Before I get into this let me just warn everyone that I’m entering “nerd overdrive mode,” fuckin’ deal with it.
With winter setting in and the snow beginning to pile up video games are quickly becoming my preferred past time. This latest generation of gaming has brought us many innovative ways to communicate and interact with friends, but there is still something missing. Why haven’t we seen any sort of integrated clan system? The Xbox 360 and the PS3 both have this wonderful OS accessible from anywhere on the console. I can be slaughtering hordes of zombies in Left 4 Dead and be talking to a friend who is watching the latest episode of Lost and another friend who is playing FIFA all while streaming music from my Windows PC. With all this incredible functionality you think we’d at least see a glimmer of clan support. So, with that said let me get to the meat of this thing; this is how I would do it if I were a game developer.
For my examples I’m going to refer to the Xbox 360 simply because that’s what I game on and what I am most familiar with. The most recent dashboard update has added a “Community” section that contains things like Facebook, this would be a perfect place to set up our clan interface. Lets start with the individual player. Each player will have a list of clans that he/she is a member of, there could be some sort of limit on this like only 10 clans per player or some nonsense like that. The reason for multiple clans is simple, there are a ton of people that have groups of friends that they only play with in certain games. You could have a clan just for Call of Duty, a clan just for Battlefield, and yet another one just for Gears of War. Now, if you’re like me, you probably have a core group of friends that travel from game to game and you don’t really care about other people you come across. This will be a addressed by each individual clan.
Let’s say you want to make your own clan, you can go to the clan interface in the community tab and select “New Clan.” You will then be prompted to enter a few fields of data; clan name, motto, description, and website url for starters. Then you will be given a list of all the games on Xbox Live that support clan play and be told to add all the ones that apply to your clan. So if you’re assembling a team of goons that will play nothing but Modern Warfare then you will select that, otherwise you can select multiple games that your clan will participate in. Finally you will invite all of your friends into the clan. When someone joins they will be prompted to choose from a list of games (the one you just determined) for all the games they own and are interested in playing competitively. Once you’ve got at least 4 people that can participate in a specific game your clan will become eligible to compete in that game. Now that you’ve got your clan underway you’re going to need to schedule some matches.
Remaining in our clan interface you will select one of your clans and go to “Compete.” Then you will be asked to select one of the games that your clan is eligible for. After that we could have a couple of options, you could look for challenges where the opposing team has already specified the time and rules, or you could specify the time and rules and wait for a challenger, or you could look at a list of all clans for that game and try to schedule a match with a specific clan (ooooh, rivals…). Once a match is scheduled all eligible players in your clan will be sent a message detailing the game, time, and rules. When the match begins all players will be sent invites to the game, you will join, and once all players are present the game will begin. If one team fails to field the number of players required they will be forced to play man-down. Once the match is complete the system will record wins and losses, along with some other fun stats, everyone will say “good game,” smack each others asses and depart.
Obviously this would take some work on both ends to implement but could it really be that hard? Rainbow Six 3: Black Arrow did something similar to this years ago. Halo 2 tried, but it wasn’t the same. Now all we get are “Clan Tags” and a handful of websites that operate on an honor system.
P.S.: Microsoft, if you see anything you like I can be reached by mail, phone, or electronically and I accept payments in cash or check form. My warmest regards.
