Today nobody at Chez Scrapple felt like doing much of anything, so I sat around playing Cooking Academy*. It’s a gesture-based cooking game that’s better than Cooking Mama by a long shot, —though so similar to CM that I’m quite surprised nobody’s been sued.
For those who aren’t familiar with gesture-based cooking games, the basic premise is this: You are given a recipe that has a number of steps. To perform each step you move the mouse (or Wii controller, or Nintendo DS stylus) to mimic knifework or stirring or folding a wonton or what have you. It’s so realistic it’s like you’re actually cooking!
If my disdain didn’t come through there, let’s try again: It’s not at all realistic and it’s nothing at all like you’re actually cooking!
The problem with these games, C and I have decided, is that the idea of “cooking” is reduced to a number of menial tasks that the real cook performs without a second thought. A game of dicing onions and peeling carrots is not my idea of a fun night.
I realize the hypocrite I’m being, of course, since I am a huge fan of Rock Band, which to a real guitar player is anathema. Real musicians would probably prefer to see a game that doesn’t reduce the art of playing music to the motion of pressing frets along with a backing track.
So what would a fun cooking game for cooks look like? I don’t know. It would be more freeform, but would still be a game—that is, with metrics and points and in-game rewards. It would not be a collection of recipes with some pretty pictures, is what I’m saying.
It would not be a manage-a-restaurant sim. In this cooking game, you would be cooking. End of story.
Maybe you would develop recipes using the ingredients and equipment you have on hand, with the successful recipes earning you money (through cookbook sales, restaurant licensing, or through your rising stardom and sponsorship on Food Network), which you could use to invest in more exotic ingredients or fancy equipment. I’d try a game like this. The trouble is that recipes are so subjective: who would decide what’s “good”? And is cooking really fun at all if you can’t eat it afterward, or at least smell it while it’s cooking?
Maybe the idea of creating a cooking-game-for-cooks is impossible. But I’d love to know what would go into your dream cooking sim.
*I also made this.
