960’s street racing would be interesting too. Think Need for Speed, but with older American cars and no exotics.

    The Korean War gets forgotten about and I wouldn’t mind seeing a good story told in that setting. Along the same lines, I would be down for a game based on M*A*S*H.

18. Charlotte, NC would be an awesome setting for a demolition derby game. Once you unlock the secret Nissan Altima, it’s game over for everyone else.

19. If the traversal is mostly on foot, then something with Death Stranding style climbing would be great in Yellowstone National Park.

    The game could be: a park ranger trying to solve a murder or find missing children, or it could be set in the near future with someone looking for a buried treasure….

    Edit: or perhaps a ufo crashed there and you play as a kind of agent tracking down the pieces. Weird alien enemies and future tech, eventually you get better hoverboards and even a jetpack.

20. 1930s mob game but instead of the cliche Chicago or NY setting, it’s in Detroit instead.

21. A moonshine game set during prohibition, where you build and upgrade your still while also driving the moonshine to the destination, dodging G-men the whole way. Call it “Thunder Road” or something.

    I wonder if you could do something with commercial fishing, the sort that they make TV shows out of, where you have to race out as fast as possible under dangerous conditions

    Actually, speaking of that, Age of Sail whaling could make a great videogame, but I’m not sure a game about killing whales would sell well (odd, nobody minds games about killing _people_).

    One of those truck simulator games, but it’s snowplow simulator

22. Appalachia, prohibition era. Bootlegging tycoon or maybe some sort of drama

23. The Reconstruction-era South.

24. I wouldn’t mind an Ozark RDR2 type game. Centered around the late 19th century.

25. Maybe a freeway building Simulator in the 50s and 60s.

26. Las Vegas in the Mob days could be interesting

27. There’s really no games about Gilded Age building a monopoly from scratch and influencing politics, suppressing strikes, cutting corners, and fighting against the Trust Buster, but they would be so fun as management games. (Not that I’m in favor of these companies but playing as the villain is often pretty fun)

28. The Rust Belt in the late 60s-70s, Rockstar style.

    Factories are closing down and the protagonist is a loyal foreman/union rep who turns to crime to help his guys provide for their families. In the first act he tried to pressure the factory owners and companies, then realizing that is futile he starts building a criminal empire.

29. Bengali Harlem. Or other lesser-known immigrant experiences and communities.

    The Cascade Range volcanoes erupting – not the well-known ones, but the obscure ones. (Example: Glacier Peak, a rarely visited volcano with a violent history, is roughly the same distance from Seattle as Rainier is, almost due east of Everett.)

    Similarly – any of the historic volcanic activity across the western third of North America.

    Westward expansion, from the perspective of the Native people already there.

30. Mafia game set in 1970s Detroit. Have it closely follow the plot of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.