Creating Games within Games

[dragonprobably]

Alright, I assume that most of the people that go here also go to Cracked and probably have read the article: "6 Video Games Invented Inside Other Video Games." But for those who don't go to the site/haven't read the article, here is a recap:

*Get all the red coins in Super Mario 64 while a 1-UP Mushroom follows you in hot pursuit.
*Become an NPC in Skyrim (think Minecraft but in Skyrim. Speaking of Minecraft...)
*Play Minecraft while following the rules of Islam
*Create a household of barely functional sims in Sims 3 and let nature take its course.
*Either abuse or rehabilitate abused "Norns" in Creatures
*Race in Halo

Going through the comments section, I found these:

Spoiler :

*Nuzlocke challenge
*Fight only with swords and draw the enemies' attention in Dishonored
*Never use any of your powers or buy an upgrade for them in Dishonored
*Never leave any evidence of yourself, never be spotted, and never kill anyone in Dishonored
*Never stop moving in Dishonored
*If you die in Dishoroed, delete your save file
*Dress as a Pirate, take over the Pirate Ship at the mock Treasure Island in GTA: San Andreas while keeping the boat in your possesion for as long as possible while looting people who pass by and not allowing your ship to be boarded.
*Ride around in a Go Kart mowing down as many pedestrians as you can for a minute in Bully.
*Sims Survivor
*Kill everyone in Hitman
*Ram your opponent off of a Mountain in Halo
*Obey traffic laws in GTA
*Play GTA Online as if it were Metal Gear Solid complete with dressing like Solid Snake
*Make a stack of dead prostitutes in Fallout: NV

Things I just came up with on the spot:

*Free Will/No Will Challenge (Sims 3): Create a household of 2 sims. One sim has no free will, they cannot make decisions on their own, if they make a decision of their own you must cancel it immediately. The other sim cannot recieve any input from you, they have to make their own decisions. See how long it takes for each sim to get their life goal. Put free will to high to make this work better.
*Hannibal Lecter's trip to Nevada (Fallout: New Vegas): Yes, let's make the stereotype that all gamers are violent and cynical more dominant in the public's eyes . Kill people using only melee weapons. Kill as many people, in secret, as possible. Once you get the Cannibal perk, take it. Don't take companions. If you die, delete your save file. Use hardcore mode for a harder experience. Can be turned into Jeffery Dahmer's trip if you only target young Black and Asian males and also choose the Confirmed Bachelor trait... okay that was pretty bad, I apologize for that.

 

[civvver]

The only thing remotely close to this I do is try to win civ scenarios by certain dates, using certain victories etc. Or other games I try to do all the achievements. Achievements are precisely games within the game, they are just developer created instead of user created.

 

[TheDanish]

I frequently roleplay in Skyrim and Morrowind. Pretty straightforward.

Europa Universalis IV is great for creating your own rules, given that there are no real victory conditions. Some fun, non-achievement goals I've accomplished recently:

-Invade Europe as Ming before 1500
-Colonize across Eurasia to the Pacific as Sweden
-Colonize the new world as the Ottomans

 

[Quintillus]

Wasn't Bungie the one who created the Race mode in Halo? I know it's there in Halo 1 PC; whether it was there in 1.00 I'm not sure but it's certainly not a new addition.

But it's pretty common to come up with your own goals within games. Getting your variant to catch on can be more challenging. Nonetheless, one I've seen for Civ3 is the "green" variant, where you can't build anything that will cause pollution (and if you're more strict, can't cut down forests/jungles). OCC (one city conquest) and Always War are two more civ variants that were present in Civ3, and those became formalized into actual options in Civ4.

Outside of Civ, ISBI became somewhat commons for The Sims 2. Short for I'm Surrounded By Idiots, it's a variant where all but one of the Sims has complete free will, and the remaining Sim is player-controlled. Obviously, the AI-controlled Sims don't always behave optimally.

I'll skip the Cracked article, though. In my experience their articles tend to be low-quality and often laced with needless profanity. Better than Buzzfeed? Debatable. Better than Polygon or RockPaperShotgun? Definitely not.

I expected this to be something like creating whole separate games within a game. I recently saw a headline on Polygon about someone creating Minecraft within another game, for example (I didn't read that since I'm not that into either game). Or perhaps Fall From Heaven II within Civ4 would fall into that category.

 

[SouthernKing]

*Ram your opponent off of a Mountain in Halo

This one is particularly fun to do in Halo MP, not to opponents, but to friendlies, because it's one of the few ways I know of (having only played Halo at friends' places) to teamkill without getting kicked.