Game Idea A Week: Rock Band World Tour Manager

Week Sixteen (24/01/2010)

In the idea for this week, you are a manager for a rock band. You must decide the cities the band will visit on their tours. If you are successful, your band will increase in popularity and you will earn more money. Watch out, the band may start fighting and all your plans will be jeopardized.

Platform:

PC, Nintendo DS

Genre:

Music/Business Strategy

Why it needs to be made:

People like rock bands and love the idea of being able to travel all over the world. This game lets them do these things.

Description:

The game starts with the player deciding which band they would like to manage. Then they begin to design concert tours for the band. Initially, the band travels locally and nationally, before launching a world tour. The player balances budget and time constraints in an effort to improve the band's popularity. If the band spends too long on tour they will begin bickering amongst themselves which may lead to future problems. If a band doesn't visit the cities where they are most popular, then fans will be disappointed. On the other hand, if the band only visits cities where they are popular, then their popularity will not increase significantly.

As the game progresses, the player has the option to manage more rock bands. This means that the player needs to balance the bands so that bands have the proper exposure and are not neglected or overused. The key tasks a player can perform are: choose a band to tour, choose tour type (local, national, regional, world), choose locations for the tour. The player gets feedback in the form of money, band popularity, and in-fighting within band members.

Why it will be a compelling game:

When choosing the cities for the tour, it is easy to get a small amount of success, but difficult to fully optimise the combination of time, budget and popularity. This means that the player will always be looking for new ways to improve the money and popularity of their band. The trade-offs will be obvious, but will be hard to perfect and depend on whether the player wants the band to be more popular or have more money.

Other thoughts: