Need for Speed: The Run, but good. Give me an uninterrupted race accoss the US (or any other continent), against 199 other drivers, with strategic decisions to make such as fuel stops, sleep breaks, multiple paths... Make it a rogue lite with unlockable vehicle classes, police chases, weather changes, racing through traffic... Bonus points for realistic physics and VR support.

Cities: Skylines but ecosystem repair. Plant forests, regrade areas of mountains to mitigate landslide potential, reintroduce species and study their functional relationships with each other... Game progression comes in the form of additional research grants or new area assignments which present new challenges and unlock a new set of tools/procedures, but the successes from previous sites allow for migration of the reintroduced species into the new site.

I guess this game just doesn’t exist, but remember that tweet of the guy who had a dream about an open world pirate exploration game with Waluigi in it?

That game.

Star citizen

Hmmm, quite hard to choose. I would say an anticapitalist game. Most of game focus on growing, gaining power and i never saw an game that has horizontal power hard coded to its bone.

For example : city skyline unlock new building based on population threesold. The city development is geared toward growing, expanding and creating new job. That's bad. We can't live in this kind of world anymore and yet we fail to imagime something different.

Can't we imagine a new economical system and set up new variable ? Or a game that go beyond the scope of heroes's story ? Why should we be special ?

Eve Offline, with all other players being NPCs.

I have a mental hangup with the very real dread of when hosted multiplayer games die, that all the time and effort I have spent, and all the things I've built, will just suddenly disappear. It's why I run a private G17 Mabinogi server on my pc, rather than playing online.

Back in the day I playtested this game concept under an NDA, but since it expired I can talk about it.

An FPS game in an open map with buildings, has 12 players playing but when someone dies, they respawn right there but swap to the opposite team. The last person to get shot gets eliminated and then the teams split again. This goes on until 6 players are remaining, who are declared the winning team.

It was really fun to play, and I quite miss it.

It used to exist, but not so much anymore. I miss heavily community based FPS multiplayer games. With custom servers and so on. I played Counter-Strike: Source last night, what a breath of fresh air!

Same, I played some Day Of Defeat: Source also a while back. I got onto a server, people were talking about random things and seemed to know each other, there was a sense of community, it felt like a local bar.

It's 3am and I'm chilling and talking with strangers while surfing on CS:S. God, I miss this.

I miss that in newer games. It's all matchmaking, all competitive and in many ways, modern games like this feels "no fun allowed".

Here’s a weird one I had a half-baked idea for: Tower Defense Metroidvania. The idea is that your an acolyte of a temple (or a mechanic in a space station, whatever), and there’s an armed group trying to force their way past the temple’s traps and defenses to get to the heart of the temple and steal the macguffin; that’s going on in a little horizontal track at the top of the screen, and meanwhile the rest of the screen is Metroidvania gameplay as you navigate the interior of the temple (or space station) to activate defenses, acquire magical relics, and eventually awaken the temple’s guardian spirit. You lose if the bad guys get to the heart of the temple, you win when you successfully gather everything you need to awaken the guardian. In the meantime, you have to decide when and where to spend resources (including time) shoring up the “normal” defenses (that delay the attackers) and when you need to just push onward to awaken the guardian.

A turn-based, tactical, squad-centered action title where a collective of vicious aliens invade the planet and you as the leader of a group of brave if vulnerable heroes have to save the world from the strange new threat. Except this time the world the aliens have picked to invade is a fantasy realm.

Guiding mages, warriors and rogues against the threat from outer space, combining XCOMesque battles with traditional fantasy game combat and levelling mechanics. Advance through the map taking regions back in control rather than zigzagging around the globe. Both the dwarven and elven capitals are under attack, which one do you go to rescue first and gain the help a new race to pick your pool of heroes from? Manage your kingdom and choose which deities you build a temple for, determining whether you unlock paladins or warlocks as a sub-class. Beat the aliens to reach the dragon before its captured and converted to their side. And as you encounter more armoured enemies, let your blacksmiths experiment with slapping together scavenged items from the battlefield to form high -tier magitech armour of your own.

It's a fever dream combination of effectively XCOM and Majesty that's been in my head for years because I love quirky mashups like this. Not necessarily anything new under the sun but I feel like with some work put into it, you could really forge something unique by embracing the combination of styles and genre conventions.

