[IF theory] Involving players in story
Tom Lokovic
retaining the basic role of the story. (Aren't we all?) It's clearly
a big and obvious problem, but while I've seen plenty of discussion on
the merits of interactivity for immersion, I haven't seen anyone
describe specific techniques for achieving the effect.
The three most common techniques, evident in most games I've seen, are
as follows.
* ARCHAEOLOGY: Don't let the player's actions affect the story. Set
the story in the game's past and let the player uncover the
static story through exploration.
* PLOT TRIGGERS: Wait for specific player actions, then dump out the
next bit of dramatic narrative.
* PLOT BRANCHES: Same as "plot triggers", but with multiple paths
and endings.
None of the above allow the player to *affect* the story--they just
allow him/her to uncover the story.
It seems that more advanced design techniques would allow the story to
be modified by the player's actions without changing the basic thrust.
Easier said than done, I know, and intractible in the general case.
But I'm having trouble finding discussion on the topic.
Two more advanced techniques occur to me, though I can't claim to have
used them successfully. I'm also willing to consider them hopelessly
naive.
* JUSTIFICATION AFTER THE FACT: Think about things that the player
might do--even subtle, uninteresting, seemingly useless actions.
Think about how these actions might affect characters or other
elements of the story, possibly in obscure or wacky ways.
Consider these actions optional but useful: when (if) they occur,
record that fact but don't make a big deal at the time. Later,
bring them up as justifications for plot elements. ("I must kill
you, not just because I am the antagonist, but also because
you broke that vase, which it turns out contains the ashes of my
uncle.") Such connections will make the player feel that their
actions matter, even though you're just using them to justify the
story you already had in mind.
* POSTPONE CASTING DECISIONS: For each role in your story (love
interest, enemy, confidant), consider assigning the role to a
character dynamically. Create several candidates, then allow
some player action to trigger the decision. For extra credit,
make characters that might satisfy one of several roles, and
encode constraints that regulate the assignments. (The enemy
can't be the same as the confidant, the love interest must be
a certain gender, etc.)
I'm not suggesting that these are good techniques (or that they're
bad), but they're concrete enough that one might try them out on a
particular story. Is there somewhere where other such techniques have
been discussed?
--Tom
5parrow
> I'm interested in how player actions can affect a story while
> retaining the basic role of the story. (Aren't we all?) It's clearly
> a big and obvious problem, but while I've seen plenty of discussion on
> the merits of interactivity for immersion, I haven't seen anyone
> Two more advanced techniques occur to me, though I can't claim to have
> used them successfully. I'm also willing to consider them hopelessly
> naive.
>
> * JUSTIFICATION AFTER THE FACT: Think about things that the player
> might do--even subtle, uninteresting, seemingly useless actions.
> Think about how these actions might affect characters or other
>
> * POSTPONE CASTING DECISIONS: For each role in your story (love
> interest, enemy, confidant), consider assigning the role to a
>
> I'm not suggesting that these are good techniques (or that they're
> bad), but they're concrete enough that one might try them out on a
> particular story. Is there somewhere where other such techniques have
> been discussed?
Michael Mateas (one of the academics in the game-studies field) is
interested in this problem, and believes that it's not really possible
at this point to achieve such a thing without a "fully-dynamic" story -
along the lines of your "Postpone Casting Decision". He's not a big fan
of the branching narrative, not because of its rigidity but because he
believes that providing a sufficient level of "choice" would require a
truly intractable number of branches. The guy comes from the AI field,
so naturally he's interested in throwing AI at the problem - but then,
that's really outside of what we can do with our regular IF languages.
As for "Justification After The Fact", it seems as though it would not
differ dramatically from a branching storyline, because there are only
so many possible justifications. Your other idea, IMO, would provide a
much wider range of possibilities - although it would be difficult to
build, almost as much so as a pure branch structure.
My personal opinion is that the player doesn't have to affect the story
THAT much in order to become involved in it. "Tapestry" did an excellent
job of pulling the player into the story: at some points I really felt,
at a subconscious level, that I was connected to the story - even though
it's a very simple branch structure.
--
- 5parrowhawk (to email, please rearrange for the mail server at
Georgia Institute of Technology).
() ascii ribbon campaign | what "yaoi" really
/\ - against html e-mail | stands for:
- against M$ attachments | "yamete, oshiri itai".
Mike Roberts
> I'm interested in how player actions can affect a story while
> The three most common techniques, evident in most games
> I've seen, are as follows.
>
> * ARCHAEOLOGY
> * PLOT BRANCHES
That's a good start at a taxonomy of interactive plot evolution techniques.
I'm not sure Plot Branching belongs here, though; that's more of a feature
of the structure of the story than a technique for advancing the plot. I'd
also add one: Observation: the story unfolds on its own around the PC and
regardless of what the PC is doing, the plot driven forward by other forces
(NPC's, external events, etc). It might also be useful to distinguish
"intentional" and "accidental" plot triggers: a plot trigger is intentional
when the PC is meant to figure out where the plot is going next, and to
formulate and carry out a series of actions to make it go there; it's
accidental when the PC isn't clued in to what happens next, but is simply
meant to explore randomly or is motivationally misdirected, and the plot
advances as an unforeseeable consequence of a PC action.
> None of the above allow the player to *affect* the story--
> they just allow him/her to uncover the story. [...] It seems
> that more advanced design techniques would allow the story
> to be modified by the player's actions without changing the
> basic thrust.
I think it's important to be very clear about what you mean here, because
there are two very different schools of thought on what it means for the
player to control the story. First, there's plot branching: the author
comes up with several possible pre-determined storylines, and the PC's
actions in the course of a traversal of the game determine which storyline
plays out. The branching points need not be blatant or even apparent - the
decisions might not even obviously be decisions, but just things that look
like ordinary actions to the player at the time. Second, there's full-blown
AI-based dynamic plotting, where the game offers the player a deep
simulation model allowing a realistic range of action, and the computer
constructs a satisfying narrative on the fly based on what's happened so
far.
There's a tendency for people to visualize the second one and then try to
use the first one to implement it. To the extent that your goal is to truly
let the player affect the story, I don't think you can get a very satisfying
result using plot branching. You said it yourself: plot branching only lets
the player uncover the story; if there are several possible stories, it lets
the player uncover the several possible stories.
That's not to say that branching stories aren't interesting; a number of
games have used branching to good effect, and if you do it well you'll get a
lot of interest around here. There are two caveats, though. First, games
with extensive branching tend to be short stories in terms of how much you
get to see in a single traversal (i.e., a trip through a single branch),
both because the author's time gets divided up among N branches and because
the author's time is further diluted by the combinatoric effects of keeping
all the branches straight. Second, players tend to approach branching
stories not as stories per se, but to some extent as puzzle-boxes to be
taken apart. A lot of authors have this notion that players will get more
deeply and personally involved in a story if they have a sense of control
over its outcome, but in practice it seems that just the opposite happens:
the individual stories become secondary, and players instead dissect the
mechanism to exhaustively map out the range of possible stories. I suppose
it's possible in theory to create a branching story in which the range of
possible stories is itself a sort of meta-story, and thereby involve the
player at a level one step above picking apart the puzzle box, but I haven't
seen an example.
(Here's what I have in mind, in more concrete terms. You create a story of,
say, a character trying to reform himself from a criminal past. He has
several opportunities presented in the course of the story, but no matter
what choices he makes, he ends up reverting to his criminal ways because of
character flaws he can't overcome. The meta-story is the hopelessness of
the character, the inescapability of his own past. This is kind of a
hackneyed meta-story, but you get the idea. The problem I see is that I
don't think players will really buy in at the meta-story level at all; I
think they'll just feel cheated that they can supposedly make all these
choices, but still can't truly affect the outcome of the story. It's almost
inherent in the proposition, actually: if there even exists a meta-story to
find, then it turns out that the real story - the meta-story - is fixed and
pre-determined and beyond player control. So the supposed player control is
just one more gimmick that lets the player uncover the real story.)
> Two more advanced techniques occur to me:
> * JUSTIFICATION AFTER THE FACT
> * POSTPONE CASTING DECISIONS
I think you're into a different taxonomy now - I'd call these techniques for
handling plot branching. These are examples of how you could accomplish
what I was getting at earlier about making the branching points non-obvious.
