Yes. Many people would want to play the main characters. A potential problem is with players taking the part of a Dagney, Hank, Wesley, or James would be moving away from the story. Maybe the producers will not be sure to win. This kind of makes sense. Capitalism does not equal success for all.

An online game with multiple players sounds like fun. I know nothing about computer games. Computer games appear to have a lot of action and motion. I see a challenge here with keeping close to the book and dealing with short attention spans.

Yes terrycan, this sounds good. But you don't have to stop there. Games as trilogies with complex storylines are being funded by major studios (Starcraft, Mass Effect, Assassin's Creed, and more), so there's no reason AS should be restricted to one game. Often these trilogies have a story mode where a player progresses through a fixed story (but may still have options to choose a good/evil side) and then a multiplayer mode where you can play against others online. Since AS is already split nicely into three parts, each part could be an individual game. I imagine the scenario you describe above as the final part of game #3 :)

Hey sorry for the lapse - I've been on vacation.
Yes, app is short for application, and it is most commonly used to refer to software downloads for your phone or mobile device (iPad, Kindle, etc.)
It does not necessarily refer to games (could be a weather app, music app, etc.)
Game apps can be simple like tic-tac-toe, or very complex like a first-person shooter. The kind of game khalling and dave42 mention above would work as an app. It could be an online game with many producers and looters playing against each other, and your phone or mobile device would alert you when it's your turn to play. An app would be much simpler to develop than a full-scale computer game, and could generate interest in and revenue for the AS films.

EitherOr I may have been approaching this the wrong way. Instead of trying to change the way people play computer games the AS game should be like most computer games. Imagine an action shooting game.
John Galt is being held prisoner in a NYC hotel. You/players are members of the Gulch. Your mission free John Galt and return to the Gulch. JG hass been moved to a lab. He is being tortured until he submits to the moochers and looters. Dagney Taggert kills a man. Henry Rearden is wounded. Francisco D'Conia crashes through a window!
Winning requires freeing JG and flying out of NYC. You look behind you and see the lights of NYC going out. The producers win. Game over.

You are right Mike Marotta. The title "Atlas Shrugged" is intellectual property. A programmer could sell his game/code to the owners. Value for value.

Yes, but the owners of "Atlas Shrugged" and the federal courts might all disagree with you.

I think people could play online against others. "Bots" could fill in the missing players. If you play alone you are playing preprogrammed bots. Intellectual property may be an issue. I believe anyone with the drive and determination to write the code owns the game.

Khaling BOOM! you have nailed it. No one starts in the Gulch. You must earn your way in. Perhaps this could be programmed by earning points. Points could be determined by decisions you make, how you grow your wealth, and skills you have.
Looters could gain points/ wealth and power by how much stuff they break and take unjustly. Hey that is why we call them looters.
Imagine the game could go something like this. When a looter reaches a threshold he gets a call from Wesley Mooch, Mr Thompson or James Taggert. He is invited into a corrupt organization AKA Level 2.
When a producer reaches a threshold he is visited by Akinson, Francisco, or Galt.
The producers goal to get into the Gulch AKA Level 2.
If this works what does Level 2 look like?

Either Or the more we talk it shows how little I know. When you mention an ap what does an ap do. I'm guessing it is a computer game played on a phone.

Either Or since you are an avid gamer you can provide good input. What would a player see and do in your AS game?

in the board game thread, there were a couple of ways to deal with strikers and looters. 1st you couldn't strike right away. you have to have some resources to do that and two, once you strike, it's not passive at all. You could provide more infrastructure to the Gulch or spend more time back in society working to take it down (I saw that by maneuvers to "influence" players who have not chosen to strike or whatever mechanisms are in place to further looters. these mechanisms are easy to come up with in a boardgame, not sure how that would be done in a video game. Incentives to play looters. Make the path to get to a "goal" faster and easier, but limit the ways to get there and make the mechanism deciding how quickly they breeze through levels vulnerable. after all, eventually the "giver" is losing resources from those striking. Also, the looters are the only players who can initiate force (for example). Ultimately, the looters can only win the game if they keep the other player from being able to strike and by force. I see some great fights!

Yeah... same as movie graphics, just keeps improving. lots of film actors are doing games too. Fun fact - the main detective in L.A. Noire is Aaron Staton (Ken Cosgrove on Mad Men).

Code for this kind of game would probably take a large team... and probably a major studio (or enough money to lure some developers away from a studio for a while.) If the AS producers wanted to generate some small revenue for the game they might consider releasing a smartphone app. That would have to be a whole different kind of game though...

Thanks terrycan. I can program in html/css... which is to say no, I have absolutely no experience creating games. Just playing them. :)
However, I'd definitely be willing to be the first beta tester if Scott or the team did decide to make a game. Even a small Flash game (could be put on the website or something.)

The graphics are impressive. Shows how little I know about gaming.

Occu-opoly.

"Occupy Monopoly" Winning means turning a prosperous city into a modern day Detroit.

I am not a gamer. Sure I would play a looter. It is acting or maybe a game of chess. Playing a looter would only give me more knowledge.

This is good stuff. Do you know anyone who could write the code?

Just a few reflections here...

It is good to see some interest and I appreciate the input from dave42 and also EitherOr's work. I downloaded the flowchart.

I prefer what he calls a "sandbox" game, open-ended. Even if the Strike is successful, rebuilding must commence!

And why would the Strike NOT be successful?

As I said, I am not a big gamer, but one day in the store where we played D&D, I spent a couple of hours with every "railroad" game in the shelves. All could be played in 90 minutes to 3 hours. I like a game like Risk (or D&D) that can go on all night and into the morning and then the next afternoon.

That said, the preference here is for a computerized game. Does that mean you play by yourself with or against software modules as other players? What about an online game that is Multi-player?

Given Atlas Shrugged and given us here, who would want to be a looter?

Do you know the BIOSHOCK first person shooter games with Atlas Shrugged as the backstory?

When I played Monopoly with libertarians, they got rid of the Income Tax, of course. Probably many people here have that experience.

Finally, we have to consider the intellectual property problems here before we get too far down the road.

Kind of like a Monoply game where you either acquire property, or you are an Occupier?

If an Occupier lands on an empty Park Place, does he/she get to place a tent token piece on the square? And when a property owning player lands on the square, he has to contribute to the Occupy Park Place food bank... ;-)

great ideas eitheror

I think PC based would be the way to go.

The concept of winning changes depending on if you are a looter or a producer.