Originally Posted by tshiggins
I think GURPS would be perfect for a survival game, myself, and those are very popular these days. However, there's a significant schism in the community who call first-person shooters with random loot-drops that allow construction of bases a "survival game," and the more hard-core crowd who want the ability to hunt, gather, craft and farm, and who also want to have to worry about food, water, exposure and wild animals*.
GURPS could do either of those things well, and is (I think) uniquely suited to do a game that could appeal to both. Personally, I like the notion of a Robinson Crusoe type of game, where someone gets marooned on an island, somewhere, and must figure out how to survive.
Make it a TL 5 setting (circa 1850, or so), and a skilled craftsman can make just about any technology routinely available to normal people. My friend Dave points out that one of the unique things about the U.S. Civil War is that it marked pretty much the last time that the soldiers who fought in it could make most of their gear, themselves -- especially the Yankee craftsmen on the Union side of things. Give those guys a workshop and they could pretty much produce just about anything short of a high-pressure steam-engine (and they could repair one of those).
That said, such a setting would need a lot to offer, since people on the FPS side of the schism really like their automatic weapons. Given that SJ Games has a solid core of "After the End" material, a post-apocalyptic setting might be the way to go.
However, if you do that, you're walking into a market that's pretty saturated with exactly that sort of computer game, right now. You'd need a really different take, or you'd need an instantly-recognized and wildly-popular franchise, (Mad Max, or something), which you're not going to get without a seriously loaded and somewhat eccentric angel investor.
*For sufficiently broad definitions of "wild animals" that may include zombies or fantastic creatures.
(Copied this over to the other thread, where it may be more appropriate.)
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