--Mike
mjr underscore at hotmail dot com
Aaron A. Reed
well.
tom_l...@yahoo.com (Tom Lokovic) wrote in message news:<6cd0ba2f.04042...@posting.google.com>...
> * POSTPONE CASTING DECISIONS: For each role in your story (love
> interest, enemy, confidant), consider assigning the role to a
> character dynamically. Create several candidates, then allow
> some player action to trigger the decision. For extra credit,
> make characters that might satisfy one of several roles, and
> encode constraints that regulate the assignments. (The enemy
> can't be the same as the confidant, the love interest must be
> a certain gender, etc.)
I had this same idea a while back for an RPG that combined the
plot-based nature of console games like the Final Fantasy series, with
the open-ended, huge environment feeling of some PC games like
Morrowind. Essentially, the game would have a knowledge of story
archetypes, dramatic structure, rising action, climaxes, etc., and
could arrange scripted events in such a way as to randomly create a
narrative... with the added bonus that the narrative would be cast out
of NPCs the player has shown an interest in.
For example, if the player seemed interested in talking to a random
barmaid at some inn in some town, the game might note this interest,
and then arrange for the barmaid to star in a "Defenseless
Acquaintance Kidnapped by Bandits" mission. Depending on how much
enthusiasm the PC shows in this mission, the game might co-opt the
barmaid into the "Principal Romantic Interest" role, with its own set
of subplots. Other dramatic roles such as mentor, villain, and so on
could also be dymaically created in this fashion.
If you set a game like this in a Morrowind-style world with hundreds
of cities and thousands of NPCs, it would appear from the player's
perspective to be a vastly more complex and realistic environment, and
would have immense replay value. The devil would be in the
implementation, of course, but I think it's an intriguing idea that
I've never seen explored in a game before.
ems...@mindspring.com
> used them successfully. I'm also willing to consider them hopelessly
> naive.
>
> * JUSTIFICATION AFTER THE FACT: Think about things that the player
> might do--even subtle, uninteresting, seemingly useless actions.
> Think about how these actions might affect characters or other
> elements of the story, possibly in obscure or wacky ways.
> Consider these actions optional but useful: when (if) they occur,
> record that fact but don't make a big deal at the time. Later,
> bring them up as justifications for plot elements. ("I must kill
> you, not just because I am the antagonist, but also because
> you broke that vase, which it turns out contains the ashes of my
> uncle.") Such connections will make the player feel that their
> actions matter, even though you're just using them to justify the
> story you already had in mind.
Hmm. I don't entirely like this idea, and here's why. Most of the
player-involving tricks that I find interesting (as a player, not as
an author) are ones that give me a chance to affect the story in an
informed way. I have to realize that I'm making a choice and,
ideally, have some notion of the probable outcome before I find it
very involving. Otherwise, I'm just along for a ride *and* being
forced to pick tracks randomly. (I complained about this in
"Narcolepsy": the player's actions determine the shape of the story,
but in such a way and at such a time that there's no reason to think
that you're actually affecting anything, let alone the possibility of
informed choice.)
I realize what you're describing is a little different -- using player
actions to provide plot motivation for events that you were planning
to have happen anyway -- but I think that the effect would be similar:
the player would soon realize that he didn't have any real,
intentional control over the shape of the game.
> * POSTPONE CASTING DECISIONS: For each role in your story (love
> interest, enemy, confidant), consider assigning the role to a
> character dynamically. Create several candidates, then allow
> some player action to trigger the decision. For extra credit,
> make characters that might satisfy one of several roles, and
> encode constraints that regulate the assignments. (The enemy
> can't be the same as the confidant, the love interest must be
> a certain gender, etc.)
Cool idea; really, really hard to accomplish. You not only have to
write an engine clever enough to decide who goes in what slot, you
also have to create all the dialogue to accommodate every possible
branch of outcome. Unless, of course, you have an AI
dialogue-generator, or you plan to set your game among people who
don't speak. What this means, in practical terms, is that you will
almost certainly either have to plan out all the possible variations
as plot branches anyway, or else rely on very generic dialogue that is
not very exciting.
I think you do get a substantively different player experience with
plot branching if there are very many branches and combinations than
if there are only a handful. In a mystery game, for instance, you
might determine that the player needs to find out facts A, B, and C,
but each of these facts can be revealed by any of a number of
different scenarios. Now, combining those scenarios will give you a
very large number of variations on the plot. The author doesn't have
to have foreseen each and every one of those variations; he just needs
to have written all the scenes that go into them.
This is still a lot of work -- I won't try to pretend otherwise. But
I think it's a more accessible goal than an entirely open-ended system
like the one you seem to be describing above.
-- Emily
Tom Lokovic
> That's a good start at a taxonomy of interactive plot evolution techniques.
> ...
> I think you're into a different taxonomy now - I'd call these techniques for
> handling plot branching.
I agree with your addition of "observation" and different types of
triggers, and it may be that my taxonomies are inconsistent. But I'm
not sure I agree that my latter two techniques are just about
branching.
I have no desire to quibble over terms, but I'd like to examine part
of what you're calling "branching", to get to the core of my original
question.
You're right that full-blown AI-driven dynamic plotting is a beast
unto itself, and I'm not interested in that now. (Well, I'm
interested in it, but that's not where I'm putting my energy.) You
seem to suggest, though, that if something isn't dynamically plotted,
then the only possible variation in story is branching.
I *think* that what I have in mind is not branching in the traditional
sense. And it's definitely not AI-driven dynamic plotting.
I have a specific story in mind, and I want to tell *that* story. To
give the reader a sense of involvement, I want her to feel as if she's
affecting the outcome. In particular, I want some aspects of the
story--not just the rate at which the story unfolds--to be affected by
her actions. Ideally, after she's experienced it, she won't know what
parts of the story were preordained and which were affected by her
fiddling. (Let's ignore replay value for now. I'm not worried about
stumping Multiplay Reverse Engineers.)
So how do I let the player affect the details while retaining the
basic story? I figure out which parts of the story are essential,
and which parts may vary without changing its core. Then (through
careful crafting and painful enumeration) I allow the peripheral parts
to respond to her actions.
My original question was, in essence, "In what ways can I make
peripheral story elements vary?" To be sure, some forms of variation
could be branded as "branched subplots", but others couldn't. For
example, if you assign the role of antagonist at runtime, that's
hardly branching. It's parameterization. The same basic story
happens regardless, but it's parameterized by who plays whom, and (if
you do it right) is subtly different based on the choice.
Another example: Suppose I decide that a particular sequence of events
is essential to my story, but the *reasons* for those events may vary.
So I concoct an array of plausible reasons for events, and decide
which to invoke based on reader actions.
In each of these cases, the game is cobbling together snippets of
prose and behavior in some constrained way. If "plot branching" is
meant to refer to any sytem that combines a finite set of known
pieces, then so be it. But then "plot branching" really just means
"non-sentience", and thus isn't very useful. And either way, what I'm
looking for is techniques for combining those pieces to good effect.
Thanks for the input,
--Tom
5parrow
> tom_l...@yahoo.com (Tom Lokovic) wrote in message news:<6cd0ba2f.04042...@posting.google.com>...
>
>> * POSTPONE CASTING DECISIONS: For each role in your story (love
>> interest, enemy, confidant), consider assigning the role to a
>> character dynamically.
> I had this same idea a while back for an RPG that combined the
> plot-based nature of console games like the Final Fantasy series, with
> the open-ended, huge environment feeling of some PC games like
> Morrowind...
> For example, if the player seemed interested in talking to a random
> barmaid at some inn in some town, the game might note this interest,
> and then arrange for the barmaid to star in a "Defenseless
> Acquaintance Kidnapped by Bandits" mission...
Sounds eerily like Peter Molyneux's pet project "Fable" (coming soon).
Mike Roberts
> I *think* that what I have in mind is not branching in the
> I want to tell *that* story. To give the reader a sense of
> involvement, I want her to feel as if she's affecting the
> outcome. In particular, I want some aspects of the story--
> not just the rate at which the story unfolds--to be affected
> by her actions.
Okay, I see what you're getting at - you want to create the *impression*
that events later in the story are the results of events earlier in the
story, even though the events are pre-ordained, by varying the surface
details.
> And either way, what I'm looking for is techniques for
> combining those pieces to good effect.
