OPRAH WINFREY: THE VIDEO GAME

I wanted to try and design a game around an unusual license as a personal challenge. Patrick Curry jokingly mentioned Oprah Winfrey as a license to make a game on and I took him up on it. After giving the game that would evolve from the license some thought, I realized the potential for making both an enjoyable and inspirational game based on the life and empire of the person we call Oprah.

Thought Process

I initially had a few ideas. They were the following:

1. A business simulation game in which you lived the life of Oprah. You begin as an aspiring actress out of school and slowly build an entertainment empire.
2. A game about producing the Oprah show and O Magazine. You are tasked with selecting, investigating, and producing segments and stories for the Oprah show and O Magazine. Your actions build up or lower the shows ratings. Your job is to find moving stories about social injustice, spirituality, health issues, politics, etc.
3. Oprah’s philanthropic actions are actual a guise for her world conquest. “Oprah would never suck out our brains and turn us into a zombie horde. She is too kind and caring.” Think X-Com meets day time television.

None of the ideas realized the potential or honored the strengths of the license. I needed an idea that took advantage of why people love Oprah so much. Tycoon games and tactical strategy games were not going to show off what Oprah offers the game world. So I went back to the drawing board and pondered on why we love Oprah. I came up with the following:

• Her rise from a minority, low income kid living in the ghettos of America to the richest African American woman in the world is the epitome of what we believe America offers citizens with enough determination and ingenuity.
• She has never forgotten her roots as she is always giving back from her wealth.
• Oprah’s compassionate approach to journalism seems sincere and heartfelt.
• Her media company focuses primarily on content that positively impacts the lives of its audience.

After I thought of the license in this way an idea for the game I would make started to form.

Game Premise

Patrick Moran Presents:Oprah Winfrey’s Greatest life coach to live ever in the universe focuses on your attempt to overcome the challenges of being born into an impoverished and underprivileged neighborhood in the effort to create a better life for your character.

Game Play

Game play is broken down into three main sections: high school, college, and early career. Each section lasts four to six game years. The goals of each phase are different depending on the year and section but all levels include high level goals such as studying enough to receive good grades, maintaining meaningful relationships, staying out of trouble, helping your family financially, assisting with taking care of your brothers and sisters, and finding ways to open up new opportunities.

You are part of an open world setting in which NPC behaviors and challenges dynamically develop outside of the scripted event and storyline depending on your actions. Each game day is considered a year in your characters life. Choices that are made at each phase will have repercussions down the line.

Three main devices are used during game play: choices, activities, and creative problem solving.

Choices focuses on the decisions you make during conversations with characters or the decision you make simply by engaging in an activity. Will you help your friend cheat on a test in order to improve your relationship? Is your time better spent studying or working at a local motel to save up money for college? Your mother would like you to buy some of your own clothes with the money you earned but you had something else in store for it. What do you do?

Activities take place in the form of smaller games representing the activity. Examples of activities are studying, working at a local business, trying out for the volleyball team, delivering a speech to a class, or interviewing for a job. These quick, representative games evolve according to the player’s actions that relate to the associated action and the difficulty of the action being attempted.

Creative problem solving arises from the player’s understanding of how the game’s dynamic systems work. “If I want a chance to be a part of Miss. Smith’s drama competition group then I should probably enroll in her class so I can build a relationship with her.” “If I buy some candy from the store, maybe I can sell it to kids after school to make some easy money.” “If I can pitch in some money each month my family can move to a better school district and I will receive a better funded education.”

Over the course of the game characters that worked to generate both short term and long term opportunity as well as balance their current life with hard work and play, see the fruits of their labor reaped. Characters that find creative way to open up opportunity will attend better schools, receive better jobs, and generally see their character moving into better life situations. Conversely, characters that don’t take advantage of the education they are receiving, improperly balance immediate enjoyment of life with long term character improvement, fail to seek out opportunity, and get distracted by the darker side of society don’t progress far out of their birth home.

The Oprah Factor

Oprah has decided to mentor a young underprivileged high school student and to document her efforts on her show. She frequently gives you advice as you play the game. You are able to call Oprah at anytime for advice and any given choice. At the end of each game day Oprah delivers a segment on her show about how you are doing in your efforts to improve your life. This provides a meaningful reward for the player succeeding as each segment can be different depending on the player’s success.

Final Thoughts

By creating a game that teaches children about poverty and how difficult it is to pull out of it and by giving kids a game that teaches them about being creative and working hard, the game helps its audience to develop the correct mindset that it takes to improve your living situation. A positive game that gives you lots of wins in a simulated world can give you the confidence and example to be a winner in the real world. The goal of Patrick Moran Presents:Oprah Winfrey’s Greatest life coach to live ever in the universe is to provide a valuable example of how to win at life despite having the cards stacked against you.

~ by patrickmoran on January 12, 2007.