BLOG is for Back LOG

Just to clarify: I have been keeping my journal in a little notebook, as I find I brainstorm my ideas better on paper. However, I hate attempting to formalise my ideas on paper, or write in anything other than disjointed thoughts / sentences and dot points. Consequently, I decided to upload all my entries to an online blog, and from now on I will be adding my entries here. I have not simply written 8 blog entries in the last hour.

Systemic or Systematic ramblings

Our third lecture in this subject made me think once again about the narrative system I was explaining in my first post. As that post was made before we had that lecture, I thought I'd update my thoughts on how it relates to complex systems within games.

The adaptive narrative I described in my first post could be represented as an extension to a game's formal system, primarily focusing on extending the attributes, internal relationships and environment of the game.

For instance, an NPC's (object's) behaviour is determined by its attributes, and by increasing the system's complexity, this could include situational behaviour defining how the NPC should react in various situations. Furthermore, by interlinking this with the internal relationships of the system, it provides a framework for expressing how various objects of the system should interract and behave together.

As previously mentioned, this idea is very young and its overall do-ability and effectiveness is not known. At risk of this post turning into rambling, I will attempt to sum up: game mechanics such as the artificial intelligence and adaptive narrative explained previously, should be incorporated as elements into the game's formal system as a whole. Rather than having separate elements such as narrative, AI, and various other mechanics, these could all be combined into a complex system allowing a greater degree of interraction between these elements, and consequently a greater degree of complexity and player interactivity in a game's system.

Innovate me

I think games too often focus on implementing old systems with a new GUI shell, or slightly tweaked story. This is particularly true for many adventure or RPG style games, which depend more heavily on story than many other games. By sticking to common systems, such as the experience based levelling system and D&D dice based combat, or damage multiplier based combat system, game developers are guaranteed that on that front at least their game isn’t going to fail. Instead they focus on coming up with an original story and fancy graphics, with potentially some nice new features, to cover the fact that their game is really only a reworked shell of hundreds of older titles. The problem is, this latter part often isn’t done well: game stories are frequently lacking substance and quality that they should have (at least in the sci-fi / fantasy area) and most graphics revolutions seem to be in FPSs and racing games.

Take for instance the traditional fantasy model: just once I would like to play a fantasy based adventure or RPG game where I am not a prodigy child or hero that has been prophecised about. It only takes reading a few novels in the fantasy genre to learn a few things about this model:

1. It’s excessively overused
2. When the story does not follow this model, it is generally a much better read

These thoughts on innovative story lines have been prompted by the book I’m currently reading: The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant by Stephen R. Donaldson. This is a widely acclaimed (apparently) novel of the fantasy genre. However, I have, thus far, been utterly disappointed by how stereotypical a story it is. At approximately 200 pages in it is completely unoriginal and not even written that interestingly. Granted it took a different path in introducing the fantasy world, but once there the story represents everything that makes fantasy boring: prophesised (and reluctant) hero, land with very definitive good and evil, self-righteous people and all that jazz. As previously mentioned, books form a great source of inspiration for me. Even the bad ones, such as this, have prompted several thoughts on how story plays such a part, especially in fantasy genred games, and how important it consequently is to provide game players with something truly original.

Conflict mechanics in games are another area that could do with an innovative overhaul. Lecture 4 mentioned conflict as being an integral element of games, and explained how various different styles of coflict can be implemented in game. Although several avenues for conflict can be implemented in games, so often in a vast majority of fantasy titles do they only implement the oldest Physical style of conflict. In some more recent titles we’re starting to see examples of Verbal conflict, and situations that promote employing other means to avoid physical conflict. However, generally speaking, this form of conflict is still the dominant form in most fantasy adventure and RPG games. Granted, the genre tends to be fairly combat oriented, but this is no reason why it should lack innovation and exploration.

I would love to see RPGs that implement a revolutionary combat system that wasn’t dependent on the roll of a dice, or the damage multiplier and other relevant stats of a character. So too would I love to see a higher prevelance of focus on conflict in games that explores other avenues such as political and social conflict. Their limited existence has proven to have interesting side effects on games, and it could revolutionise the genre to bring out games that had a much higher dependency on maintaining political alliances, or staging economic coups on others.