Well, I can think of some very limited examples. This is almost too
superficial, but it's at least related: some games ask for the player's name
at the beginning of the game, and then use the name from time to time in the
game's text - an NPC could address the PC by the player's name, for example.
The LGOP "sexing" trick is the same sort of thing, but it involved more
elaborate text substitutions. (And it's a perfect example of getting the
player to make a choice without letting on that it's going to be important.)
Getting a bit closer to what you have in mind, I think, is the trick you
often see in conversational menus in graphical games: no matter which item
you choose from the menu, you end up in the same place, although for
different purported reasons. For example, you might be given a choice of
flattering, insulting, or threatening an NPC. If you flatter him, he'll get
all buttered up and give you what you want; if you insult him, he'll be
impressed by your wit and give you what you want; if you threaten him, he'll
back down and give you what you want. The plot goes the same way in any
case; you just get different justifications for why it went that way
depending on what you did. This is much more localized than what you have
in mind, though, I'm sure.
Beyond that, I wouldn't be surprised if there are some isolated examples out
there, but I don't think anyone's reduced this to a science. I'd say you're
going to have to do some inventing as part of your game design. It sounds
like an interesting approach to pursue, but it also seems like it'll be
pretty challenging.
Michael Chapman Martin
> I'm interested in how player actions can affect a story while
> retaining the basic role of the story. (Aren't we all?) It's clearly
> a big and obvious problem, but while I've seen plenty of discussion on
> the merits of interactivity for immersion, I haven't seen anyone
> describe specific techniques for achieving the effect.
I've found that Varicella did an excellent job of this for me. Discussion
of this might possibly qualify as a slight spoiler (it outlines the puzzle
structures, but doesn't directly reference them). Spoiler space follows...
y
a
y
s
p
a
c
e
.
.
.
In particular, it doesn't seem to use any of these techniques. You have a
number of goals, all of which must be met by a certain time to win. If you
fail to meet them all, the game still ends at that time -- but the ending
is nonoptimal. The ending you get is a function of which goals you have
accomplished.
Varicella uses a simple priority function for this (e.g., the goals are
basically strictly ordered, and the highest-priority goal you failed
determines your ending), but one could imagine a number of endings
potentially exponential in the number of goals.
One could also not have this be the ending of the *game*, but merely of the
section. The situation in subsequent sections could then be derived from
how many goals were achieved in the previous ones.
This could be considered "branching path", but the formation of it is
sufficiently freeform that it feels qualitatively like something different.
Michael
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Getting a bit closer to what you have in mind, I think, is the trick you
> often see in conversational menus in graphical games: no matter which item
> you choose from the menu, you end up in the same place, although for
> different purported reasons. For example, you might be given a choice of
> flattering, insulting, or threatening an NPC. If you flatter him, he'll get
> all buttered up and give you what you want; if you insult him, he'll be
> impressed by your wit and give you what you want; if you threaten him, he'll
> back down and give you what you want. The plot goes the same way in any
> case; you just get different justifications for why it went that way
> depending on what you did.
One angle which both of you seem to be skipping: how does the player
*notice* that the game is actually responding to what he chose? Merely
*being* reactive to the player's choices doesn't mean the player gets
a sense that his choices matter.
Say I threaten the NPC, and he gets all cowed and subservient. Also
assume, as Tom stipulated earlier, that I'm not planning to replay the
game multiple times; this is my first pass.
There's no way for me to tell, *per se*, that this *isn't* a
single-path game in which the only solution is to threaten the NPC!
For all I know, flattery and insults would have been coldly rejected.
How do you address this?
It's true that, over many interactions, the player will get
*statistical* evidence that all of his choices were viable. (You
wouldn't expect to get lucky five times in a row.) But this is
after-the-fact reasoning, and it doesn't seem right to me. I don't
have a clear idea what's wrong with it, though. It just doesn't seem
like the sort of thing Emily was talking about, where she tried to be
suave and clever, and the game reacted to this.
Hm. If I recall that post (don't have it handy right now), it's
something she only noticed the second time through the scene. So maybe
we *can't* stipulate that the player only plays through once!
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Jim Fisher
> One angle which both of you seem to be skipping: how does the player
> *notice* that the game is actually responding to what he chose? Merely
> *being* reactive to the player's choices doesn't mean the player gets
> a sense that his choices matter.
>
> Say I threaten the NPC, and he gets all cowed and subservient. Also
> assume, as Tom stipulated earlier, that I'm not planning to replay the
> game multiple times; this is my first pass.
>
> There's no way for me to tell, *per se*, that this *isn't* a
> single-path game in which the only solution is to threaten the NPC!
> For all I know, flattery and insults would have been coldly rejected.
I disagree.
There's still statistical information from a single-path. When I play a
game - every single time - I try something that isn't possible. Whether it'
s trying to break a window, slap another character, or pry a brick loose,
there's *always* something. I expect it.
In your example, I might not know whether flattery and insults would have
been "coldly rejected", as you say, but I *would* know that my first
attempt, whatever it was, worked. Lucky guess?
Probably so, I would think.
But then I'd try to flag down a taxi, or steal a car, or climb down into the
sewers. If they all worked? This I would take notice of.
It's the missing failure that I would catch the first time through. if it
were possible to do.
--
--
Jim (AT) OnyxRing (DOT) com
Visit "An Inform Developer's Guide" or browse the
"ORLibrary" extensions to the standard library at
www.OnyxRing.com
----------------------
Some days you eat the code; some days the code eats you.
Tom Lokovic
> Hmm. I don't entirely like this idea, and here's why. Most of the
> player-involving tricks that I find interesting (as a player, not as
> an author) are ones that give me a chance to affect the story in an
> informed way.
No doubt, if the game made unlikely connections left and right,
turning every player action on its head, the player would feel swept
along against her will. This technique (like everything else) would
have to be used carefully. But remember, I'm not even arguing that
it's a good idea. I offered it as an example of the sort of
"technique descriptions" I'd like to find.
> the player would soon realize that he didn't have any real,
> intentional control over the shape of the game.
Well, at one extreme is "no control". Lots of games have that. In
the middle is "some control". Fewer (but generally better) games have
that. At the other extreme is "total control". That's in the realm
of intractible AI, and besides, even real life lacks it. :)
I'm contemplating something that's sort of to the side of that
spectrum: "perceived control". For whatever level of actual control
you choose, I'm wondering if perceived control can increase the level
of immersion.
The theory, I suppose, is that perceived control is somehow easier to
implement than actual control, and so forms a lower-cost way to
enhance whatever control is already there. And I'm willing to believe
that that's not the case. But I don't know.
--Tom
Sam Denton
> (Here's what I have in mind, in more concrete terms. You create a story of,
> say, a character trying to reform himself from a criminal past. He has
> several opportunities presented in the course of the story, but no matter
> what choices he makes, he ends up reverting to his criminal ways because of
> character flaws he can't overcome. The meta-story is the hopelessness of
> the character, the inescapability of his own past. This is kind of a
> hackneyed meta-story, but you get the idea.
The PC is trying to do something other than reform a criminal past,
but I think that you've just described one of the winners of the 1998
IF Competition. (To the point that to name it might be considered a
spoiler!) As Paul O'Brian said in his review, "At no point was I even
close to getting stuck in [XXX], because the obvious action is almost
always the right one -- or else there is no right action and fated
events occur with heavy inevitability." His review even works in the
word "metanarrative".
Tom Lokovic
> were possible to do.
You've actually gotten to the core of what I'm trying to accomplish.
To put it bluntly, and to the horror of puzzle enthusiasts everywhere,
I'm trying to figure out how to eliminate failure entirely. This is
what the "easiest"--or most "puzzleless"--games already do. But even
the most puzzleless games seem to force progress either by
a) Getting frustrated and making stuff happen despite the player's
dilly-dallying ("An arthritic chimpanzee wanders up and lifts
the lever, thus opening the gate. Now don't you feel silly?")
b) Offering more and more blatant hints.
These are fine, and my idea is similar. I want the frustrated puzzle
forfeits
and the blatant hints to be decorated, as often as possible, by random
things the player did earlier in the game. "An arthritic chimpanzee
wanders up and lifts the lever, thus opening the gate. He grins,
holding up the necklace you discarded earlier." In this case, the
necklace thing isn't a prerequisite for the chimp thing; it's just
something we can choose to connect to it if possible, thus giving the
impression of causality.
