Over the weekend, a friend of mine announced that he is working on a non-violent first person shooter app designed to utilize the math and mental skills required for long-distance marksmanship.
Here’s the post from the Facebook page, to help you understand what exactly he’s trying to do:
For those who want to follow along:
I want to build a new game, a first person shooter, but not one that rewards you for maiming the elderly and law enforcement. So no Grand Theft Auto look-alikes here. I’d rather have a game that teaches useful long range marksmanship skills, which involves quite a bit of thinking and no small amount of trigonometry. And instead of shooting up gangsters, we’ll shoot up garbage cans.But I can’t call the game “Non-violent marksmanship with Trigonometry” I’ll never see a single download! So Sniper Dojo is about the best name I could come up with where the domain name was still available. That’s how I got the name.
What do I need to do? Four things:
1. Build the basic Game Loop, which I’ll do with Unity.
2. Build a Monetization Loop, which I’ll do with Ads and In App Purchasing of scenarios past 1000 meters and new rifle/ammo/scope packages.
3. I also need to build in User Acquisition and Retention, which I’ll do with some Social Network sharing features, Leaderboards and Achievements, and plenty of analytics and A|B Testing.
4. Another important thing is building a fan base. If I do this right, I’ll have 1000 fans along with me on this journey who want to get the game (and all the ad-ins) for free upon launch. This Facebook page and the eponymously named Twitter account represent my initial efforts in this regard.So I invite you to join me, and comment on what you want and don’t want in a game like this. If you leave a thoughtful message, follow the twitter account and ‘Like’ this page, I’ll get you the game and IAP items for free when I’m done.
The idea certainly isn’t for everyone, but there are a broad number of firearms owners who aren’t interested in participating in violent first person shooters, but would be excited by a thoughtful game to help improve marksmanship skills. As someone who enjoys long distance shooting, but is terrible at math and doesn’t really understand how all the numbers go together I am both intimidated and intrigued.
The website isn’t live yet, but be sure to “Like” the Facebook page if you’re interested or if you have any feedback!
If it’s anything like a mobile version of “Long Range Shooting Simulation” from shooterready then I’m all for it
I don’t use facebook but am interested…