World of You're-Never-Going-To-Finish-Me-Craft

“Four years have passed now since the aftermath of Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, and a great tension now smolders throughout the ravaged world of Azeroth. As the battle-worn races begin to rebuild their shattered kingdoms, new threads, both ancient and ominous, arise to plague the world once again.”

This is a potential concept statement for World of Warcraft. At the very least, it is the introduction to the game given on their website. This sets the scene for the game, at the same time as giving little enough detail to keep people curious. WoW is nothing special in terms of its concept statement. It does, however, take an interesting approach to start and end conditions. Well mainly end conditions.

Start Condition: Each race has its own starting area, where the player is initiated into the game with a small backstory about their race of choice, and where they can familiarise themselves with the game completing some simple quests. In terms of individual background, the player essentially starts a clean slate with no backstory. The game itself also only gives the player a brief overview of plot backstory (in the long run, plot comes a long way down the list of driving factors in this game – why are we killing Illidan? Because he drops epics…).

End Condition: This game takes an interesting approach to end conditions, in that the definable end does not take place in game, but out, in one of two situations:

1. You ‘/quit’ the game due to one of several factors including, but not limited to:
1. Your loot being ninja’d
2. Blizzard failing to adequately buff your class
3. Repetitive PVP deaths to a class that Blizzard has repeatedly buffed
4. Guild related angst
5. Inability to deal with noobs
6. You tire of the game after reaching 60 / 70 / 80 and realising your class sucks. This coincides with realising that there are several months / years of your life missing and you can’t get them back
2. You continue playing…forever, until WoW not only dominates your life, but your death, when you’re inflicted with a disease (incurable) that deals -100 stamina every hour.

Funnily enough, neither of these situations would really constitute a player winning the game, or even finishing it. Does this mean that WoW is not technically a game, as it can’t be finished? Or does it represent a game that has an undetermined end condition, where the end condition is decided not by the developers, but by the players and what they hope to achieve from the game.
This raises an interesting issue in regards to Lecture 2: do start and end conditions always have to be decided by developers, or is it enough to simply create a framework and allow the player to decide what constitutes having ‘finished’ the game?

Engagement Guitar Hero Style

I’ve recently become a part-time addict to the Guitar Hero series of games (i.e. 2 & 3 on Xbox 360). I say part-time due to a thankful lack of skill that prevents me becoming completely addicted. We were recently discussing in our lecture (I believe it was lecture 2) how our brain requires constant change in stimulus to keep it engaged in an activity, and this got me thinking about how this is easier in some games than others, and how Guitar Hero roped me in hook, line and sinker.

The game obviously provides a more engaging or attention intensive experience than most due to its very nature; excluding menus, there is no slack time in game (unless you’re playing the bass line to something like ‘Rock You Like A Hurricane’).

The game provides changing stimulus in many ways. Firstly, there is the variety of songs that you play as you progress through career mode. Especially the first time through, you don’t know what songs will comprise the next set. Even after playing through career mode, going through at a harder difficulty provides another level of engagement.

Then there’s the level of engagement required within each song. You never know when you’ll be plodding along knee deep in familiar riffage only to be blasted out of your reverie by a solo that you’ve got more chance of faking on a real guitar than nailing in this game. Take Metallica’s ‘One’ for example. You lull yourself into a false sense of security with the melodic and repetitive (but still brilliant) intro and rhythm riffs. You even boost your confidence by doing passably well at the ad-lib instrumentals dispersed within. Enter new level of engagement in the form of the Machine Gun riff. AND, when your arm is ready to fall off from that round of tremolo picking, you get faced with Hammett’s ridiculous finger-tapping solo in the form of a solid wad of notes tearing down the screen towards you.

Co-operative play also adds a whole new dimension to the game. Jump into co-op career with a friend and fire up your favourite dose of riffage, a tried and true tune that you can shred along to with your eyes closed. Only this time your friend steals the guitar line and you’re left with bass. So you sit back for three and a half minutes of bass boredom, only to find yourself struggling to keep up to the riffed-ramblings of a ballistic bass shredder, frantically hammering out a manic, albeit inaudible, bass line.