Thus, regarding Andrew's concern, I imagine (perhaps naively) that a
dense collection of false causalities will give the player a strong
sense of control, or at least involvement, even on a single play.
Not that I think this is easy to do.
--Tom
Tom Lokovic
> that events later in the story are the results of events earlier in the
> story, even though the events are pre-ordained, by varying the surface
> details.
Exactly. My theory is that, for whatever level of genuine control the
player actually has (via branching or other techniques), their sense
of involvement will be enhanced by "varying the surface details."
As I mention elsewhere in this thread, it may be that varying surface
details in a plausible way is as difficult as implementing genuine
control. Dunno.
--Tom
Mike Roberts
> mjr:
> > (The meta-story is the hopelessness of the character, the
> > inescapability of his own past.)
>
> The PC is trying to do something other than reform a criminal
> past, but I think that you've just described one of the winners
> of the 1998 IF Competition.
You're right, there is some similarity. I do see a subtle but important
difference, though. The '98 game you're talking about doesn't make it a PC
goal to escape the inevitable event. The PC doesn't even know it's coming;
the *player* is clued into it by the out-of-time-sequence narrative, but the
PC doesn't have that fore-knowledge, so has no in-story awareness that there
even exists a problem to avoid. In my example, the PC is acting in
awareness of his tragic trajectory and wants badly to change it, but even
knowing what fate has in store for him doesn't turn out to be enough. A
pretty existential difference, I'll grant, but I think it actually drives
the game structure. In the one case, the perfectly linear structure is
almost required, because the game is saying: this bad thing happened, and
here's what it means. In the other case, the branching structure is
required, because the point is: fate is stronger than free will, or it's
impossible to escape your past, or whatever.
Mike Roberts
> One angle which both of you seem to be skipping: how does
> the player *notice* that the game is actually responding to
> what he chose? Merely *being* reactive to the player's choices
> doesn't mean the player gets a sense that his choices matter.
Well, the original poster seemed to have in mind that the connections would
be spelled out more or less blatantly: "Gloria sweeps into the room with her
staff of goons, smiling evilly as she sits behind her gigantic granite desk.
'The bulldozers are leveling the orphanage where you grew up, even as we
speak,' she says, dripping menace. 'I do hope they remembered to tell the
nuns before they started.' If you'd known that breaking her vase way back
in scene one were going to drive her to a life of corporate crime, you'd
have been more careful..."
But it's an interesting point. If the choices aren't obviously of
consequence when they're made, then investing them with importance
retrospectively won't do anything to make them feel involving at the time
they're made. The question is whether there will be an accumulating effect:
as actions in the early parts of the game are seen to have consequences in
the mid-game, maybe the player will start to feel like everything in the
mid-game is going to be important in the end-game. But I'm really not sure
this would be *involving*; it could be quite the opposite. One rational
player reaction would be to feel that the game world is capricious,
operating under bizarre and illogical rules; any action could be important,
but you can't know which ones and you can't know why. Another reaction,
probably more likely among the IF crowd, is that people will just think: I'd
better to back and start the game over and not break the vase this time.
Either reaction would seem to distance the player from the story.
Cirk R. Bejnar
> I suppose
> it's possible in theory to create a branching story in which the range of
> possible stories is itself a sort of meta-story, and thereby involve the
> player at a level one step above picking apart the puzzle box, but I haven't
> seen an example.
That sounds to me like a description of Slouching Towards Bedlam where
s Emily Short noted "Because of the game's structural conceits, the
failed playthroughs become part of the story of how the player reaches
a final, desired outcome." But perhaps I have missed your point.
Cirk R. Bejnar
Jan Thorsby
"Mike Roberts" <mj...@hotmail.com> skrev i melding
news:QCTkc.43546$ls3....@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com...
> Another reaction,
> probably more likely among the IF crowd, is that people will just think:
I'd
> better to back and start the game over and not break the vase this time.
So put a message at the start of the game saying that the goal of the game
is to try and win it at the first attempt.
Mike Rozak
> I'm interested in how player actions can affect a story while
> retaining the basic role of the story. (Aren't we all?) It's clearly
> a big and obvious problem, but while I've seen plenty of discussion on
> the merits of interactivity for immersion, I haven't seen anyone
> describe specific techniques for achieving the effect.
There is a solution, but it's basically impossible to do in its entirety.
I was thinking about this problem awhile back and came to the conclusion
that if the player can affect the story the player will almost always
unravel the plot. A plot is a tight-rope act... any error in balance and you
fall off. This is why authors must spend so much time devising a plot.
To use an extreme example: Just think of the Harry Potter books. The reason
the books are entertaining (and of any length) is because Harry alternates
between making stupid decisions that cause the Voldemort not to be killed
too quickly, and smart decisions that cause Harry not to be killed by
Voldemort. For example: In the latest movie, the chamber of secrets, if
Harry had told dumbledore that he was hearding a voice from the wall saying
"Kill" and he had told dumbledore that he can talk to snakes, end of story.
Dumbledore would solve the problem. If he had taken Riddle's hournal to
dumbledore, or had done anything to keep it from Ginny, end of story.
Likewise, if Harry hadn't thought of using the baselisks tooth to kill the
diary, end of series. The books are full of choices that, had they gone the
other way, would result in either Voldemort or Harry Potter being killed too
quickly.
What you need is either a tool that automatically balances the player as he
walks on the tightrope so his decisions don't make him fall off (the long
bar that tight rope walkers hold), or a way for new ropes to magically
appear underneath the player as he steps off the narrow path.
My solution is similar to many of the solutions listed by other replies to
the topic, but with a slightly different twist:
The solution is to have an AI whose purpose is to redirect the path (or get
the player back on the path) when the player falls off the tightrope. (If
the player does something completely silly, like jumping off a cliff, then
nothing can be done.) In face-to-face RPGs, this AI is a person named the
game master. In an IF title, it could be called "ThePlot" or simply "God".
At it's simplest level, ThePlot could give hints when a user is obviously
stuck, or tell the player that jumping off a cliff is a really stupid idea.
(IF games usually do this.)
Conversely, if the player is advancing too quickly then throw in stuff to
slow him down. Have Peeves show up and get Harry in trouble, etc.
The next level of complexity is having ThePlot work in the background to
keep the story on track. If Harry Potter tried to talk to dumbledore about
hearing voices, then Hermoine might stand in front of dumbledore's doorway
saying it wasn't a good idea. If the player insisted, it's their fault, so
end of story. Or maybe Snape would intercept Harry as he was walking towards
Dumbledore's, and give Harry detention for no particular reason so the
player will forget he was trying to see Dumbledore. Or, if Harry tried to
hide the book too well, have some reason for it being found. Etc.
The more difficult (and impossible?) task is realizing that the player's
actions have just messed up the storyline so much that a new story needs to
be rebuilt using the bits and pieces still remaining. This could be hacked
by creating several possible storylines in advance and chosing the story
that has been screwed up the least. For example: In a murder mystery IF,
clues to the killer always point in all directions. If the player
accidentlly kills the "real" murderer, just rewrite the story (on the fly)
so the real murderer was actually a different NPC.
Of course, once you have successfully implimented all this, some players
will start a new game... They will see how much they can disrupt the story
before the AI gives up or goes insane. Children do this to their parents...
their parents have a planned story for the child involving high school,
college, marriage, etc. Many children do what they can to disrupt this plan.
--
Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
Tom Lokovic
> retrospectively won't do anything to make them feel involving at the time
> they're made. The question is whether there will be an accumulating effect:
Ah, well said. The accumulating effect is what I had in mind. And
you're right: if the player thinks some outcomes are "right" and some
are "wrong", she might regret the innocuous actions that, in
retrospect, led to the "wrong" ones. I'm not sure what to say to
that, because I'm one of those puzzleless extremists: I want IF that
offers little or no challenge, but still offers involvement. I want
an experience, not a game. That's the kind of work I like, so that's
the kind I want to write.
(I'm not suggesting this is the only proper approach. It's just
mine.)
With that said, I know how hard the puzzleless extreme is. How can a
work be involving if there's no challenge to the reader?
Here's my approach. I choose a single story to convey: one story arc,
one outcome. In a philosophical sense, this means that the reader has
no free will, but my goal is to make them *think* they have free will.
To do this, I need to take advantage of *everything* the reader does,
doing everything I can to justify my story--as plausibly as
possible--with the actions of the reader.
I can't claim to have succeeded with this. I'm not even confident
it's possible. But it's the corner of IF space which seems most
promising to me.
--Tom
Drakore
> If the choices aren't obviously of
> consequence when they're made, then investing them with importance
> retrospectively won't do anything to make them feel involving at the time
> they're made. The question is whether there will be an accumulating
effect:
> as actions in the early parts of the game are seen to have consequences in
> the mid-game, maybe the player will start to feel like everything in the
> mid-game is going to be important in the end-game. But I'm really not
sure
> this would be *involving*; it could be quite the opposite. One rational
> player reaction would be to feel that the game world is capricious,
> operating under bizarre and illogical rules; any action could be
important,
> but you can't know which ones and you can't know why.
Sounds like real life. There's also a Shakespearean quality to it. Does
Claudius know that Gertrude will drink from the cup of poisoned wine he
offers Hamlet? He kills the one he loves instead of the one he wants to
kill. Does Hamlet know that he kills Polonius when he stabs at the arras? Is
the play less involving because the protagonists are unable to foresee the
consequences of their actions? Would real life be more involving if it were
as predictable as a sunset?
Uli Kusterer
> might do--even subtle, uninteresting, seemingly useless actions.
> Think about how these actions might affect characters or other
> bring them up as justifications for plot elements.
Tom,
I think that's a nice idea for adding ambience to a game. In many IF
games, the player can walk through a house and do things that, in RL,
would be rude or downright illegal: 'Steal' anything lying around that
interests them, read other people's diaries, destroy their property.
Nobody ever makes a fuss about them.
It would be really nice if the game actually took record of these
things and and made the NPCs notice that. It would make the NPCs seem
much more three-dimensional.
However, from a storytelling point of view, this isn't really a good
choice for important plot points. In a 'wacky' game like Sam'n Max Hit
the Road, maybe, but otherwise important plot points are important
because of themselves, and thus not easily exchangeable. The motivation
for the antagonist to kill you must have impact, and should influence
his behavior and the way they go about their work. If you exchange the
motivation depending on the user's actions, you have to be very careful
that the user doesn't get the feeling the motivation was arbitrary.
So, yes, it's good to show that most of the user's actions have a
result, but it's just one of several tools that can be used together to
make the game interesting.
Cheers,
-- Uli
http://www.zathras.de
Uli Kusterer
tom_l...@yahoo.com (Tom Lokovic) wrote:
> The theory, I suppose, is that perceived control is somehow easier to
> implement than actual control, and so forms a lower-cost way to
> enhance whatever control is already there. And I'm willing to believe
> that that's not the case. But I don't know.
You'll also want to take into account your target audience; Some players
just try everything, while others take a more RPG-like approach to the
game: They try to get to know the PC and then try to act as the PC most
likely would. So, if your PC has enough personality (like Guybrush
Threepwood in Monkey Island, where they let you pick some really stupid
dialog options, but Guybrush always chickens out and uses the safe one
in the end -- which works there because it fits the character and is
genuinely funny in that context), that can add to perceived control,
even though it actually is even less control than in other cases.
Uli Kusterer
tom_l...@yahoo.com (Tom Lokovic) wrote:
> Thus, regarding Andrew's concern, I imagine (perhaps naively) that a
> dense collection of false causalities will give the player a strong
> sense of control, or at least involvement, even on a single play.
Tom,
personally, I think such casualities would be a nice gimmick. Just like
the way I actually enjoyed "Duke Nukem" because of the attention to
detail (if you shot wildly around yourself, you'd leave bulletholes in
the walls, which were still there when you returned, and if you walked
over a dead body, you'd leave bloody footsteps for a few yards).
However, I don't think such things will give me more of a sense of
control. Control to me means being able to fail. This doesn't have to be
like "The Daedalus Encounter", where you get killed every time you do
something wrong, but there should be occasional points in the game where
my actions can cut off certain plot threads. I rarely replay games (and
if I do, it's usually years later), but in many games, I still notice
hints and objects related to plots that were cut off by one of your
actions, thus giving me a glimpse of what I could have got without the
mistake.
Your idea of "deferring casting decisions" might work for me, though.
Sometimes I find a character in a game I really like, just to find out
it's a minor character, or a character that gets killed off. It would be
nice to occasionally be able to say: Hey, I don't want that character to
die. If given enough indication of his/her impending doom, but also
given the awareness that it is my free choice whether to save that
character or not, this might actually work.
But you may be right: Just giving the player choices may not be enough.
You also have to make sure the player understands these choices. And how
best do that? Foreshadowing? Explicit statements in conversation?
"Freezing" the moment of the critical decision and then giving the
player two options and only those? All of these work, depending on the
ambience and setting of the story, your skills and style as a writer,
the kind of scene they're used in and their technical implementation.
This is interesting,
-- Uli
http://www.zathras.de
ems...@mindspring.com
> > > * JUSTIFICATION AFTER THE FACT: Think about things that the player
> > ...
> > Hmm. I don't entirely like this idea, and here's why. Most of the
> > player-involving tricks that I find interesting (as a player, not as
> > an author) are ones that give me a chance to affect the story in an
> > informed way.
>
> No doubt, if the game made unlikely connections left and right,
> turning every player action on its head, the player would feel swept
> along against her will. This technique (like everything else) would
> have to be used carefully. But remember, I'm not even arguing that
> it's a good idea.
Sure. I just got distracted into commenting on the actual idea.
> I offered it as an example of the sort of
> "technique descriptions" I'd like to find.
I think some of this kind of discussion is likely to be buried in
newsgroup threads of the past. Google may be your friend here, or the
research library at http://bang.dhs.org/if/library (though, for
whatever reason, I am not getting it to come up for me at the moment).
I don't recall a really systematic and thorough discussion anywhere,
but I may be forgetting something obvious.
> > the player would soon realize that he didn't have any real,
> > intentional control over the shape of the game.
>
> Well, at one extreme is "no control". Lots of games have that. In
> the middle is "some control". Fewer (but generally better) games have
> that. At the other extreme is "total control". That's in the realm
> of intractible AI, and besides, even real life lacks it. :)
>
> I'm contemplating something that's sort of to the side of that
> spectrum: "perceived control". For whatever level of actual control
> you choose, I'm wondering if perceived control can increase the level
> of immersion.
I can think of a couple of perceived-control tricks in specific games
that work reasonably well, at least the first time you play. I
associate them most with extremely linear games (which, I suppose,
fits what you're describing wanting to write, if I understand you
correctly). Essentially, the player is given a choice of several
options, but whatever choice he makes leads to the same outcome, the
one that advances the plot.
This is a fairly transparent trick, but there's a variation on it that
works slightly better: offer the player several choices, and allow him
to come back and follow up the other leads later (so he's not as
tempted to restore or replay just to find out where those go), but
make sure that whatever he chooses first leads him to first plot
point, the second to the second plot point, and so on. This can be
done really badly, but I've seen it work on a few occasions.
There's also the issue of what *level* of the game the player's being
allowed to control. You can write a game that has a very linear plot
and a predetermined outcome, but allow a lot of variety in
moment-to-moment activities. In a puzzly game, this consists of, say,
having a puzzle with multiple solutions, so that the player gets a
sense of freedom in how he goes about things. But I think the same
can also be achieved to some degree in a non-puzzly game. J. Robinson
Wheeler has written several fairly linear pieces (try Centipede, Being
Andrew Plotkin, and Tale of the Kissing Bandit) where things remain
interestingly immersive simply because there's so much interesting
surface detail and so much momentum to the action that I always felt
as though I had plenty to do.
Yoon Ha Lee
[snippage]
> So how do I let the player affect the details while retaining the
> basic story? I figure out which parts of the story are essential,
> and which parts may vary without changing its core. Then (through
> careful crafting and painful enumeration) I allow the peripheral parts
> to respond to her actions.
>
> My original question was, in essence, "In what ways can I make
> peripheral story elements vary?" To be sure, some forms of variation
> could be branded as "branched subplots", but others couldn't. For
> example, if you assign the role of antagonist at runtime, that's
> hardly branching. It's parameterization. The same basic story
> happens regardless, but it's parameterized by who plays whom, and (if
> you do it right) is subtly different based on the choice.
