http://www.humblebundle.com/

Welcome to last week guys. Now you should understand why I'm suspicious and not supportive of the thing, and the next one.

There's a slider where you as a consumer can give money to which developer, which is good if I think one of the developers or charities should be support more or less than another or not at all.

but rather that it’s a sensitive deal between us and the devs

I haven't a clue as to what this means. Also, that's not what would I expect and that's the problem.

I have to write a scene of a play, and I have no clue what I should write about.

Also, I'd rather write the whole dum play. I have to develop 3 characters in 2 pages plus the actual scene.

You half inspired me to write up this post. Start with unique characters and put them in a room in the middle of a realistic but odd situation then just watch what happens as they try to interact. It'll create a plot and round of the characters at the same time.

[which makes all the difference]

Emergence and Game Design in general, .

We all know about the basics of storytelling, introduction exposition rising action climax decending action resolution protagonist antagonist blah. What's important to remember is that these are not the basics of storytelling, they are the basics of literary critiques. Critique to me is lovely people who just wanted to read books tricked into/paid to wrap words around what an author already brilliantly described by writing the book.

The point is the descriptive words are not and should never be a checklist for a good story despite what Joesph Campbell blathered (I prefer John over Joe anyday for a good story). Fitting a story to a formula is not only boring but ingenuine and perpetuates stereotypes for characters as you force people into certain roles. It is supremely important to consider how characters and events interact in your story for a game because you are dropping a free agent in with what are usually flat rigid characters and something will always break.

The characters and structures of your story have connotations (the emotional and imaginative association surrounding a word) that should be considered when writing.  Things like Hero, Villain, Princess, Barkeep, Wizard can be used as descriptions but never as the entirety of who the characters are. With emergent design for writing, always use adjectives and verbs over nouns.

A brilliant example of this in action is Shakespeare. Most of us read him in school instead of seeing the play so we see again and again "Fool" (usually the fool has a name, which is better but anyway). Our connotations with that word end up shaping (pre-judging) how he will act and respond. In a play it may be done with costume. But the character was not written as a "fool" but as human person reacting under the job description fool, which makes all the difference.

So, that's what I think is wrong with the way people think about writing stories. Too much structure, not enough character depth. So, without a plot structure how does one go about writing a story? Put characters in an environment and videotape them.

It's that simple. It's like an ant farm. All of my favorite writers talk about writing as if the characters are real people interacting inside their head. Characters are driven by personal motivations and interact with each other, sometimes changing or not changing depending on the author's understanding of each character as a person. As with any emergent system, the interactions between characters become more and more complex to the point where even the best writer could never have predicted them. Stories become interesting as the characters change and react differently to new people or new situations. As for conflicts, without planning it out you will see them develop as the characters pursue their simple desires even against those who you would originally put as allies.

One last note on emergent storytelling is that along with no set structure of events there should not be an end in mind. I figured this was the case with the director of Breaking Bad and I was right. When writing it seems most people plot out the whole story first and just have the characters (and the player) go on the rails of a theme park until they reach the end. By removing the track and the end what drives the story is only the interactions of the characters and their environment. The actions become realistic and the story can end when you feel the characters have run their course, either after the climax, ten years after the climax, or with their sons or whatever.

Letting go and giving your characters and the player freedom will almost guarantee a unique and brilliant story, as long as the characters have personal motivation (history, values, etc.) and the environment (politics, economy, health) are realistic.

Seems so. I haven't the time to play it today, but good on you for sticking it out and making something. Congrats.

Pretty progress makes us happy. But it's probably the proper time to complete some design goals so it's not total feature creep.

The rotation vase thing could be pretty cool, reminds me of the awesome Goht battle in Majora's Mask.

~watching closely forever

@moi

It's true which is why we need to keep the Humble Bundle idea and not accept anything less than what's fair. It worked well for absolutely everyone so what's the point of going back to a less transparent system? If these guys get away with hiding it, the next bundles could hide it and shaft indies ever more while still getting the press and success of indie bundles.

This is a time when we can argue which systems we want to support while Steam is getting bigger and Origin is starting up. At the very least on an indie level we shouldn't have people hiding how big cuts are.

Also Notch and PR are words that don't really get along in my head, he's done quite well at being a guy who makes games rather than CEO.

Well put! Hopefully I'm just spinning conspiracy theories and they overlooked it. Benefit of the doubt and all that.

Well the difference it's not run by Valve, so they can run things any way they want. And for some reason they choose to run it like Valve.

To take the rather dumb tomato analogy, you go to your local farmer's market where the cashier lets you split the total cost between the farmers however you want and how much you want the cashier/market organiser to get paid. Great system, fair for everyone. Then a new market starts up selling local grown tomatoes from a storefront, called King's Farmer's Market banking on the success of the well run fair business but without the ability to know who gets what. People go to it because of the low prices, still being proud of themselves for not going to Wal Mart.

If they were setting up storefront like Steam or I don't know Desura you're right it wouldn't be that big of a deal. I made it clear that I really respected the Humble idea, and I'm kind of upset that these guys are trying to do the same thing without the consumer's choice. I'd rather not support them this time around and in future bundles when I know a better system actually works.

I know Wadjet sells games from their site so I'm probably going to buy it from them. If the games were more my style I would probably ask them directly. Right now I'm just sort of upset that they can get away with ignoring a really big issue with their Bundle compared to previous Bundles.

Please do not meme up our (mostly) civil discussion with your memes.

I was the one who isn't buying the thing because it's a step backwards from the indie bundle where I knew how much of my money the people who invested time into making a game (instead of the people who made a paypal surrogate). Also as I keep saying, there's no reason to hide the info from the main site or even the faqin' faq. Maybe they do give them a nearly all my money, but I don't know that. Hiding where money goes is something I don't trust and don't think anyone should trust, like ever.

It's also a problem because it's not a one off thing. They are going to make a lot of money from this, depending on the percentage. I really don't like middlemen.

There was something like this 2 years ago, http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=9287.0

I'm excited to see the concept again. There's so much that could be done with it, a stealth horror could be very cool.

It's getting close to the end here, work hard and finish strong guys!

Maybe this (along with gimmy's original video) could be put in a new thread where people can post gaming related tech news.

Also the company is in Sweden, maybe Notch is interested in trying out such a theatre/arcade.

I'm glad you got around to watching that. But now you have me wanting to buy one for Zelda and Minecraft.

The Virtual Theatre from MSE is based on the omnidirectional floor. It may be configured with optional ad-ons, such as a the following:
- Visual (360 degrees seamless projection
- Audio (surround sound system)
- Motion (platform for Z, pitch, roll and vibration)
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- Body tracking (unlimited number of positions/segments with highest accuracy)
- Weapons interface

To receive further information, please contact us at [email protected] or by calling us
at +46 (0)476 559 50.

http://www.mseab.se/The-Virtual-Theatre.htm

It was a pretty dumb bold statement, and I take it back.

Style is never substance. Form is never function.

You mean like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg8Bh5iI2WY? (around 2:00 to avoid cheesiness) Bring on the smell-o-vision.

That video was pretty amazing gimmy, I'd love a next gen Myst, or Fract for that matter.

Worth watching for sure, gets just a bit of what the movie was about.

I loved the first bit, where without much thought he just goes for it. It's that kind of feelings that games should embrace. It's hard to think of a game that allows the player to actually risk anything for the sake of adventure, its just assumed and written as backstory for the player to ignore. If games started like this movie I think it'd be some major progress in interactivity.

Pay what you think games are worth. Personally I think anything else is disrespectful to the game designer. That said, also don't pay unless you know how much the designer is getting. Why it doesn't say in giant red letters is beyond me. Why it doesn't say at all is inexcusable.

The thrill of being indie is seeing a broken system and getting a chance to do it right. The Steam sale/mobile market/humble bundle system is effective at raising money, but seems to literally devalue the enormous effort it takes for anyone, especially a small number of people to make a game.

I can't extend the deadline, but I bet you can get it done a day early and get voted on with the rest of them, but I suppose that's up to you. A few people started a late so I wouldn't worry about that part.