Truly open-world Star Wars. Like a Breath of the Wild game except with multiple planets and all the Star Wars stuff.

We had something close to it with SW: Galaxies, but... RIP SW: Galaxies.

I want to play a game like Fallout, with perhaps a light plot, but a much heavier settlement building mechanic.

Like, you found a settlement, and it’s filled with trash, debris, and burnt-out structures. As you scavenge and collect things, and attract people to your cause, the place slowly becomes cleaner and more structured. You can have settlers scavenge for themselves and fix up structures, farm for food, treat wounded, lead small armies against mutants and generally secure an area of a map, and really be able to treat the settlement as a home base.

Playing Fallout 4, I was bothered by how I could build out all these settlements, place structures and whatnot, help these people, and still no one had the sense to pick up a broom and sweep up the pile of trash in the street.

Modern AAA matrix game

I want a game that's somewhere between Animal Crossing and Dwarf Fortress - something with the extensive world gen of DF, but with cute goofy animals, and maybe a little less grisly. So less sudden death by wildlife/zombies/collapsing ceilings, and more adorable wagon travel, trade and founding of settlements - which you then get to live in!

A Microsoft Flight Simulator game but for cars.

I just wanna drive around the world and see shit I can't otherwise see, but in real time drives. I got the inspiration from those Trucker Simulator games.

We're almost there with Street View and satellite images, and the developer could do hand-modeling for certain cities and landmarks like MS FS does.

Science-based dragon MMO

The WoW raiding experience, but without the MMO, and possibly the addition of rogue lite elements (each raid is a run with its own progression, but wiping would be allowed and embraced).

The format of DRG or Gunfire Reborn is pretty close, but 1) I prefer the high fantasy setting of warcraft to the gunplay, 2) I'm not interested in procedural levels, and 3) I want the focus to be on polished boss mechanics.

Dungeon Defenders is also close, but 1) you're defending instead of delving, and 2) it is also focused on killing waves of trash mobs rather than boss mechanics.

Destiny bosses are sometimes well designed, but 1) don't care for the gunplay, 2) classes hardly matter, 3) it's a max of 6 people, and I think closer to 10 is the sweet spot.

Gauntlet from a few years back was probably the closest, but still far from the mark. It could have used more mechanic heavy bosses, more meaningful gear, and a larger party size.

1: An open world exploration game that doesn't have combat ... like Breath of the Wild but without all the fighting and with lots of short stories and puzzles.

Basically I want to be able to go wandering off and uncover ancient ruins etc without having to fight for my life.

2: Snowrunner, but with a good narrative story mode and gearboxes that actually work.

There's so much potential to have engaging stories in that game, which could be tied into improved game structure (namely restricting truck / tire choice to make some tasks challenging in an interesting way).

I'll tell you what I want... Katamari Damaci online multi player. Imagine the final level where you roll up the world but with the mechanics of the multiplayer mode that was already in place. It'll be like agar.io where you get bigger and you absorb other people as you get bigger or you get absorbed because you weren't quick enough at growing. They could update the levels to be themed and add new items and Easter eggs for you to discover and pick up. I want this soooooo bad! I want to play with my friends and strangers. I want different play modes where you get the biggest in the time, pick up the most of a specific thing, capture the flag, use your katamari to play golf but it gets harder if you pick up weird shaped stuff that throws off your balance, Easter egg hunt, racing, team games where you absorb the enemy!!!!!!!! I want it alllllll!!!!

A few things come up for me.

An rpg based on wheel or time or storm light archives

Open world top down skyrim-like with combat more akin to ghost of tsushima than traditional 2d zeldas. (As in focus on bad guys, dodge roll, fluid combat)

Modern single player carpg, similar to original forza horizon

I will start. I want to see a game that mashes factory building with either FPS or RTS, where one or more players create a supply chain inside a zone/factory and the other one or more players utilise the ammo, weapons, vehicle etc.

Two player retro JRPG (a la Chrono Trigger, etc) where each player can play independently in the same world, but the story lines intersect and must work together in many parts of the story. Would work great if the story filled in gaps when you replayed as the other player.

Oh, a Diablo or Borderlands like game where the items (loot) and their effects are AI generated.

