KING OF BLATTA! OR QUEEN!

What the world needs is a video game featuring valiant cockroaches. This blogger is convinced that such a game would give the computer generation actual heroes with which (or whom) they could identify. And naturally you have to agree. You already know many people whose private lives embody the gestalt. Not all of whom are geeks or code monkeys.

There's your cousin Squiffy. You've never figured out what gender he/she is. "It" dresses in baggy sweats, and behind those sunglasses there may be multi-faceted orbs instead of eyes. This is what you stay away from at family gatherings.....

Although, since the start of the cell-phone age, there have been far fewer of those. Your family texts instead of talks. It's better that way. Now none of you get interrupted while doing important things like playing solitaire, researching porn or kitten pictures on the web, or deciding where to eat with the fabulous person (of whichever sex) you met online.


EMPIRE OF BLATTODEA

You, the player, can choose what character you are. The sexy ingénue, the brutal uncle plotting to seize the throne, the wise elder, the gallant warrior(ess), or the young prince(ss). As well as what you wear. Given that you have six limbs, clothing choices are exponentially greater than for humans, and think of the fabulous shoes! One pair of Isabel Marant, AND a pair of kick-ass bitch boots! The possibilities are endless! Plus there's wonderful accessorizing! Such expression, such individualism!

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to daringly rescue transgender top-diplomat Laxta Granicole from the evil bipeds who have imprisoned him (her) in a dark and sticky box. You have five minutes.
What weapons are you going to use?


The advantage of this game is that most modern humans, after overcoming their initial revulsion, will find it easy to identify with the characters and their environment. You goals, your ideals, your dreams -- all of these are expressed fully in the story. And there are reward points.

You can play it lying down. In your comfy sweats. Which actually haven't been washed in ages, but there's a laundromat in the game.
Just dump the chips and crispy crunchy things in a shoe-box; that way you can tip it slightly to pour nutrients into your mouth when you're hungry.
Oh goody, you've killed the Black Flag Monster!
All his base are belong to you!

If everybody in the house is playing this game, no one will tell you to pick up your shoes.

There are even creative and artistic tattooed roach characters in the game, who compose fabulous World Music. For those players who need to express their inner selves.
Plus, get this, every room has a television!
Which shows the Real Housewives!
Or something Kardasian!

We also have an aged cockroach with a long white beard and a wizard hat, for a total Gandalf. This character speaks to your inner magician.
All spiritually significant and stuff, very Middle-Earth.
He (she) smokes a long churchwarden.
Benevolent mystical roach.

Of course, you still might have to go to work five days a week. But if you can convince your bosses to let you work from home, you only need do a few minutes of useful crap a day before going back to your six-legged life. You'll never have to wash again.
Real roaches will considerately groom the crumbs from your reclining body, and your on-screen character can actually call a pizza place from within the game for fast delivery.
Which will please your several thousand new friends.
You love them, they're so understanding.
Social, and non-threatening.
And supportive.

You are the the Grand Gromphador!
You positively rule over all!
An enlightened despot.
With antennas.
Waving.

Finally there is world-wide peace.
The roaches will survive.
Forever.



AFTERTHOUGHT

This blogger has not played video games since working for Fweeb Inc. (a pseudonym for a computer company located in Menlo Park), back in the nineties. I'll admit that it was fun, running around a surreal outer-space environment shooting bug-like aliens, and I learned a lot while doing so.
For one thing, humans in someone else's space station act emotional, and tend to get infected with exploding viruses, and computers go rogue and start imagining themselves to be mediaeval knights or super hedgehogs.
I hadn't realized till then that artificial intelligences had their own dreams.

They actually want to be irrational flesh and blood, and messily splatter each other across a landscape filled with plants and animals.

Instead of being sealed in steel and copper and plastic, in the cold, dark, impersonal outer reaches of space, where there is a weeping and a wailing and a gnashing of interlocking metallic parts forming an airtight seal.


I do not have a handheld communication device of any kind, and while I eat by myself, I like watching people at other tables interact. 
Consequently I seldom have pizza.
I do not text.


In other words, the game described above would have almost nothing to offer people like me. But I'll gladly draw-up the story-boards and work on product development. As my contribution to furthering societal harmony.



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