I just read a preview of Need for Speed: Carbon and a few things caught my attention, for better and worse. The things I'm not intrigued by are controlling "turf" and "tricking out my ride" and all that petty superficial social nonsense. I buy racing games to race. I want to spend my time on the road, not in the garage or the real estate office.

The idea of new road hazards—battling in a canyon and on the edges of cliffs—has some potential. I just hope it amounts to something more than simply incorporating Burnout's popular crash modeling and physics.

But what really got me thinking was the idea of your "crew." There weren't many specifics on how these other drivers will materialize and behave in the game, but they do have their own cars and modifications, implying they may have a little pride in their rides, and will defend that pride.

This is where it gets interesting, and where the idea of genre blending could make the game a lot cooler. Two of my favorite genres are squad-based tactical shooters and racing. So why not put them together? Rip up the road in teams, barking CB strategies to coordinate bumping this guy out on a corner, or blocking the passing lane. Team strategy in a racing game? It's worth a shot.

Genre blending has come and gone before, between the invention of new technologies or specific genres that changed the way we play. Mixing Doom with chess gave us ideas like S.W.A.T. and Rainbow Six, and in the other direction moved turn-based strategy games like Panzer General into the realm of faster-paced real-time strategy games like Command and Conquer and WarCraft. Then the squad-based action idea was moved into the cockpit with Microprose's excellent Gunship on the PS1. The Grand Theft Auto series is probably the best-known example of mixing genres.

Some experiments went a little awry. The revamping of Spy Hunter felt more like a clumsy third-person shooter with the constrained movement and limited interactivity of being stuck inside a car. Also, while a cool idea, the melding of frenetic action and strategic awareness in Battle Engine Aquila wasn't without its own set of struggles.

Still, this idea of mixing previously unlike elements for the meat of a game (not just shabby tacked-on minigames) makes me a little more optimistic. It falls into this oft-unexplored segment of gaming called cooperative gameplay. Too often I think developers think gamers just want to compete against each other and fling trash talk all over, but some of my most memorable gaming moments came from playing games cooperatively like Doom and Descent, as well as many sports games.

And now that playing online has gotten big, it baffles me why a popular franchise like Dynasty Warriors hasn't added co-op and versus networked modes. Games like Champions of Norrath and Phantasy Star Online have shown that similar concepts work quite well.

Obviously, mixing some genres seems like a bad idea.  Guitar Hero crossed with the car-PG hybrid Gran Turismo certainly sounds like a recipe for disaster. Still, I don't discourage anyone from trying it. You never know what you'll come up with once you start coloring outside the lines.