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Hunh?

I'm not trying to fight you. I'm just talking about the things that are on my mind. I don't know what you want explained.... ()

A game is a million pieces. I am talking about 1/100 of those. I'm not saying that the others aren't critical. I'm happy to explain some other piece you'd like me to, you just have to ask. Saying, "show me how it really works" is super vague. I'm a nice person, and I get something out of sharing, but I don't understand what it is that you're referring to.

Building a dynamic character is a big process. It is really fucking big. I think maybe one of the issues designers have is underestimating how big of a deal design theory is in general.... I'm not saying that's you. I'm just saying that in general.

Bridging structure and character aren't questions I have. I'm just doing the work. A character needs to be deconstructed into constituent parts. You need to identify each of the pieces, the same way you make a blueprint of a building. You need to see everything, in incredible detail, and how it all fits together. Writers normally don't do this because an intuitive understanding is enough. They can build such a "blueprint" in their minds by considering all the various properties their characters have, such as how they'd react to a situation they have planned in the story, whether they eventually include that situation in the story or not.

With AI that strategy doesn't work. Plugging structure into characters is trivial. Defining a character is what's hard. You can't rely on an intuition of "what a character is" when you're writing a dynamic story, because you have to teach a computer to understand the same things. The computer needs the same understanding of a character as a writer would, so the character has to be deconstructed in a technical way.

The same thing is true for dynamic designs. If you want a machine to construct a level, for example, it would need a designer-level understanding of how all its available level-constructs relate to one another in creating an experience for the player.

Hunh. I wasn't dissing your link. "1 under par" means good. In golf, a birdie is a very good thing. It was a compliment! .

I will read any good source on story structure. Most books on "structure" that I read are written from a writer's perspective, so they're filled with writer-like details. The link you gave me is a little more technical, so it rounds out my library well.

I promise, I will read that thing through 3 times before I release. I have an ever-growing list of structural analysis resources.

Yeah, 3-act structure is a general template. It tessellates down. The general theory is this: introduce viewer to elements, show how elements play out, explore results and recap what happened. You can apply that template to any attempt to communicate to find flaws.

If you want a "how" or something, that's personally interesting, I'll be happy to explain it. I'm just not sure which how's you're looking for. A lot has to be implied in writing. I mean, I never talk about decision trees. A decision tree isn't powerful enough to handle the kinds of ideas I'm talking about. You can use it for very simple characters, but they become unwieldy fast. You need to introduce whole new structures to manage characters that are as rich as those in stories and as dynamic as we'd like them to be in games.

But I haven't talked about that because no one has asked. I haven't talked about threading strategies either, or ways to reduce load times, or ways to animate characters procedurally. There's a lot of patterns in development that you have to follow to ensure that you can develop fluid animations that reflect what you want, and that suit the characters and mechanics that you are developing. Splitting that workload among a team requires an even more articulate process. But I haven't talked about those things... just because. No reason. I mean, I'll probably talk about those kinds of things later... probably when I start doing a lot of animation. But if anyone's curious I'll explain.

There's some hidden "how" that you've hinted at in this discussion and our other one (about design). I know how to take the structure I've presented and turn it into the results we're both talking about, but there are 50 other steps involved, and I don't which ones I've implied that I need to explain. Sometimes very simple changes in definition can make a lot of things clear that weren't before.

I can produce a game that makes people feel as expressive as they do in Mario, or Minecraft, and shift it to other kinds of feelings given what I've said... then expand on it to give the player both more guidance and freedom. It would take lots of work; that's why my game is taking so long.

If I explain 1/10 of the process of something, and you say, "but how does it really" work, all that means to me is that somewhere in the other 9/10ths is something that is unclear. But I don't know where that location is without an example or something. So I just guess and talk around for the exercise, to keep my blood flowing, and I enjoy it. But it's not the best strategy for becoming clear. If you want me to take my theory and apply it to Zelda or something, while maintaining the series' modern level of accessibility, I can do that, if you point to the few areas where it seems to not work. But you've got to point to those areas for me to do that, of course if you're interested. I can't tell. I'm happy either way. We're all here to talk about ourselves anyway .

I know I haven't explained most areas. Writing good characters is a lot of work. Writing a dynamic story is more work than writing a normal story. You have to do all these extra things. A bunch of posts barely explains anything. I need to know what you know, and what you're looking for, to understand what information might be interesting or useful.

also one big thing is to treat structure not as big inflexible how to, but a multi rez lend. 3 acts structure goes down to animation (tension and release) and is generally a very nested structure in any work (superposition of various arc, using it only as an overarching structure is loosing its efficiency.

Yeah, I know. Studying raw structure is better seen as a way to know how to apply it everywhere. That's how theory works: flexibility. We're on the same page on that one.

Why else would I be so crazy about theory :|. It's the argument that prioritizes example that sees theory as hard structure.

