By: D.C. Cutler, U.S.A.
I’m always curious with what’ s popular. People don’t have a lot of time and what they choose to watch, or play is fascinating to me. “Tracker,” on CBS, is the number one scripted show on television in the United States. “Tracker” is in its third season, and it averages around 18 million viewers when a new episode is broadcast. If you can get 18 million viewers watching a network show when there’s video game consoles, TikTok, and YouTube to occupy people’s time, it’s quite a feat in entertainment.
On “Tracker,” there are extreme car chases and fights over various locations when the main character, Colter Shaw, is tracking someone for hire. The other night, I was deep into an episode and I thought, This would make one hell of a video game. “Tracker” could be a great mission game with clues and assistance from some of the show’s supporting characters.
“Tracker” was a hit out of the gate. Colter Shaw uses his instincts to collect rewards when he finds a missing person. Some of the people he’s trying to find are shady characters that would be perfect for a first-person video game. It could have an open world where Shaw can complete his missions and gain rewards with action-adventure gameplay.
Some of my favorite games are mission games. “The Legend of Zelda” franchise is one that I’ve played since I was a kid. “Battlefield 3” and every “Grand Theft Auto” entry are other examples.
So many of the best episodes of “Tracker” take place in the woods when Shaw is chasing after bad guys or they’re chasing him. He usually enters some house and then a chase starts in a car where Shaw always catches up to the episode’s villain. Shaw also does his tracking in urban environments, which game developers could get creative with their graphic design.
The television series is based on Jeffery Deaver’s 2019 novel “The Never Game.” A video game based on a series, based on a popular novel with “Game” in the title, seems like a no-brainer for a video game.