Inspiration or Creative Plagiarism

I’ve been thinking a bit recently about where I get my ideas for games from. One primary reason for this is that I haven’t really had any good ideas for games recently, so instead thought I should at least understand what prompts my thoughts. In attempting to examine my creative processes, I’ve realised two things about myself:
1. I get many ideas for games based on wanting to improve elements of games I play; and
2. I get the majority of the rest of my ideas from good books
This highlights some important facts: I rely on other media (such as novels) as a form of inspiration for ideas, and I’m most likely to end up developing something that is either a direct or inadvertent plagiarism of someone else’s work.

I find that other games are a great source of inspiration for either foundling ideas for a game as a whole, or for general ideas for game mechanic developments. I’ll address books in a later post.
Just recently, I decided to whip out the credit card and see if World of Warcraft was still as unstimulating as it was a year ago when I stopped playing it (actually, I fired up my friend’s account and used a ‘Try the Burning Crusade for 10 days for free’ pass to save my credit card). What I found was that in general terms, yes it is still as unstimulating as it was. In roughly a year, and about three patches, the game appears to have changed little. This once again got me thinking about some ideas I’ve had for World of Warcraft.

Firstly, the idea of factions. Factions play a significant part in WoW. Several thousand people spend countless hours playing and killing the same group of monsters to build up enough reputation with a certain faction, to be able to buy the latest cosmetic upgrade to their wardrobe. In addition to that, the narrative and game-play is strongly dependent on the two primary factions of the game, the Alliance and Horde.

This got me to thinking about different faction mechanics that could be implemented in the game. What if, as a player, you didn’t want to remain as a member of your designated faction? Change your character? What if you felt no particular allegiance to the Alliance or the Horde? Prompted by one of the early WoW background pictures, I came up with the idea for an ‘Outcast’ faction, a faction that a player could choose to join by forsaking their own faction.
I’m sure there would be several organisational headaches with implementing such a model, but I can’t personally think of any reasons why it ultimately wouldn’t work, and I believe that it could be quite a successful addition to a game such as WoW, giving players even more choice in how they play the game.

I have also been thinking recently about the possibility of allowing players to join the already existing in-game factions, such as the Argent Dawn, or Cenarion Circle. This could be used as a alternative mechanic for allowing Horde and Alliance to work together (for those who say this is against the narrative of the game, just have a look at these factions – it already happens with NPCs, why not players), and could also provide a means for expanding the immersive experience for players. Being a member of a faction such as the Argent Dawn for instance, could open up avenues of the game that are not available to other players. In my opinion, that would be a more worthwhile reward than a chestpiece (no matter how epic).

The problem with these ideas is that they are rather specific to an already existing game. They do, however, have merit as starting points for the development of other game ideas or mechanics.

Another day in Paradise

I received Burnout Paradise for my birthday, so I thought I’d write my thoughts on it! Personally I’ve always been a fan of the Burnout series. They pack all the speed and adrenaline associated with street racing into a system at the same time as doing away with the realism that often plagues other racing games.

The newest addition to the family marks a significant change in design methodology, when compared to the older releases. The old ‘select-your-race-and-car-and-everything-else-at-a-menu’ model has been replaced with a free roam open city reminiscent of GTA or later Need For Speed games. This design change has significant ramifications for how the game is played, and who it appeals to. The traditional model of a racing game is often boring to many players, who want to simply be able to play a game outside the constraints and rules of racing. This is now possible through Paradise.

An examination of a previous Burnout release such as Revenge might have seen it classified under the areas of Agôn and Ludus (that is, rule-based competitive play). This is still present in Paradise through the various styles of races and events that a player can compete in. However, there is a whole new element of game-play that was not present in previous releases. Outside of the formalised events, play would generally lean more toward a Paida classification – it is still rule based insofar as what the car physically can and can’t do, but in all other senses it is free-form play up the discretion of the player.

Essentially, Paradise has taken the best elements of previous games, combined them all into the latest release, and placed it in a free-roam city, adding a whole new element of play to the game and giving the player the freedom to explore as they please and race when they like.

Failings of an FPS

I have recently come into acquisition of a Playstation 3 (legitimately), and decided I would like to test out its graphics capabilities. Enter Timeshift (I have to say I wasn’t really interested in hiring this game out, but Devil May Cry 4 was out, as was pretty much anything else that looked remotely interesting).

