Thinking About a Yakuza-Based Choice Game

General
1

So a while back I started a project in which some of you might remember (Dust) but I ended up abandoning the project since I went into it thinking too much about Fallout. I also decided to work on something more original, at least in terms of choice games, since @JimD has done a great job with the post-apocalyptic genre and to be honest, I fear the comparison I might get to his game, or to Fallout, which was my original inspiration.

Well randomly I remember seeing the movie “Shinjuku Incident” starring Jackie Chan, which takes place during a surge of illegal Chinese immigrants to Japan. These immigrants are mostly confined the Shinjuku District, hence the name. Anyway Jackie and his fellow Chinese immigrants begin to work in the underworld by money laundering and rigging slot machines. They get into disagreements with the local Yakuza and Taiwanese gangs, which is the incident part of the title. I got inspired a little by this movie, which I suggest for you guys to watch, even though the dub is meh.

So those of you still with me, I plan to write a choice game centering around the Yakuza, (or other gangs) with the player being a member of them, or maybe even the police. I could both sides to have both sides of morality, because the Yakuza tend to see themselves as honorable. They were some of the “first responders” an devasting earthquake back in 2011, by distributing food and blankets to those affected. On the other hand, the police can be quite corrupt, when they are meant to uphold justice.

So all in all, I’m asking

  1. Has this been done before, or something similar? (Excluding @Vendetta’s game, since he’s been AWOL like myself for quite some time)

  2. Who’s interested? ;p

I’m open to suggestions since this possible WIP is in its planning stages.

2

I’d love to see more post-apocalyptic games. :slight_smile: JimD’s is just zombies after all, there’s plenty of other possible causes. My favourite one is meteors and triffids.

Your game idea’s admittedly not in a genre that interests me. I’d be concerned about it being too close to real world things. I’d suggest using it as a spring board for inspiration, but making the gang names original.

And I’m all in favour of the difference being Post-Apocalyptic Gangs! Or Dystopian Futuristic Gangs. I’d also suggest just sticking to one side or the other since that’s easier and will let you tell a more gripping story than trying to cover it from both sides.

Honorable gang members and corrupt police. I’m starting to think Robin Hood.

3

I like the sound of Dystopian Futuristic Gangs…

EDIT:
2100 AD, Earth
Population: 25 billion
In an effort to stem the increasing population, the governments of the world have begun eradicating the unwanted and poor, and as a result of this, gangs have risen up to fight against the terror and oppression.

4

Oh…I thought that you new concept would be a bit like Vendetta

5

Yeah, that sounds great.

Will you be exploring the premise a bit more to get some more realistic world-building in?

6

Yea, I’ve seen a lot of movies about world overpopulation and such, and almost all of them involve interstellar space travel and locating a habitable planet to ferry the extra population. I honestly don’t see that happening by 2100, mostly because I don’t find interstellar space travel plausible without FTL Drives or wormholes.

That just made me think of an idea. A wormhole opens up in our solar system and some sort of sentient and hostile alien species pours in, and then they surround Earth. The governments sees this as an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone; conscript the poor and use them to fight against the aliens.

7

@Incompatibility I have the opposite sentiments to @FairyGodfeather, so I’ll say “Hold on, sport, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” It is perfectly possible to have a -grounded- game about overpopulation and gang warfare, without going into the unlikely side of things such as global democide, alien invasion, and wormholes. Just consider -why- overpopulation would be a problem: Resources. And boom, there you have it, governmental tyranny in response to a Malthusian Collapse, where any government action to rectify the situation is in somewhat of a moral grey area, and there will be large-scale civil unrest as a standard.

8

I admit I got a bit ahead of myself there, lol. I guess I still stick to something more rooted in reality. I’ll try and get a demo up by the end of the week, so more suggestions are welcome :slight_smile:

9

@Incompatibility What premise have you settled on, if I may?

10

This kind of looks like a Japanese clockwork orange to me.

11

@Drazen I’m doing away with democide, since it’s too morbid, and doing away with aliens, since it seems too much like Pacific Rim, minus the robots and godzillas.

@undead ???

12

And oops I see I didn’t post all of my reply earlier.

I’d think it wouldn’t be so blatant. You don’t just eradicate the poor, the vulnerable, the disabled, the mentally ill, those of different races, anyone else you consider undesirable.

You do things like cut their access to any sort of welfare system. If they’re starving it’s their fault, they should work harder, never mind that there’s no jobs to be had, or that they do work extremely hard at low paying jobs. You see that all of the disabled, and unemployed, must have every single moment of their lives examined, and if they ever appear happy, or go out, then clearly they’re faking their inability to work. You forcefully sterilise them. You force them to work, without pay, for meagre rations.

You decide to destroy their housing because it’s not up to par and don’t provide any alternative lodgings. You round them all up into camps, for their own good.

Or deny them access to medical treatment by making it so extremely unaffordable. You don’t provide the life-saving medicine that would save them from diseases, which will run rife through the communities of the poor. In fact you may actually have them forcefully injected with said diseases.

Or conscript them to the army, make them fight and die. Steal away their voting rights, and say that only certain people can vote. And of course you forbid the undesirables access to where the elite live, force them to obey a curfew strip away all of their freedoms for their own good.

You take inspiration from real life events, of the despicable things that governments and corporations have done, and use that to build your dystopia.

13

@Incompatibility So the PC is either a policeman or a gang-member in Japan, at a time when there is an overpopulation crisis? Is that it?

14

@Drazen Well it doesn’t have to be in Japan, since you guys provided your input. Now that I think about it, Japan isn’t as overcrowded as other countries out there, like China or India.

@FairyGodfeather yea I like the sound of that more than my more brutal solution to overpopulation, lol.

15

I agree with the no faster than light travel, or worm holes, and hey even taking into consideration the time difference any communications will experience. I think we’ll end up with cities on the ocean before in space ever becomes viable.

Generation ships, or ships with cryogenic chambers in them, are one way around that. Round up the poor, the criminals, and send them all off to a new world on their ship. It’s a chance for a new life for them.

Isn’t it?

Right…

The government would never fake a moon-landing, never fake a ship and actually be sending these pioneers off to their deaths.

Where are you from? What country do you know best?

16

Well I was born in the Philippines, and it’s pretty damn crowded there, not to mention the stench of urine that is prevalent everywhere in the major cities. Don’t get me wrong, that was my true home. Right now I live in a relatively small town in Florida, where the tallest building is the City Hall, lol.

17

Write which of the two you know best. If you know the Philippines well, then use them. I’ve never read a dystopian story set there. I think it would be fascinating to have one. Especially if you actually know what it’s like there.

18

@FairyGodfeather “You do things like cut their access to any sort of welfare system. If they’re starving it’s their fault, they should work harder”

That doesn’t sound quite like the mentality which would arise. Problems being solved by diligence is something that can only occur within a peacetime-nation. But this is an nation in crisis, and hence you’d have to be insane to think “Just work harder” as a solution. And whilst my respect for the rationality of pretty much every prevailing governmental ideology is generally slim, I don’t think the powers that be belong in Broadmoor quite yet.

No, the mentality I think which would dominate would be: Sheer, blind panic. The government would be, therefore, quite inefficient. “Can we afford welfare? No? But we need to regulate our dwindling food supply, and too-large population, somehow… So, what do we do?” would be the discussion. THIS is what would determine the governments fumbling response; sometimes too heavy handed, sometimes too hesitant.

Anyway, did you have any particular real-life events in mind?

19

Those were just a bunch of random ideas which I offered up.

There are a multitude of people who are convinced that the poor should just apply themselves more and work harder. Every so often there’s some rich person or other making such claims, that they clawed their way up, everyone else should be able to too. Just work harder. So I do think that those ideas could be taken and extrapolated upon. However, it was just one random idea on a whole list of random suggestions. It’s just an example of something people do.

I don’t think me suggesting events would be helpful. I think it’s better to use those that have an impact on the author, which would work with the premise of his story. I might be inclined to go the greedy corporations route.

20

@FairyGodfeather And I am one such person who is convinced thus, but addressing a crisis with peacetime principles of governance is a flawed approach.

If I may suggest an event, @Incompatibility, mayhaps look into the Holodomor: Where the Soviet Union deliberately starved the people of The Ukraine. Now, this is a case of forced starvation, - which may not be a factor in your game, - but it is still a modern, fairly developed nation, suffering the effects of famine, of which we have plenty of information. Could be worth a gander.