Photography Game

This has probably been mentioned, but has anyone thought about designing a photography game? I wouldn't do it because of skill level, but if someone could make a next gen photography game with realistic play, that would be cool...

Something like Pokemon snap, but real world. You could play as a feelance photographer, set up sex, appearance. Take local jobs. There could be locations: city, mountain, farm, town, island.... some open world type stuff... caves even with floating white stuff to take pictures of...

It would be cool if there were missions, maybe a newspaper to find local jobs in: weddings, birthdays, movie sets.... Cool stuff.

Then of course free play where you go where ever you want taking pictures...

maybe have a store, upgradable camera parts..

Ever been talked about?

 

you can do this in real life
why would you need a game to do it?

 

What a ridiculous question to ask considering emulating real life in games is a multi-billion pound industry.

 

As with most ideas, implementation would be everything. I could see it being fun to have faked-up events and score points for getting certain shots...

But having just gone through my own wedding, and having taken pictures at a real (very small, budget) wedding before that, I can tell you that the real event would be stressful and not really fun, so the game would have to be rather fake-feeling. Plus, the real events are several hours long, and that's just not fun either, I'm sure.

 

The way Dead Rising rated your photos was an interesting way of promoting the photo taking mechanic.
If you made the rating method more related to real world photography, I imagine that would help it feel more gamey.

 

simulation games such as a truck driver , flying planes sure but not taking photos it can be done by anyone at anytime
where as you can just pick up a truck and drive it around you cant just hop in a plane and fly it see my logic?

 

You can't just pick up a camera and photograph someone's wedding. Even if you're invited, you're still going to need their permission to do the actual work.

Most events are going to be this way. Sure, you can go photograph flowers or butterflies, but events are a different thing entirely.

Getting in a plane and flying it might be a little difficult and expensive, but driving a truck? You could probably bribe many truckers into such a thing. For a little while, anyhow. But just like photographing events, the actual substance of the *job* isn't available to someone who isn't in that profession. You need a lot more than just the idea that it might be fun.

 

It's a cool idea. There was a time when there was a lot of creativity in the games industry. You know, a time where 80% of the games weren't FPS war games, zombie shooting, MMORPGs and Flappy Bird clones.

Your concept reminds of that time. Actually, I remember playing a game on my old C64 called Nessie (I think... it was long ago now) where the objective was to get a good photo of the Loch Ness Monster.

I am not sure if you are thinking of a simulation like going around and photographing monuments, nature, events or just making photography a primary mechanic. You could have a photographer traveling around the world looking for Big Foot, Nessie, Chupacabra and so forth. Or maybe UFOs. Or maybe a spy takes photos of documents and such.

I think there are many opportunities to make an interesting game based on photography.

 

People can play football in the streets but they won't ever play against Ronaldo, Neuer or Messi - that's why we get the FIFA games. Feel free to travel to every exotic location around the world, but for people on a tight budget a photography game might be the cheaper option.

 

E-Learning applications can be built for any real life situation, you'd be surprised at who will buy them.
Are you suggesting that you can pick up a camera and instantly be a professional photographer?
There's more to the industry than the games you see on Steam.

Source for this information: It's my job.

Regardless, even if this were a casual take on the idea, I still see it having some merit, it's certainly an idea that's new and hasn't been covered very thoroughly by any other game.
There is a lot of interest in games that aren't all about shooting bad guys, some people just want to wander around a beautifully created world, adding a camera to that only makes it more interesting in my opinion. I'd buy it.

 

Everything can be turned into a game, even the experience of being a forum troll etc...


So what would your purpose of this photo game be? Why do you take pictures? Can you complete the game somehow? What would the game rules be?

I once had a similar idea that I have toyed around with. My thought was that the player was a war journalist that got sent into warzones for a peace related magazine. Your goal was to sneak around, use diplomacy, smarts etc to avoid getting shot so that you would have to be sent back home (wounded or dead) while collecting facts about the war and... taking shots of the ongoing battle. Each map was won when you had managed to collect enough intel and pictures to sway public opinion about the war, get the public moving and put pressure on their politicians to stop it.

It was a part of an exercise where I tried find a different angles on war games that wasn't about shooting people but still had room for interesting game-play.

 

And the best part is, you ARE still shooting people.

 

Touche!