Therefore if you can link function and flavor, more power to you, but you can't do it without a good inventory of all functions. Simple character map simple function in a singular story arc, like who is the hero, the opponent, the mentor. Complex story mixed character function, shift them over time, superpose meaning of story arc in one action, etc... Also strong structure give genre, people like genre which is a proof that they can like structure for itself beyond the character, also same character can be use in totally different setting and genre while remaining consistent, this highlight there might some independence from each other.

Mmm. I see what you're saying. This is what we were talking about way before....

Inventory of good functions. Yes. You need that. I do not deny.

I'll give you an example. Say you want to be a sculptor. Say you want to create the most beautiful and evocative sculptures possible. But let's also say you live in a time when sculpturing is a new art form and people don't really do it. There are no good tools. Now let's forget that a lot of sculptors just use a hammer and chisel and a lot of patience and skill.... Assume you want a box of tools, just for the analogy.

Ok. If you want to design good tools you'll need a working knowledge of sculpting itself. You need a box of tools to create the world's best sculptures, because that is our assumption. But you also need to know how to sculpt to know what tools would be the most useful. You need the knowledge of sculpting well to design the tools, the tools to produce well made sculptures.... It's a catch-22 common in programming.

The tools and skill-set have to develop together. As one improves it opens new opportunities to improve the other. I do not deny this.

All I am saying is that designing the tools in total isolation, without considering how they might be usefully applied to an actual product, isn't the best idea. A sculptor designing all the tools before working on actually sculpting is headed for a weak product.

I am reminded of the "step ladder" process that is way too ubiquitous in big-business game development. You probably know it. It's like, "draft outline, scope required resources, produce outline, research implementation requirements, create implementation plan, implement, user-test, polish, real-world test, release, support." Something like that. Nice easy steps, 1 through 8 or whatever. Start with a plan, produce a product, polish and ship. This obviously isn't the best plan for games, which need to be super iterative.

Theory design is the same way. You have to cycle around, developing your tools alongside the projected games that they could be used to build.

A lot of design theory suffers from asking questions that are too small. Design theorists find ways to structurally analyze the aspect of games that play small roles in a game's value to a player. I still have yet to see a single proper deconstruction of Mario. Jon Blow is the only guy I've seen talk about orthogonality... which is insanely important in good software design, and game design, both for creating deep mechanics and choosing initial mechanics (at an early stage in development) that have a very high likelihood of being malleable in the ways that you'd want them to be, so that they can hit the targets you'd like to meet but haven't defined yet, because you aren't that far along.

Orthogonality is also very important to designing characters that are very likely to play well off of one another. If you fill out a structure with characters, then try to manipulate it, you might be headed for trouble. ... though I don't know if that's part of the discussion.

...

I talk about all the "philosophy" stuff because I want tools that are most likely to be useful. If you talk about structure without considering why Mario is engaging, you'll probably produce a structure that will help only a little in reconstructing the value of Mario. If you consider why Mario is Mario while developing your (structural) analysis, whatever structure you produce will be of far more value.

If you create a bunch of tools, then consider "all the bullshit" later, you'll produce sound tools that will help you a good amount. But it will still be up to the developer to do the meaningful work. If you create a bunch of tools while considering "all the bullshit," then you'll produce sounds tools that will do a lot of the meaningful work themselves, freeing the developer to work on even more meaningful ideas.

The catch is that an AI can only understand the structure. All it can use are tools. If there isn't a defined relationship between one tool and its use, then the AI can't use it. An AI is a tool; it can only use tools. If your tools are designed in such a way so that much of the burden of creative creation is on the manipulator, then they will be very useful to a human, not to an AI.

The fact that good AIs don't exist is strong proof that most of our design theory is far removed from what makes a game interesting. Once structure is made clear, AI becomes a natural follow-through. You can use one to judge the other. In other words, if you can explain a thing to a computer, then by definition you understand it at a mathematical level.

I do not deny the value of strong structure.

Yes, there is some independence between "structure" and "contents."

I still think we're mostly just talking about semantics.

What sort of tools are you looking to develop?


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I think we'll both easily agree that a story with lots of structure and 0 anything else is totally uninteresting.

However, structure is valuable because a person can use it to create something excellent. The structure doesn't write a story for the writer, but it provides a useful box of tools for the writer to use intelligently to write an excellent story themselves.

I value the pursuit of structure, just for structure's sake. There is a lot of value in structure all by itself.

However. When you want to start generating levels, and things like that - human things - the AI needs to understand how to apply structure, and manipulate the "non-structural" contents. If it doesn't it will generate stories that are just as bland as the writer "filling out" the structural formula.

I care about tools too. In our other discussion I would've been happy to just discuss tools. But you wanted to pursue why I used so much abstract stuff instead. This is the reason. Generative-anything requires it. But if you wanted to just talk about tools, I would've just talked about tools. I need tools just as much as you do. I just approach each one by thinking, "how would this tool be useful?" So I explain everything in a really abstract tongue. The reason I wasn't giving you what you were looking for was because I didn't understand what that was, not because I was defending some strange position. Give me a result, I'll give you a solution, otherwise I just talk about whatever is on my mind.

