Pro Wrestling Tycoon. Forget the many sports wrestling games out there, where you play a wrestler who is wrestling – those almost never capture the spirit of the thing. It’s always “well, here’s a match, wrestle the match.” But pro wrestling is so much more than that – and the challenge factor of successfully running a wrestling company so much higher than that of simply winning a match in any case.
The actual engine wouldn’t have to be too difficult: after all, pro wrestling writing mostly depends on a number of scenarios that only vary mildly (the basic feud, the friends-split-up-and-become-enemies, the formation of a heel stable, etc.). You could probably come up with about forty or so possible mini-plots and the player could mix and match them to best effect. In terms of the wrestlers themselves, you could assign ratings for various traits – some for interviews and acting ability (acting ability, improvisational ability, charisma) and some for wrestling ability (selling, execution of moves, large moveset, ability to resist injury) and then some X-factors (motivating factors which make the wrestler happy – some want money, some want outside-of-wrestling-fame, some want to only wrestle great matches, etc.; as well as how much the wrestler demands in salary). You could also do something like how baseball-manager games do and as wrestlers age their traits can shift (and not always simply a decrease, either). And, if you were being honest to the spirit of the thing, there would be the occasional tragic death.
Once you get past the wrestlers, you can start to consider the audience and business models as well. How do you negotiate TV deals? What does your audience demand, and does it vary from city to city? How much money does your company spend on pyrotechnics? What PPV schedule will you use? How do you deal with competing wrestling companies – cooperation deals like the old territory system or WWF/ECW in the late 90s, or total bloodthirsty competition a la the Monday Night Wars? Hell, you could even timeshift scenarios – managing a wrestling promotion in the 1960s-1970s was a totally different ballgame than managing one in the 1980s or today. Put together an “exodus” challenge to mimic the business challenges of losing a number of your top young stars to your chief rival – how do you stay afloat?
The only problem is I don’t see how you would account for events like the Montreal Screwjob or other things that exist only in wrestling and are one-off, non-duplicable events. Which is part of the reason wrestling is the way it is, I suppose, but make the tycoon game that much harder to design.
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There actually was a game like this. It was free to play for the longest time, so it used real promotions and real wrestlers in it. Eventually it went Pay, and thus faked everything.
I can’t remember the name of it though, unfortunately.
This is the first Tycoon game concept that I’ve ever been interested in playing, and I haven’t been an active wrestling fan for….well, how long ago was the heyday of the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection and The Hurricane & Rosey?
Aulayan, I believe you mean Extreme Warfare Revenge
Yes that was it! Which was the most ridiculous name given what the game was, but EW:R was pretty fun. It didn’t have all the features MGK listed, but many.
(I wish we could edit, because I keep posting). Huh according to wikipedia, they still are making it. Total Extreme Wrestling 2010 was released 2 years ago. Neat.
I agree that you couldn’t program one-off events, but you could still have things like unexpected fan reaction, and let you decide how to handle it. For example, if someone has X-Pac heat, do you keep trying to push them as the next big thing, hoping their high charisma stat will help them turn it around? Maybe you bury them, and try to bring them back after things have died down.
And to represent things like the Gobbledy Gooker without making you actually approve such an idea, there’d be the “Gimmick Failure!” disaster.
This may be tongue-in-cheek since Total Extreme Wrestling 2010 has literally every feature you mentioned plus a dozen others (like, if you push a young guy too hard, his attitude backstage will go from positive to negative in a hurry).
The game was formerly EWR and free, but switched to TEW in 2005. That meant it wasn’t built on real world people/companies anymore, but a fictional universe called the “Cornellverse” which has been actually more fun to play because it has its own unexplored personalities, promotions, and history.
However, if you want to take over a company with Ric Flair or Hulk Hogan or Bret Hart (like all Canadians, I’m assuming you love Bret), tireless “mod-makers” have created downloadable scenarios for virtually any time period from the mid-1980s to present day.
Grey Dog Software, Total Extreme Wrestling 2010. I find it incredible fun to play and I don’t even particularly care for wrestling. It’s just a great text sim.
Weird, my comment got cut off and I can’t seem to post with any HTML tags. Well, here’s the link to the site with all the mods.
http://www.greydogsoftware.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=166
The company that sells the game is Grey Dog Software.
http://www.greydogsoftware.com/home.php
The 2005 version is now free ware, but the 2010 version is well worth the 25 bucks.
As a wrestling fan this is always, always something I’ve wanted to try. Either that or a fully-functioning BioWare wrestling RPG.
Fire Pro is hands down better than the current schlock of WWE games at providing a fighting game depth to the thing, but even then it’s not the only way to look at the art form.
Serious question for professional wrestling fans: do you guys ever wish the fighting looked more like fight scenes in movies?
Well sure, in theory. Heck, if we had sweet hologram generators they could throw Hadokens at each other and that’d be awesome too. The problem is that pro wrestling, which consists of moves that have been specifically designed to look cool without hurting the person taking the move, is absolutely *brutal* on the performers’ bodies.
The WWE is currently insisting on a safer overall style than was used five to ten years ago, and even so they’ve got a fair chunk of the roster on the injured list at any given time. Then you look at maniacs like Mick Foley, who put themselves through hell and now can barely walk. Not to mention multiple concussion syndrome -> Chris Benoit.
It took 3 posts on this topic for MGK to learn that if he wanted to play this game, he could.
Let’s see what other things MGK can will into existence!
Personally, I wish they made ketchup-flavored potato chips.
Was that a whoosh?
http://www.herrs.com/products/chips/ketchup.html
I have Ketchup flavoured chips.. God Bless Canada.
Ketchup? Pfft, whatever.
(… and yes, they do. They really, really do. Almost as confusing as bacon icecream.)
Question. What is this montreal screwjob? Is it something you can only get on St Catherine?
@bunny the Montreal Screwjob is when Vince MacMahon and Shawn Michaels basically conspired to take the title from Bett Hart, in a real life, not fake wrestling way. It’s a bit detailed, but googling it will take you to very detailed descriptions.
I have returned to being a commenting commenter who comments (and says redundant things) here, with this comment that I’m commenting.
Anyhoo, it’s an interesting idea for a game but it would be tricky as hell to design. Of course, if there have been games a lot like this as mentioned above, maybe it isn’t as tricky as I think.
Got a couple questions for ya, MGK. First of all, have you ever done the e-fed thing, or considered it? Because I got back into it a while ago (after not doing it since the days when WCW still existed) and it’s been fun. One thing it’s got going for it is that while the fed I’m currently in does have a head booker, everybody has a say in where the storylines go, really. And usually we don’t run into the “too many cooks” problem. Since booking is part of what you’d be doing in a Pro Wrestling Tycoon game, that might interest you. Or it might interest somebody else here.
The other question is whether you follow the indies very much: ROH, CHIKARA, Dragon Gate USA, PWG, CZW, and so on. I find most of them to be better than WWE and definitely better than TNA.