IPs that should be MMOs, part 4: Law & Order

When Law & Order starts its 21st season this year, it will become the longest continually running drama on American television — surpassing previous record holder, Gunsmoke.
Law & Order is both a police and a courtroom procedural. In the first half of the show, a crime is discovered and a police investigation leads to the arrest of one or more suspects. In the second half, prosecutors build the case against the defendants and attempt for a conviction in court. Law & Order’s emphasis on realism and cases inspired by the news of the day — “ripped from the headlines” — has made it an enduring hit for a generation.
Good show, but how can it POSSIBLY be made into an MMO? Most every MMO involves players indiscriminately killing everything that crosses their path. Crime-focused games in real life settings, like Grand Theft Auto, make heroes of murderers and criminals. Past that, how can a show that follows a formula (opening theme, cops nab crooks, ka-CHUNG, prosecutors put them away, closing theme) be made fresh and interesting throughout a long MMO grind?

The only possible way to do Law & Order right — to make a game that the millions of Law & Order fans the world over could enjoy — is to drastically depart from what we would normally think of as an MMO.
For Law & Order, we’d have to make it more like… a game show.
Still here? Hear me out. By game show, I don’t mean a vacation and a new car and pointless trivia questions and a live studio audience and funny costumes. I’m thinking more of two or more random people asked to complete a task about which they have limited or no information and yet must still come up with the correct solution under severe time pressure.
Players join the game as either Detectives, Lawyers or Jury.
Detectives can play solo or in a group, and are given a crime scene. There’ll be one or more bodies, and a bunch of various bits of evidence. Some of it will be important and some of it will be trivial or false leads — it’s up to the detectives to figure out which is which and to construct a scenario from it. The game will generate a half dozen potential suspects; the detective players will discuss the evidence among themselves and choose a suspect. They can then go on to another case or hang out in the social hub for detectives.
Lawyers can also play solo or in groups. They get cases from a pool filled either by the game or by detectives (and can potentially be re-used as a kind of player-generated content). The cases contain whatever information the detectives placed in them — evidence, their suspect, any notes. Players can take cases as either the defense or the prosecution; in either case, they spend money to purchase the testimony of NPC expert witnesses to connect evidence to the suspect, or to disprove that connection. This would be very similar to the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney courtroom. Players must choose the right expert witness and give them the correct evidence to consider — a forensic anthropologist and bone fragments, for instance.
Once both sides have presented their cases, their time ends, and the case is referred to a jury.
Juries are chosen randomly from all players — it’s jury duty, and it’s the quickest way to gain influence in the other two spheres. Drawn again from a random pool of cases that have been argued in the lawyer phase, jury members would vote guilty/not guilty. The jury phase would be a single player option. The player gets the case, reads it, chooses a verdict, and moves on. When enough votes have been obtained, the game closes the case. If the verdict was guilty, the detective and prosecutor players get extra influence. If the verdict was not guilty, the lawyers for the defense get extra influence.
It’s important to note here that the guilt or innocence of any particular suspect is never known for certain, but there would be periodic recognition of those players who were the most accurate.
Influence is the currency of the game. Detectives earn influence by investigating crimes, collecting evidence, choosing suspects and by eventually having their suspects convicted. They spend influence to eliminate weaker suspects or evidence.
Lawyers earn influence by preparing cases for juries and eventually winning their case. They spend influence on expert witnesses.
Juries earn influence by voting on cases. They earn more influence by being on the winning side. Jury members don’t spend influence.
Players can choose to play in any of the three roles as often as they like and change whenever they like. Their influence follows them from role to role. A typical player would spend a certain amount of time as a juror, deciding cases and building influence, then play as a detective or a lawyer, earning more influence and spending it wisely to increase their chances of success.
It would be a casual MMO meant for jump in/jump out gameplay.
The largest challenge here is one common to all MMOs, which is — don’t make my having fun depend on someone else. Hence the disconnect between the three areas of play.
An equally significant challenge is making the game fun in all three area. Investigating a crime scene would be fun for a fan of police procedurals, but how could the courtroom case be made fun at all? Arranging evidence and calling expert witnesses, perhaps discussing the case with the opposing attorneys? The rewards for playing this phase should be very significant. At the very LEAST, the costume choices for being a lawyer should be the BEST.
The jury phase would be the quick influence generator to get those cases finished so everyone up and down the line can get the reward for a closed case and obtaining their conviction (or freedom for defense attorneys). Jury Bots could be a problem.
Anyway, tomorrow we head to a land of spandex and neon as we explore Tron: the MMO.