I don't think we're at a point where this is possible yet. But I'd love to see the kind of random stuff the AI could come up with.

That would also mean: no more meta builds. You'd have to come up with your own build based on the unique items you got.

A modern dungeon keeper.

I'd love to play a fighting game, with 0 executional difficulty. I'm not talking a simplified fighting game, no. I love the fighting game culture, and discussion and analysis of fighting game tech is super interesting. But before I get to have any fun I have to grind and memeorize for hours the structures and matchups. I can't just pick up guilty gear, do a quick match and have fun.

I want a full fat, meaty fighting game where its turn based. Every frame, or at least every frame where I could have an input, I can look at the scene and make a choice. 0 hidden information, 0 mystery on why I got bodied. The depth of a real fighting game, but now its all understanding of the mechanics and not practicing dragon punches.

If this game existed I'd be so jazzed. I would like for it to have CPU matches as well, maybe not as fleshed out as a full story mode but something I can casually play with even when the community inevitabily dies.

A modern version of black and white

Imagine if Rockstar did a superhero game.
With their satire style on it. Like The Boys style.
Open world, some destructive environment, a deep character creator.

I've always thought it was weird that there hasn't been a Hunger Games video game. Not to play out the teen movie storyline, but as the Battle Royale part.

Imagine creating a character using typical RPG elements (strength, endurance, speed, crafting, survival, etc.) with a limited number of points, the same number of points as everyone else. Then you're placed inside different large arenas that have environmental hazards for a Battle Royale survival that could last up to 30 minutes per game if you're good enough to make it to the end.

You have to survive against random encounters just like the gamemasters use in the books, dangerous animals, and you can get sponsorship drops like the COD kill streak rewards (healing items, tools, weapons). You could even make it through by not killing anyone if you're good enough at surviving the environment, but you'd better hope you don't end up in a fight.

I just think a game like that would be sick.

Not a new concept or idea, but:
HL 3 and Portal 3 in Source 2

Endless procedurally generated open-world omni-directional 2D shoot-em-up. Start with a weak spaceship and go on missions to find new weapons and ship improvements. Go to spaceports to buy and sell stuff, fight against aliens or Lovecraftian monsters, survive asteroid waves, find the treasure inside the hostile nebula.

Subnautica in space. "Breathedge" came close, but it just didn't quite get the sandbox element right.

Skyrim but it's an MMORPG (and I don't mean some shitty WoW clone with an Elder Scrolls skin draped over it like ESO)

Any game where the AI cores of modern GPUs are used for actual AI and not graphics.

Zombie apocalypse game with souls like combat but all slow zombies. The game takes your GPS coordinates (or any coordinates you enter) and uses a maps API call to generate the game map based on the real world. It would take things like residential/commercial/industrial areas and generate similar structures but not exact to not be a privacy issue. All major landmarks would be generated. So you could start from your house, or the Eiffel tower, or the middle of the Amazon. Things like grocery stores and malls and schools would be in similar locations, roads and highways etc.

The game would generate slightly different every time you create a map so while always based on the real world, things would be different.

You then must rescue your partner who is across the map (random generated) and find shelter.

There would be some crafting and survival mechanics, but mostly action based combat, skills to level up etc. Minimal if non-existent gunplay, though I'd be open to it if done well.

Very gorey, rogue like/light with persistent stats and incremental style progression (get so far then reset/start new map with higher their upgrades)

So think dead rising meets dark souls, mixed with vampire survivors and incremental games, all with this AR framework. I also considered a multiplayer persistent map br style mode but would prefer a single player experience myself

A settlers-like game (resource/logistics oriented RTS) using a Minecraft-like (block-based) map.

Pokémon x Monster Hunter

Explore a world with cute graphics and build a team of creatures to be the very best or whatever story someone comes up with, but you actually have to fight the creatures to capture them.

Basically Dwarf Fortress, but sci-fi, with space travel and with really good 3D graphics.

An overly complicated simulation of an entire universe where I can do anything that the game's laws of physics allow me to do. Particularly, I dream of a game where you can fulfil Star Trek fantasies of solving convoluted problems with equally convoluted solutions; but without it being a pre-programmed option. ("Reconfigure the deflector dish to output a neutrino wave to counter act the tachyon field!")

Fake physics that allow for real fake science and engineering.