Thanks for clearing this up .

I’ve been toying with the same ideas myself for quite some time now. The best thing I can think of is an RPG like game (easier to dwell heavy on narration without bothring players) that goes something like this:
You start up as the quintessential boy-ish japanese RPG hero, first stealth job in a team of mercenaries. By end of “chapter 3″, the hero dies. Volontarily violent and meaningless death, headshot by a sniper, on the job.
Narration then switches of to the rest of the team (men and women), with no particular character being given spotlight. Main storyline start to be intertwined more and more with private life of the protagonists and their relationships.

I think it’s important to use a group of characters rather than one because it allows to create enough dirt to avoid being trapped in types [just using reverted types is a pleasing idea, but might not be an efficient one because said types are already boring and overdone, when not overtly despised, by a lot of players. The only advantage would be the reversal, and it can only take you so far]. All women can be “badass” enough, but one can be a really harsh killer with a twisted legist approach while another would be a bitter perfectionist trapped in a life she does hate yet is thriving in. One man can be an emotional wreck, unable to cope with any form of social life more complex than a nuclear military-like faction, while another could be stern fatherly figure… till you start digging deeper and find out he’s nothing more than a self-conscious charismatic bastard.
Taking use of one of the main strengh of video game as a narrative media, the semi-non-linearity, you could then start to weave alternate possible devellopements of the relationships around a main storyline, using possibilities offered by the Erasmatron incorporated seamlessly into what might otherwise play like a conventional scripted RPG. Pleasing to both sexes, and different factions in it.

That’s the main idea, anyway, but then I find the sheer scope of it somewhat intimidating.

I cannot but think one oft-overlooked characteristic defining the relationship between a male player and his female avatar happens to be the (sometimes guilty, often unconscious) pleasure of blurring social coding (our sex, and the features that come with it may be genetic, but most of our sexual identity is ensnared in social coding).

Sorry if it was too long.

Have you ever played Max Payne 2? The male and female characters are both strong, but they don’t make a scene about it (they’re too old for that, I suppose), and they work together. I suppose the same could be said about Resident Evil 0.

For the Escapist column, I’ll be focusing on (surprise, surprise) gender and sexuality issues within gaming culture. I have a piece coming out on Tuesday on female monsters in survival horror games. I’m not sure I should release the details on the rest of the line-up :-), but suffice to say there’ll be a lot of (hopefully interesting) exploration of less traditional topics.

Thats Chris Crawford’s Website, a status report and updates are at the top. The crux of the engine is the linguistic interface Crawford came up with, the idea is that all storybuilders will have access to a growing library of verbs with which to construct their gameplay, and then at different causal nodes the user has a range of verbs with which to construct their sentances. Theoretically its possible to build a front-end program that lets you set-up cinematic visuals and possibly even real-time segements interwoven with the turn-based dramatic gameplay. The beauty of this is that you don’t have to be confined to traditional gameplay verbs of run, shoot, use, ect. All kinds of social behavior will be possible with the core library and you can devise custom verbs for your particular storyworld’s needs, allowing to create gameplay that more directly gets at your intended themes, rather than merely subverting old forms.

By the way I too am trying to write for the Escapist, I’d like to hear what you’re working on in regards to your column.

Patrick, you had me at Evangelion. Seriously though, I’m quite familiar with Eva and Brazil (two of my all-time favorites), but I don’t know Erasmatron. I’d love to learn more though. Any links to info?