Welcome to the Village

Hi. It's Monday, about 9:20 a.m. I've cleaned up some errors in the text. I wrote the essay last night after a long day and should have given it a better edit. (I was dreaming when I wrote this, forgive me if it went astray).

Also, as I was driving into work today, I came up with the perfect game for older players, players who want to play something else besides the first-person shooter/extreme sport/sword-and-sorcery/RPG juggernaut current out there.

Ever see the cult classic television show, "The Prisoner"?

"The Prisoner" was a program about a mysterious government agent who, after a fiery resignation, gets kidnapped and sent to a bizarre compound called "The Village." There, the agent, given the moniker of "Number 6," is grilled by his captors to give up the reason why he quit. By hook and by crook, they try to drag the information out of "Number 6," who is always scheming to escape. Just when you think "Number 6" is about to pull one over on his captors, the rug gets yanked out from under him and things never appear as they seem.

Avant-garde to this day, "The Prisoner" was a groundbreaking show that explored free will, paranoia, the human determination to rise above, and man versus a faceless bureaucracy. It was a thinking man's James Bond, and there hasn't been anything like it on television since.

Take the engines behind "Prisoner of War" and "Morrowwind," add a dash of "Myst" and the trust/fear factor in "The Thing." Put them all in a blender, mutate them into an advanced state and, bingo, you have the game version of "The Prisoner." You, as "Number 6," struggle to figure out how "The Village" works and piece together who really is in charge. You risk allegiances with shady fellow prisoners and gather items and information on how to escape your confines.

"The Prisoner" would feed on the wave of television nostalgia, attract the cult following who watched the show and provide players with one hell of a puzzle box to solve. And I'd be in line to buy it the day it came out.

Keep your "Max Payne" and your "Super Mario Sunshine."

I am not a number. I am a free man.