I’m the first to admit that first person shooters are not my favourite style of game, and although there are a few titles (Team Fortress 2, Halo) that I quite enjoy, I generally don’t spend more than a couple of hours (total) playing any FPS. For Timeshift, it barely made the half-hour mark. Admittedly this wasn’t solely based on the content of the game, although without other time constraints, I doubt I would have played for too much longer.

In terms of general game design and game play, Timeshift is just another FPS. The game’s sole innovation is the player’s ability to control time to a certain degree (pause, slow down, reverse). This is a cool feature, but is not enough to make the entire game innovative. Unfortunately, it just appears that there are limited areas (at least in the FPS genre) that developers are trying to innovate.

I should point out at this point that I’m not attempting to be specifically negative on Timeshift – I haven’t played it enough to comment on the general quality of the game. However, it is by no means an innovative game; it appeals to the same target audience as a thousand other FPSs, and ensures acceptance by sticking resolutely to well accepted game mechanics. Even the player’s introduction to the game follows a common model: the player is introduced to the game as a prototypical soldier or other such role, imbued with special fighting abilities through the aid of a high-tech suit (à la Half Life 2 / Halo). In keeping with this model, there is an attack on the ‘safe’ start location of the game, causing the player to be thrown into the game with an ‘malfunctioning’ suit, allowing abilities to be explained and uncovered through the early training stages of the game as the suit is repaired.I’m sure the game itself is quite fun, and the time-travel mechanic is definitely cool, but its game-play is mechanically identical to hundreds of other FPSs. And now, reaching the end of this post, I realise I’m probably being overly negative given that I have no suggestions for innovation of my own. Such is life.

Thoughts on Narrative

I’ve recently been thinking a bit about AI in games, and in particular adaptive AI. In our first lecture for ITB016 this week we briefly went over the topic of narrative, and it set me off once again on the ‘adaptive’ train of thought.

Narrative is traditionally fairly straight-forward and linear in style. Even in examples where the narrative jumps around from character to character, or setting, or time / space (talking more generally about narrative here, not specific to games), it at least follows some predetermined path and is essentially set in concrete (in the case of books, admittedly this is pretty standard practice, due to obvious technological limitations). However, with games, the narrative doesn’t have to be set in concrete. Indeed, there are several examples where games offer rich narrative with multiple paths that can be chosen by the user, and several more that at least offer a couple of very minor narrative variations (you kill the kitten, you get ‘evil ‘ ending, you save the kitten, you get ‘good’ ending).

Although games currently exploit their interactive nature to a degree to provide the semblance of interactive narrative to a player, it really is nothing more than a semblance; in many situations you can even play the game completely differently, but take the same paths at key decisions, and end up at the same place.

So winding back around to my ‘adaptive’ train of thought: imagine a game where the narrative itself is truly interactive, where a player’s interaction with the game is one of the main driving features behind the game’s narrative itself. Would it be possible? Would it be playable? Most importantly, would it be fun? Well in terms of possibility, it would obviously require a large and complex AI model to allow for game narrative to firstly adapt to a player’s interactions, and secondly to replicate that adaptation so it reflects in all non-player characters. Playable? Probably largely dependent on several thousand factors, not least of which being the AI system’s abilities, and whether it allows the game to progress in a way acceptable to players. Would it be fun? Well as with any game, this would be subjective. But subjectiveness aside, there are some areas that could definitely make it not fun. For example, if the AI adapted itself into a corner, or the narrative adapted in such a way as to be boring, ridiculous, hard or nonsensical, then it would likely not be fun.

If this was ever going to work, it would need to be a very well thought out model. My preliminary ideas are thus:

• The system would involve several key narrative events (we still want creative directors – leaving that up to AI would no doubt be disastrous)
• All key NPCs and events would be linked in a complex network including social links, and various cause and effect triggers
• Player actions would ultimately be the starting cause, which might trigger ‘vibrations’ along a certain strand of our web of connections, which in turn causes various events and triggers to be set off

© Jeff Burn 2008

This model is subject to several issues, especially in terms of feasibility. However, I think it could definitely be an interesting area of exploration.