The BBC had an amazing programe where three members of the public sat around a table in a dark room - their role was to be the government ministers in charge of a particular crisis.
An advisor was there to give the three 'ministers' choices to make - and it was up to them to make time-critical decisions that could have positive or negative effects on the emerging crisis.
The show was backed up with a big plasma screen that connected the three to various live experts that presented choices - or to live video feeds of the crisis. It turned out to be a very instense, gripping show as the three people discussed - and more often than not - fought their way to a decision.
You would see the three try to figure out what was happening, take advice from various experts (often contraditory) - then argue with each other about the best way forward. Thereafter they would see the outcome of their previous decisions, while having to make new decisions based on the changing situation. There were even times between decisions that nothing was happening, resulting in the three sitting in silence anxiously waiting for the next bad news/result of their previous decision.
Most of the choices to make were very realistic - which means that they usually didn't have a right answer as such. E.g. We need to know whether to recall the army from the regions to save the capitals center - the finaincal heart of the UK - or to keep them there to save hundreds of thousands of lives in the smaller cities. Either choice will have devastating long term impact on this nation. I need your decision within the next three minutes.
The closed, tight feeling of the show was superb. In typical BBC fasion, all the clips of the emerging crises where made my the current real tv broadcasters to the same standard as you would see in the news - it was all very realistic. The scenarios were all plausible.
I'd very much like to see a game version of this - were you need to make decisions that can make things better or worse. It would also be grate for families/friends to play together - and seperate groups could compare how they got on in each scenario.
The most fun would be had via online multiplayer - preferably using voice (three way VoIP type call). You could then argue your point with the other two ministers to try to get them to see things your way.
There are companies that deal with such scenarios (and related prediction software for managing everything from motorways to department store queues) - so perhaps some of these developers could do such a game.
New scenarios could also be downloaded from the net (most free, some at a slight cost depending on how much work went into them).