 

I've actually already thought of this idea, and would LOVE to make it. I'm a professional photographer.

I'm TRYING to learn how to program. It's just so damn difficult to learn though because most tutorials and such are so poorly made. I need to find a mentor or something.

I have at least 2 "game" ideas I would like to at least attempt to make and 2 more traditional application ideas too.

If anybody can recommend a good place for asking for live help as I learn, please inbox me. My twitter is also my username. The type of help I'm looking for right now is like "Why am I getting an error when trying to use this variable?" not questions like "How do I use this advanced feature?"

 

Answering questions like that is the first thing a programmer needs to learn to do. Google will answer most of them for you and save you from wasting a lot of time waiting for answers. There are IRC channels for all kinds of things, and if you search this forum I'm pretty sure there's one for Unity, though.

It's true that very few tutorials stop and teach *why* you are doing things. They usually just show off something they know how to do and don't explain how to get their on your own. Unfortunately, I don't have a solution for that.

 

great though t decided by you. nice imagination of yours.
but if you make app of photograph then how to work that pls puts suggetions here.
coz. i am also photographer can check here. The Cheesy Animation - 3D Walkthrough.
or can suggest me for anykind of help for images.


Thanks, The Cheesy Animation

 

A while back there was a photography game for the PS3: http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/...chool/nat-geo-games:-afrika-for-playstation-3
I don't believe it was originally a National Geographic game.

 

A virtual camera club would be good. Everyone takes pics of the same scene (thinking landscape here) and then having a small competition to see who got the best. Beginners could learn a lot about composition, lighting, etc. As long as the scene was complex enough to support it.

 

There are a lot of things you could do with photos as your main theme.

I mean, you could couple it with AR for a lot of mobile phones, you could make it about exploring a world, and take picture of great places you found (not just screenshots), you could go for photographies that are tricky, like photos of fast moving things (lightning?), without using fast repeating mechanics, but a more game oriented way of using fast reactions and timing, you could even try to simulate the depth of what professional material can offer, and let the player play around with zoom, focus, lighting... It could also be about taking photos of people, be it in a controlled environment or not, or even as a paparazzi.

There are a lot of possibilities, and it is only if you only base it on photos, because as soon as you open the possibilities, even just a bit, you end up with a lot of other ways.
Some horror games use cameras (video and photo ones), there is at least one where you need to take photos of the monsters to "defeat" them.
It has even been used in a bullet hell, where taking a photo can be used in many ways, and is ultimately the only way to beat the bosses.

 

The problem is that the question was about real life and game, not simulation and game.
I mean, I can sky, I have a station at 5 minutes on foot, and have a decent level of "mastery" with the discipline, but that doesn't prevent me from wanting to play games that are not anything more than I could do in the real world.

Granted, skying is not accessible for everyone, so it might not be the best universal example, but just because something can be done somewhat easily in real life (at least the basic level of it) doesn't mean that it could not be a simulation or a game, by adding a bit to it to have goals (and score?).

I would tend to agree with 3agle there, because the question, as the first answer, feels more like trying to make the whole idea null, without giving anything in term of discussion or ideas.

if someone thinks that it doesn't make for an interesting idea "as is", it's fine, and there were examples given for parts that would be potentially dull (waiting a lot), but it was given in a way it could be built uppon, as a constructive criticism.

Well, far from me the idea of becoming a moderator, even more in a section that is basically all about discussing ideas, so maybe this post is not quite right.
I'll remove it if needed.

 

Why has nobody mentioned Beyond Good and Evil, the platform adventure game where you play as a photographer?

Anyway, I actually think it's a cool concept. As a newbie amateur photographer there's a lot of stuff you could learn in such a game that'd be super helpful when it came to doing real photography. Static shots are easy in so far as you can just stand there and take 20 shots on different settings until you get what you want. But dynamic shots? You might only have enough time to snap two or three, so having practice ahead of time to know what to expect and how to get the shot you want could be handy. And that practice isn't always easy to come by in the real world - I don't know about you, but I'm not at a rock concert or a monster truck derby weekly to get hours of practice, and when I am at those things I want to enjoy the show as well, not spend every second worrying about my camera.

Plus, it could help you learn about the different accessories, and lots of stuff like that.

Also, here's an idea: on mobile devices you can use the accelerator to know how steady users are holding the camera.