Auf der diesjährigen Game Developers Conference wurden drei große Namen im Business gebeten, mal was anderes zu erfinden als Ego-Shooter: ein Videospiel, das sich mit Emily Dickinson beschäftigt. Battle for the Belle of Amherst:

The Sims creator Will Wright, Black & White designer Peter Molyneux and Splinter Cell lead designer Clint Hocking were set the task of developing a game concept based on the reclusive poet.

This was the second year of the challenge: Last year, several leading designers were asked to come up with games about love. Wright had the overflow crowd roaring with Collateral Romance, a love story set in the war game, Battlefield 1942.
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Wright, the speaker most people in the room had come to see, riffed on Dickinson’s reputation as a recluse. “If she were alive today, she’d be an internet addict,” Wright deadpanned, “and she’d probably have a really amazing blog.”

At first, he said, he’d thought he would mix Dickinson’s poetry into a Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas environment. But in the end, he was inspired to create a kind of combination of Tamagotchi and Microsoft’s universally hated paperclip helper, Clippy.

Then came the idea to put the player in the role of Dickinson’s therapist. The game, he said, would be stored on a USB flash drive. “As you interact with her, you start with a cordial relationship,” he said. “She (either) becomes romantically obsessed with you, or goes into a suicidal depression, and at the end, she can delete herself from the memory stick.”

Ich würd’s kaufen. Aber ich bin ja auch einen Tag lang traurig, wenn meine Lieblingsfigur aus Animal Crossing einfach in die Nachbarstadt umzieht, die treulose Kuh.