--
Yoon Ha Lee
http://pegasus.cityofveils.com
Pi = 3, for small values of pi and large values of 3.
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>The more difficult (and impossible?) task is realizing that the player's
>actions have just messed up the storyline so much that a new story needs to
>be rebuilt using the bits and pieces still remaining. This could be hacked
>by creating several possible storylines in advance and chosing the story
>that has been screwed up the least. For example: In a murder mystery IF,
>clues to the killer always point in all directions. If the player
>accidentlly kills the "real" murderer, just rewrite the story (on the fly)
>so the real murderer was actually a different NPC.
I thought:
>shoot all npcs except one
The last one left is the murderer.
"But, Holmes, how on earth did you ever figure that out?"
"Elementary, my dear Watson. This type of IF author has the
conceit that his plot must never be derailed. Since a murder mystery
must have a murderer, kill all of the suspects but one, and the one
suspect remaining, however unlikely, must be the murderer."
"Brilliant, Holmes, brilliant. I must say though that I am very
glad that I am not an NPC."
>Of course, once you have successfully implimented all this, some players
>will start a new game... They will see how much they can disrupt the story
>before the AI gives up or goes insane. Children do this to their parents...
Curses! Found out!
>their parents have a planned story for the child involving high school,
>college, marriage, etc. Many children do what they can to disrupt this plan.
Raise ones children to be failures?
Sincerely,
Gene Wirchenko
Computerese Irregular Verb Conjugation:
I have preferences.
You have biases.
He/She has prejudices.
Aaron A. Reed
> What you need is either a tool that automatically balances the player as he
> walks on the tightrope so his decisions don't make him fall off (the long
> bar that tight rope walkers hold), or a way for new ropes to magically
> appear underneath the player as he steps off the narrow path.
Elegantly put.
<snip>
> At it's simplest level, ThePlot could give hints when a user is obviously
> stuck, or tell the player that jumping off a cliff is a really stupid idea.
> (IF games usually do this.)
>
> Conversely, if the player is advancing too quickly then throw in stuff to
> slow him down. Have Peeves show up and get Harry in trouble, etc.
In my initial (wildly overambitious) plans for "Gourmet," I was going
to implement something along these lines. The first draft contained
several puzzles that I realized could be circumvented by players who
had already been through the game once. Therefore I decided that if a
player used prior game knowledge to try to "cheat" a puzzle, they'd
succeed, but their actions would result in an even more difficult
puzzle showing up.
I eventually dropped this idea since a linear plot proved complicated
enough to implement, but the basic idea is one I'd love to explore as
a more fundamental part of a game. To use the murder mystery example
again, a game which keeps track of your actions, and during the final
scene calculates who is most likely to be the murderer based on the
evidence you've uncovered, could be delightful. There would be less
examining every object and asking every question, less
last-lousy-point-ing, and more of a feel of immersiveness. If you're
supposed to be Sherlock Holmes, why should you miss important clues?
The evidence you discover is, retroactively, all the evidence there
was.
This would be less like puzzle solving and more like reading a novel,
while still preserving the interactivity. It could be a fascinating
project.
--Aaron A. Reed
Roger Carbol
many people who are both better authors and better game designers than myself
have given it a whole heck of a lot of thought.
I don't think that any great consensus has been reached.
.. Roger Carbol ..
Mike Rozak
> >shoot all npcs except one
> The last one left is the murderer.
From Aaron A. Reed:
> a more fundamental part of a game. To use the murder mystery example
> again, a game which keeps track of your actions, and during the final
> scene calculates who is most likely to be the murderer based on the
> evidence you've uncovered, could be delightful. There would be less
Sorry, my murder mystery was probably a bad example. It was the first idea
that came to mind where a plot could automagically and easily be changed
without the user noticing. I have heard that the movie, "Clue" did something
like this, with multiple endings for different theaters, so there was a
different murderer each time a person saw it. Clue was not a very successful
movie... I don't know if this has anything to do with the ending. Clue (the
game) potentially allowed for this sort of plot realignment because it was
automatically generated content.
--
Mike Rozak
http://www.mxac.com.au
"Gene Wirchenko" <ge...@mail.ocis.net> wrote in message
news:3aob9012ir2dpamsh...@4ax.com...
Adam Thornton
Aaron A. Reed <aaro...@go-utah.com> wrote:
>If you're
>supposed to be Sherlock Holmes, why should you miss important clues?
>The evidence you discover is, retroactively, all the evidence there
>was.
_Deadline_ does this, in the limit case. Read the end of the book in
the living room.
Adam
Liability Grimwood
the end, which was then followed by "But it could have happened like
this..." and several abridged versions of alternative plots giving
different culprits.
It looks like the US theatre release was as you stated
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0088930/alternateversions
> Sorry, my murder mystery was probably a bad example. It was the first idea
> that came to mind where a plot could automagically and easily be changed
> without the user noticing. I have heard that the movie, "Clue" did something
> like this, with multiple endings for different theaters, so there was a
> different murderer each time a person saw it. Clue was not a very successful
> movie... I don't know if this has anything to do with the ending.
I wouldn't blame the ending, Clue was never trying to be a mainstream film.
>clues to the killer always point in all directions. If the player
>accidentlly kills the "real" murderer, just rewrite the story (on the
>fly) so the real murderer was actually a different NPC.
Instead of a plot rewrite, if the real murderer or any other NPC was
accidentally (or deliberately) killed by the player, then the PC could
be arrested for manslaughter thereby losing the game before being able
to reveal the killer. Unless it was a cliche murder mystery game (i.e.
dark and stormy night, phone lines cut, miles from anywhere - like Clue
or Murder By Death), then the player's revelation of the killer's name
would percieved as false by the other NPCs as the real killer is no
longer able to confess when confronted.
Mark.
Steve Mading
: From Gene Wirchenko:
:> >shoot all npcs except one
:> The last one left is the murderer.
:
: From Aaron A. Reed:
:> a more fundamental part of a game. To use the murder mystery example
:> again, a game which keeps track of your actions, and during the final
:> scene calculates who is most likely to be the murderer based on the
:> evidence you've uncovered, could be delightful. There would be less
:
:
: Sorry, my murder mystery was probably a bad example. It was the first idea
: that came to mind where a plot could automagically and easily be changed
: without the user noticing. I have heard that the movie, "Clue" did something
: like this, with multiple endings for different theaters, so there was a
: different murderer each time a person saw it. Clue was not a very successful
: movie... I don't know if this has anything to do with the ending. Clue (the
: game) potentially allowed for this sort of plot realignment because it was
: automatically generated content.
Make the murderer be the *player*. Start the player off with a "bump on
the head" and a localized amnesia so the events of the last few days are
unclear. The player will naturally think this is just an excuse to
explain away why he doesn't know what happened and has to solve the
mystery. But as the game progresses, the player learns that he's
the one that did it - and maybe at that point the goal changes to
trying to frame someone else.
If the murderer is the player, then the death of the murderer will end
the game without the player realizing anything is special about that.
(I thought of this because of the mention of "clue" - where one of the
silly things about the game is that it's possible for the murderer to
be *you* and you still don't even know it - and if that's the case
you still win by turning yourself in.)
Jayzee
I think that may demand too much moral plasticity on the part of the
player. Sure I can play GTA or one of the mafia games, but I need
advance warning going in, or some framework that still lets me be a hero.
Matthew Russotto
>Steve Mading wrote:
>
>>
>> Make the murderer be the *player*. Start the player off with a "bump on
>> the head" and a localized amnesia so the events of the last few days are
>> unclear. The player will naturally think this is just an excuse to
>> explain away why he doesn't know what happened and has to solve the
>> mystery. But as the game progresses, the player learns that he's
>> the one that did it - and maybe at that point the goal changes to
>> trying to frame someone else.
>>
>
>I think that may demand too much moral plasticity on the part of the
>player. Sure I can play GTA or one of the mafia games, but I need
>advance warning going in, or some framework that still lets me be a hero.
Well, perhaps the murdered party had it coming, for reasons abundantly
clear to the character and at least plausible to most players.
Since it's been done (famously) in static fiction, in first-person
narration, I think it probably could be pulled off in IF. But it only
works if the player doesn't get advance warning; otherwise it's a
whole different game.
