Dante’s Inferno is a first-person shooter that will be built with the Kismet Visual Scripting System™ included in the Unreal 3.0 Engine® that will be released with Unreal Tournament 2007®. The game may also be built with open source engines or GarageGames.com's Torque engine. At any rate, we aim to become a repository for content supporting Dante's Inferno, built upon Open Source CMS with a 22surf philosophy.

With its classic story, fierce demons, rich imagery, and a cornucopia of pre-existing classical art depicting a descent through nine levels of Hell on towards the three-headed Satan himself, The Inferno naturally implies a video game.

Gameplay: In the Great Books Game’s version, Dante must save the sinners from their demons—demons that have overtaken their bodies and transformed them into monsters. In each level of Hell, Dante battles the ever-more-sinister monsters, and upon defeating them, the original sinner is separated from the demon and allowed to escape to purgatory. Dante must separate the sinners from their sins to descend to the next level, en route to battling Satan.

Design Team: Great Books Games is currently recruiting artists and level designers to help realize a version of Dante’s Inferno that’s as close as possible to Dante’s original version. The official development will start in 2006, with the release of Unreal 2007.

Blending Public Domain & Proprietary: The game will utilize public domain art, music, art, and architecture, and it will release both educational and commercial versions of the game.

Design Philosophy: Modders may donate art and artwork utilizing Creative Commons licenses, or GBG may pay for the design/development of certain aspects of the game. GBG will develop an archive of artwork for Dante’s Inferno as well as other Great Books including the Iliad and Odyssey, both public domain and proprietary, allowing the artists to define their rights and the price of their work.

Soundtrack: As Beethoven wrote nine symphonies and the Inferno has nine levels, Beethoven’s symphonies will accompany Dante during his descent through Hell. Imagine battling Satan to Beethoven’s ninth!!!

Join Us! Come one, come all, to greatbooksgames.com and dantesinfernogame.com. Whether you’re a modder, gamer, teacher, or fan of classical literature, come join us on this Great Books Games journey!

Great Books Games aims to develop gaming franchises centered about rich stories contained in the Great Books. Dante's Inferno, with it's descent through nine levels of Hell and ever-more-sinster demons leading to a three-headed Satan, is the obvious place to start.

By using a combination of Open Source and proprietary philosophies, Great Books Games will marry public domain art, music, stories, and architecture to cutting-edge, proprietary game engines such as Epic's Unreal 3 engine, which will include the Kismet Visual Scripting System that will empower storytellers as game developers.

GBG aims to create a public domain archive for art and architecture to support games based on classic stories, while also developing an Open Source content, collaboration, workflow, and community management system to support virtual game companies.

While EA says tomorrow's games will cost more, GBG believes tomorrow's games will cost less, thanks to new game development paradigms based on technology's inevitable march and Open Source philosophies:

1) Great Books Games will inspire enduring franchises: as the technology advances, the story will stay the same. Dante's Inferno can continue inspiring next-generation games for hundreds of years.
2) GBG games will have great educational value: as long as kids/teens are shooting/flying/racing, why not expose them to classical art and literature?
3) GBG will inspire cool, positive publicity, encouraging parents to purchase the games and schools and libraries to stock them.
4) The games will have long shelf-lives: even an older version of The Odyssey will retain its aesthetic and educational appeal.
5) GBG can take advantage of public domain art, architecture, and music: rich games can be made at a fraction of the cost, and classical content can be modded and integrated by a small team.
6) Various stories/books can be blended in a seamless world, so that a player can meet the famous philosophers and characters, descending into Dante's Inferno and then fighting the Battle of Troy, with Beethoven playing in the background.
7) In multi-player mode, players could enter a giant game world as classical characters, such as Hamlet, Dante, or Juliet, where they could play different levels, corresponding to the classics.
8) As Hollywood and gaming merge, and storytelling becomes more pervasive in games, Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces can be manifested time and again within GBG.
9) After Dante's Inferno and The Odyssey, GBG could explore developing gaming worlds for famous historical battles, ranging from The Iliad to the Civil War, or giving tours of the Sistine Chapel or Parthenon.
10) By using a cutting-edge game engine such as Epic's Unreal 3 Engine, a small team could become a first mover in creating a lasting brand.
11) By developing and providing a suite of Open Source community/content/collaboration/workflow tools to modders, artists, and storytellers all around the world, Great Books Games aims to help foster new paradigms in game development.

The first ten Great Books Games will be:

1. Dante's Inferno
2. The Iliad
3. The Odyssey
4. Shakespeare's Hamlet
5. Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet
6. The Red Badge of Courage (Civil War)
7. Moby Dick
8. Treasure Island
9. Bible Stories
10. The Aeneid

GBG games could take place in both classical and contemporary settings. For instance, Dante's Inferno could present a classical interpretation of hell exactly as Dante described it, and/or it could be modded to present a contemporary hell, complete with Grand Theft Auto-like characters, corrupt politicians, infamous lawyers, Wall Street hypesters, and other "sinners." An Open Source approach to content built upon a cutting-edge game engine would foster hybrid games.