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Video games have been made about some very odd subjects indeed. While games like Farming Simulator and Euro Truck Simulator might not make much sense to those who aren’t immersed in those subcultures, they certainly have a niche audience that absolutely adores them. As such, it’s hard to imagine a subject about which you couldn’t make a video game. However, does that extend to seriously out-there propositions? Could we, for example, make a Eurovision Song Contest video game? Well, that’s what we want to examine today. Here’s our pitch for how a Eurovision Song Contest video game could be made and what kind of title it could be!
A straightforward singing sim
The first and most obvious way to make a Eurovision Song Contest game would be simply to make it a SingStar-style karaoke sim. Using research like Betway’s excellent Eurovision’s Greatest Hits infographic, we could extrapolate the most popular Eurovision hits of the last thirty or forty years and make a game where the player must simply sing along to those hits. This is an obvious route to take, but it’s probably the most sensible one; after all, most people who are looking for a Eurovision game would probably just want to sing along to their favourite songs.
A WWE-style “sports” sim
Bear with us on this one. As well as the karaoke parts of our potential Eurovision game, what if we also had a career mode in which the player must go from rags to riches? You start off as a little-known singer attempting to make a name for yourself in the industry. By sheer chance, one of the songs you write ends up being a minor hit, and Eurovision is just around the corner. Your song is exactly what your country’s Eurovision planners are looking for, and so they ask you to write a new one with them. Along the way, you’ll have to deal with jealous rivals, industry setbacks, and more.
A game based around writing music
There have already been plenty of video games that were based around the idea of the player writing their own music; take, for instance, the old-school Music games on PlayStation, or even something more modern like Media Molecule’s Dreams. Why not create a music production suite-style game that is based around emulating past Eurovision glories? It wouldn’t be too difficult to implement; the tech is already there, again thanks to Media Molecule’s rather in-depth Dreams music production system, so you could repurpose or license something similar to that in order to craft a Eurovision writing game.
A management sim
Another route you could take to make a Eurovision Song Contest video game would be to create a management sim. Instead of playing as the singer yourself, you would play as their manager, attempting to navigate the murky world of the music industry and get your client a recording contract so that you can enter them as the official Eurovision entrant. You’d have to deal with stats like your client’s charisma, their singing ability, and their stage presence, raising them through practice and potentially even managing multiple clients. We’re really talking ourselves round to this one.
A visual novel
Visual novels are becoming more and more popular, and although many of them concern choosing from a range of different romantic partners, they aren’t all based on that. A Eurovision Song Contest visual novel could be a good way to explore the more narrative aspects of the competition through gaming. You could play as a Eurovision hopeful, talking to fellow contestants, exploring the Eurovision halls, and possibly even foiling some kind of crime or conspiracy that’s planned around Eurovision. It might be a little out there, but we think it could work.
A more unusual idea
All of the above ideas lend themselves fairly well to Eurovision, but what if we tried to think a little bigger? What if, for example, we decided to make a 3D platformer based around Eurovision, one in which (for example) your musician was platforming around abstract concepts based on their songs? What if we made a first-person shooter in which you’re shooting dud notes and trying to collect the right notes in order to improve your singing ability? It might sound ridiculous on first pitch, but we think this could be a great way to play a Eurovision video game.
A rhythm-action game
You don’t have to actually sing the Eurovision songs yourself if you don’t want to. Our Eurovision rhythm-action game would instead be based around hitting notes with your controller or some other special peripheral, in a similar way to how games like Amplitude or Thumper work. It could even be a licensed version of those games which adds a number of Eurovision classics to an already-great lineup of songs. If you’re a little karaoke-averse, but you still want to enjoy the Eurovision lineup, then this could be a fantastic way to do so.
These are just some of our ideas for a Eurovision Song Contest video game. Imagining how to put something like this together from a logistical perspective is not easy, especially if you go down a different route to the obvious karaoke game, but we still think there’s a lot of mileage in this idea. What kind of Eurovision Song Contest game would you make? Are there any ideas here that we haven’t listed?