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <40d8152f$1...@news.kcl.ac.uk>, Jayzee <non...@nowhere.com> wrote:
> >Steve Mading wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Make the murderer be the *player*. Start the player off with a "bump on
> >> the head" and a localized amnesia so the events of the last few days are
> >> unclear. The player will naturally think this is just an excuse to
> >> explain away why he doesn't know what happened and has to solve the
> >> mystery. But as the game progresses, the player learns that he's
> >> the one that did it - and maybe at that point the goal changes to
> >> trying to frame someone else.
> >>
> >
> >I think that may demand too much moral plasticity on the part of the
> >player. Sure I can play GTA or one of the mafia games, but I need
> >advance warning going in, or some framework that still lets me be a hero.
>
> Well, perhaps the murdered party had it coming, for reasons abundantly
> clear to the character and at least plausible to most players.
Infocom, of course, released _Deadline_ (where you're the detective),
followed by _Witness_, followed by _Suspect_. I always thought the
next two games should be titled _Murderer_ and _Victim_.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
Gene Wirchenko
>Here, Matthew Russotto <russ...@grace.speakeasy.net> wrote:
[snip]
>> Well, perhaps the murdered party had it coming, for reasons abundantly
>> clear to the character and at least plausible to most players.
>
>Infocom, of course, released _Deadline_ (where you're the detective),
>followed by _Witness_, followed by _Suspect_. I always thought the
>next two games should be titled _Murderer_ and _Victim_.
"Victim" would fit nicely in the two-hour limit for the Comp.
Rikard Peterson
> Since it's been done (famously) in static fiction, in first-person
> narration, I think it probably could be pulled off in IF. But it
> only works if the player doesn't get advance warning; otherwise
> it's a whole different game.
It has also been done (sort of) in what I though was a very good way in
a free graphical adventure game (yes, there has been some good stories
in those too, now) which I'm not going to name beacuse of the huge
spoiler that would be. Ok, it's not really like that, since the PC
wasn't really responsible for his actions at the time, but it still got
the emotional response from me.
Rikard
Daphne Brinkerhoff
news:cb9it2$ci2$3...@reader2.panix.com...
> Here, Matthew Russotto <russ...@grace.speakeasy.net> wrote:
(talking about a hypothetical game where you are the murderer)
> > Well, perhaps the murdered party had it coming, for reasons abundantly
> > clear to the character and at least plausible to most players.
>
> Infocom, of course, released _Deadline_ (where you're the detective),
> followed by _Witness_, followed by _Suspect_. I always thought the
> next two games should be titled _Murderer_ and _Victim_.
Great minds think... the same way as me, I guess. I never came up with
_Murderer_, but I had a sketchy plot idea for _Victim_ (which I thought of
because of the Infocom games, same as you just did). Trouble was finding an
adequate goal for the protagonist (I had an idea for that), and also to warn
the player "Yes, there is no way to avoid death", so people won't replay a
zillion times futilely. Not that that would be a bad thing, necessarily
(I'm sure we're all thinking of the same game right now). And maybe the
name _Victim_ would be enough to warn players.
But I'm really terrible at coming up with puzzles. And the characters were
not exactly believable. And it seemed to be ending up a strait-jacket of a
story. Otherwise, it was a great idea.
--
Daphne (tempted to go all Adam Cadre on you now)
Joe Mason
>> Make the murderer be the *player*. Start the player off with a "bump on
>> the head" and a localized amnesia so the events of the last few days are
>> unclear. The player will naturally think this is just an excuse to
>> explain away why he doesn't know what happened and has to solve the
>> mystery. But as the game progresses, the player learns that he's
>> the one that did it - and maybe at that point the goal changes to
>> trying to frame someone else.
>>
>
> I think that may demand too much moral plasticity on the part of the
> player. Sure I can play GTA or one of the mafia games, but I need
> advance warning going in, or some framework that still lets me be a hero.
Something similar, but with a lesser crime, was done in a short game
by a famous IF author a few years ago. Alas, giving the title would
obviously spoil the game.
Joe
Esa A E Peuha
> Infocom, of course, released _Deadline_ (where you're the detective),
> followed by _Witness_, followed by _Suspect_. I always thought the
> next two games should be titled _Murderer_ and _Victim_.
And, to continue the progression to the opposite direction, there should
also be _Prosecutor_, _Judge_, _Juror_, and _Executioner_.
--
Esa Peuha
student of mathematics at the University of Helsinki
http://www.helsinki.fi/~peuha/
Esa A E Peuha
> Something similar, but with a lesser crime, was done in a short game
> by a famous IF author a few years ago. Alas, giving the title would
> obviously spoil the game.
If you mean the game I think you mean, then I have a question: what
lesser crime? If you kill someone during a robbery, it's a murder even
if it was in self-defence; the fact that you'd've died otherwise is no
extenuation because you shouldn't have been committing the robbery in
the first place.
Daphne Brinkerhoff
> Joe Mason <j...@notcharles.ca> writes:
>
> > Something similar, but with a lesser crime, was done in a short game
> > by a famous IF author a few years ago. Alas, giving the title would
> > obviously spoil the game.
>
> If you mean the game I think you mean, then I have a question: what
> lesser crime? If you kill someone during a robbery, it's a murder even
> if it was in self-defence; the fact that you'd've died otherwise is no
> extenuation because you shouldn't have been committing the robbery in
> the first place.
Wow, I don't know the game you mean (but I'm curious). The game I
thought Joe meant involved poetry and phone calls (I think, cut-scene
phone calls?).
It seems to me there are lots of games that involve doing something
against the authorities and having to kill people as a result. That
isn't exactly the same as getting inside the head of a criminal.
Frex, I can think of TATCTAE, where you break into lots of places, and
I think you kill people, but I never felt like a criminal in that
game.
--
Daphne
Cedric Knight
news:1a80bb93.04062...@posting.google.com...
> Esa A E Peuha <esa....@helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:<86pr7s5...@sirppi.helsinki.fi>...
> > Joe Mason <j...@notcharles.ca> writes:
> >
> > > Something similar, but with a lesser crime, was done in a short game
> > > by a famous IF author a few years ago. Alas, giving the title would
> > > obviously spoil the game.
> >
> > If you mean the game I think you mean, then I have a question: what
> > lesser crime? If you kill someone during a robbery, it's a murder even
> > if it was in self-defence; the fact that you'd've died otherwise is no
> > extenuation because you shouldn't have been committing the robbery in
> > the first place.
>
> Wow, I don't know the game you mean (but I'm curious). The game I
> thought Joe meant involved poetry and phone calls (I think, cut-scene
> phone calls?).
Now I'm confused. Do you mean the one with poetry where you eventually try
to kill someone but fail? That one made me laugh, and I didn't mind it too
much.
I thought Joe meant the one where you could play all the way through without
necessarily realising you'd killed someone. That's the one Esa meant.
(from different part of thread)
"Matthew Russotto" <russ...@grace.speakeasy.net> wrote:
> In article <40d8152f$1...@news.kcl.ac.uk>, Jayzee <non...@nowhere.com>
wrote:
> >Steve Mading wrote:
> >
> >>
> >> Make the murderer be the *player*. Start the player off with a "bump
on
> >> the head" and a localized amnesia so the events of the last few days
are
> >> unclear. The player will naturally think this is just an excuse to
> >> explain away why he doesn't know what happened and has to solve the
> >> mystery. But as the game progresses, the player learns that he's
> >> the one that did it - and maybe at that point the goal changes to
> >> trying to frame someone else.
> >>
> >
> >I think that may demand too much moral plasticity on the part of the
> >player. Sure I can play GTA or one of the mafia games, but I need
> >advance warning going in, or some framework that still lets me be a hero.
>
> Well, perhaps the murdered party had it coming, for reasons abundantly
> clear to the character and at least plausible to most players.
Well, the author can try to justify it to the player, but many players will
still refuse to go through with actions beyond the pale. Or at least, only
on the basis that, suffering amnesia, you are now somehow a different
person.
CK
Gene Wirchenko
>Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> writes:
>
>> Infocom, of course, released _Deadline_ (where you're the detective),
>> followed by _Witness_, followed by _Suspect_. I always thought the
>> next two games should be titled _Murderer_ and _Victim_.
>
>And, to continue the progression to the opposite direction, there should
>also be _Prosecutor_, _Judge_, _Juror_, and _Executioner_.
^^^^^^^^^^^^
Or "Aspiring DA". There are also "Defence Attourney", "Legal
Aid", "The Media Circus", and "The Chair" (some jurisdictions only) or
"Governor's Pardon".
Daphne Brinkerhoff
> "Daphne Brinkerhoff" <cen...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:1a80bb93.04062...@posting.google.com...
> > Esa A E Peuha <esa....@helsinki.fi> wrote in message
> news:<86pr7s5...@sirppi.helsinki.fi>...
> > > Joe Mason <j...@notcharles.ca> writes:
> > >
> > > > Something similar, but with a lesser crime, was done in a short game
> > > > by a famous IF author a few years ago. Alas, giving the title would
> > > > obviously spoil the game.
> > >
> > > If you mean the game I think you mean, then I have a question: what
> > > lesser crime? If you kill someone during a robbery, it's a murder even
> > > if it was in self-defence; the fact that you'd've died otherwise is no
> > > extenuation because you shouldn't have been committing the robbery in
> > > the first place.
> >
> > Wow, I don't know the game you mean (but I'm curious). The game I
> > thought Joe meant involved poetry and phone calls (I think, cut-scene
> > phone calls?).
>
> Now I'm confused. Do you mean the one with poetry where you eventually try
> to kill someone but fail? That one made me laugh, and I didn't mind it too
> much.
>
> I thought Joe meant the one where you could play all the way through without
> necessarily realising you'd killed someone. That's the one Esa meant.
After quite a bit of confusion on my part (complicated by my initially
thinking you, Cedric, meant a different game where you kill people
without knowing it, but that one didn't involve robbery), I think I've
figured out what game Esa (and you) meant. However, in that game, the
player doesn't have to kill anyone. You may be playing a killer, but
you don't have to do the act, if you see the difference. Also, you
don't even do the lesser crime, during the game. All that has already
taken place before you play. In the game I thought of, you do have to
commit a crime in the course of the game. Several, actually.
Anyway, sorry to be confused earlier, and now I see some of the many
different ways one can be tricked by IF authors into a life of crime.
Guess _Murderer_ isn't so far out of bounds after all.
--
Daphne
J. J. Guest
> followed by _Witness_, followed by _Suspect_. I always thought the
> next two games should be titled _Murderer_ and _Victim_.
>
> --Z
Doesn't Level 9's _Scapeghost_ explore the crime genre from the
victim's point of view? :)
Gene Wirchenko
[snip]
>Anyway, sorry to be confused earlier, and now I see some of the many
>different ways one can be tricked by IF authors into a life of crime.
>Guess _Murderer_ isn't so far out of bounds after all.
I ask for mercy from the court. I had a bad childhood, full of
IF, and now, I will probably never enjoy Cheerios again. I will not
even mention The Group That Does Not Exist.
Esa A E Peuha
No, in the game I (and I think also Cedric) mean, you've already killed
someone, but the game isn't exactly forthcoming with this fact. If you
explore everything like a decent adventurer, you'll find it out easily,
but it's actually more fun to let the game deceive you (the ending you
will get that way is one of the funniest I've ever seen).
Tommy Herbert
> I had a sketchy plot idea for _Victim_ (which I thought of
> because of the Infocom games, same as you just did). Trouble was finding an
> adequate goal for the protagonist (I had an idea for that)
Have you read Martin Amis's _London Fields_ (he considered the title
_The Murderee_)?
Joe Mason
Wow. I, um, managed to miss most of this thread after last time I
posted, but reading this is really funny for some reason.
I'll explain which game *I* was talking about...
* SPOILERS: A game by a famous author whose name itself is a spoiler *
This space intentionally left blank.
The game is 9:05, by Adam Cadre. It's very short - go play it (it's in
the zcode directory on the IF Archive). Now you know something is up,
but not *exactly* what it is, so I hope I didn't spoil it too much.
Joe
Cedric Knight
OK. It's now clear that Joe, Esa and I were all thinking of the same one,
whose author's name is itself a spoiler. I agree that Esa'a questioning
whether it is a 'lesser crime' is a moot point (manslaughter or a lesser
degree of murder perhaps?). Like I say, in one ending if you don't behave
like a 'decent adventurer', it is possible not to realise you've killed
someone.
This is different from the one Daphne initially thought Joe meant (not the
one she later realised that Esa thought Joe meant, and in fact Joe did
mean), which is also by a famous author and even shorter, which does force
you into attempted murder 'on screen'. For a while I though Daphne thought
I meant yet another one by a famous author (not necessarily the same one)
which forces you into a series of murders, which doesn't involve poetry and
where you do see the deaths, and which isn't the one Daphne originally
thought I meant, or the one Daphne originally thought Joe meant, or which
Joe actually did mean.
I haven't played very far in the one where you kill people without realising
it. I realise I've probably played far enough to have killed someone
without realising it, though.
-----
There is actually a moral question about all this which has never been
explicitly resolved AFAIK. I can recall reading a comment in 'Feedback' in
New Scientist circa 1980 about the 'Missile Command' (?) video game.
Confronted with a nuclear war scenario, the player explodes ICBMs and then
has to shoot down a 'presumably manned' plane, which the author of the piece
regarded as stepping over an ethical line of unexamined consequences.
Hard to imagine such agonising over the explosion of a few red pixels in
these days of GTA, Resident Evil, etc. Is there some point at which this
actually does something dehumanising to the player/interactor? For
instence, when games have achieved the realism seen in Cronenberg's
_eXistenZ_? Or is it no worse than a passive involvement in reading Crime
and Punishment or playing Macbeth?
CK
Joe Mason
> OK. It's now clear that Joe, Esa and I were all thinking of the same one,
> whose author's name is itself a spoiler. I agree that Esa'a questioning
> whether it is a 'lesser crime' is a moot point (manslaughter or a lesser
> degree of murder perhaps?). Like I say, in one ending if you don't behave
> like a 'decent adventurer', it is possible not to realise you've killed
> someone.
I was thinking when I posted originally that the crime was merely theft,
actually, since you are playing a burglar. That one thinko seems to
have caused all sorts of confusion.
> one she later realised that Esa thought Joe meant, and in fact Joe did
> mean), which is also by a famous author and even shorter, which does force
> you into attempted murder 'on screen'. For a while I though Daphne thought
> I meant yet another one by a famous author (not necessarily the same one)
> which forces you into a series of murders, which doesn't involve poetry and
> where you do see the deaths, and which isn't the one Daphne originally
> thought I meant, or the one Daphne originally thought Joe meant, or which
> Joe actually did mean.
> Hard to imagine such agonising over the explosion of a few red pixels in
> these days of GTA, Resident Evil, etc. Is there some point at which this
> actually does something dehumanising to the player/interactor? For
> instence, when games have achieved the realism seen in Cronenberg's
> _eXistenZ_? Or is it no worse than a passive involvement in reading Crime
> and Punishment or playing Macbeth?
I've been playing Knights of the Old Republic, choosing the Dark Side
route and having a great time constantly taking the greedy, mercenary,
power hungry and violent route. Then I got to a bit where a destitute
woman said her husband had just died on a hunting trip; all she had left
were his hunting trophies, and she couldn't sell them because she didn't
have a hunting license. Since *I* had a license, could I please sell
them for her and bring her back the money? She was just trying to get
enough to buy a ticket out of here for herself and her children...
I could immediately tell the Light Side option was, "You're in luck! It
was worth 200 credits more than you thought - here you go!" and the Dark
Side option was, "I got a good price for it. You get nothing! Ha ha
ha!" But, for the first time in the game, I felt *really bad* picking
the Dark Side option.
I noticed that was the choice where, for the first time, the NPC's
started to comment on what a bastard I was being, too.
Joe
Adam Thornton
Cedric Knight <ckn...@gn.babpbc.removeallBstosend.org> wrote:
>I can recall reading a comment in 'Feedback' in
>New Scientist circa 1980 about the 'Missile Command' (?) video game.
>Confronted with a nuclear war scenario, the player explodes ICBMs and then
>has to shoot down a 'presumably manned' plane, which the author of the piece
>regarded as stepping over an ethical line of unexamined consequences.
Given the premise of _Missile Command_, the presumable level of
radiation in the air in the scene of _Missile Command_, and the
inevitable outcome of _Missile Command_, this sure sounds like someone
being whiny for its own sake.
Adam