Also, as an aside, tools that put creative power in the hands of an AI, are also easier to distribute. If I take the structure of a building, I can divide the workload of its constructions among workers, because the plan has all the necessary details. If I do the same thing with a game, I am fucked, because a design implies so much interpretation. If there was a way to divide a game into pieces so you could isolate the dependencies between tasks, you could distribute them among people in such a way that didn't restrict creative freedom. The kind of theory that could do that is the same kind that allows an AI to be creative.

Just saying, because I'm like that.


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I think this might be a case of artist and programmer can't communicate, especially over internet. Semantics, semantics.

Station Alpha: E

[edit:]

@zigzag

No, that's related. You described it pretty well. I like the analogy with the kid with aspergers. I want all of the things that you described to be true about the game.

In fact, the player starts off as an ethereal entity, watching the events of a world. They have no idea how to play. Through the pressing of arbitrary buttons, and watching the consequences, they slowly understand how to affect things, change them, guiding beings in constructive ways or not.

Over time their ability to impact what is happening develops, becomes more complex and deep, and personal, and permanent. They become more "permanent." At some point their decisions materialize as a consistent entity, that is them. Their developing being is a reflection of their decisions. (like the Fable good/evil system, but not 1-dimensional).

Then they can continue building their relationships, abilities, and skill in communicating. The player is a "new arrival" in a strange world, I suppose....




@Gimmy

Hehehe? No I'm not! But that's okay.... We can talk games forever and I'd eventually convince you that its a real story line and everything. For example, I've written the core constructs of every major character in television that inspire me - well.... I've done it for a whole lot. Anyway, whether or not I'm talking about "ornaments" is a reflection of my ability to identify what makes those character's tick.

What you're saying is similar to identifying the relationship I have with my parents and saying, "I bet that's really hollow...." Maybe! It depends! You probably have to meet them first and see me with them.

Your link. Yeah, yeah. I have an education in story theory too! I've read enough books on film structure and plot structure so that I can map out a given work blindly and fluently. A few times now you've taken my "philosophy" to mean "not really real." That's fair. But remember... I'm the math degree. I'd never lose sight of how something is programmed. I would also never waste time in theory that doesn't produce a good game.

"Structure" and character are indivisible parts. You want to talk about structure and character as these separate things. It's like AI guys - again with the AI ... but AI programming relies on the same theory as all this other stuff.... They want a story line for this side-quest and one for that one, and one for that one over there. Then they want one for the side-kick, then one for each enemy, then one that controls all of them in some way to create dramatic structure, at least in a small way. Then they want a pathfinding one, and holy FUCK TON of individual rules that link each of your decisions to the behaviours of each NPC. It is this isolation of systems that produces terrible AI... design... etc.

Structure is meaningless without good character. You could say good character isn't a story without good structure. I'm not denying either of these things. I think you're saying the same thing, that it is all connected (right?). We just happen to be talking about "flavour," because structure is the easy part to program. Humanity is the hard part.

A lot of structure has to do with "things a character does," or "changes within them." For example, Act 1 is the place where we are introduced to the critical elements that make a character interesting and someone who has a goal/weakness that will play critical roles for the rest of the story. Act 2 is development, tension, resolution. Act 3 is results and loose-ends, maybe with another mini-climax or two - James Bond often puts a second, smaller, climax into Act 3.

All that is textbook. You can drill down super deep. That stuff may be as challenging to understand as anything else, but it's still well primed to be programmed. The parts where it becomes challenging are the parts where it interacts with character.

How does one determine the relevant elements of a character to introduce? What if circumstances change slightly, or a "quest line" is being formed dynamically? The relevant "introductory" details change. Maybe the player has seen some of these details already, from a previous "quest." How do we compare what they know to what they need to know, which in itself is abstract?

You need a way to take a character and slice them up according to whatever parameters you have. Maybe the characters are in a particular situation, let's say in some environment and participating in a battle against an enemy (alongside the player). Maybe they each have a "mood" that is a reflection of how the grind has been going over the last hour. Ok, now we've decided is the time for introductory details. We have new constraints. How should the NPC demonstrate the necessary knowledge to suit both his mood and environment? How should he do so in a way that blends with his current behaviour which is also guided by the goal to vanquish the enemy in whatever way he is currently pursuing? Is this even the right time for everything? Maybe different details should come out now because they better suit the circumstances?

Structure is easy. Applying structure to a character - an abstract thing - is hard. So I'm talking about the deconstruction of characters. Yes, they need a structure to play themselves out and all that. I'm not denying the value of structure. I'm just saying... I don't know what I'm saying. Structure and character are both important.

Also, thanks for the link. Your links are always good. This one is 1 under par.

When I work the story I consider structure and character simultaneously. When I talk about AI, I only care about the character, because that's the hard part.

When I develop the game structure and character will evolve together. There's no argument there. Even when I have 1-d personalities running around there will a core game loop, "3 acts" (you know what I mean...) and whatever degree of detail I need.

There's no confusion here. I'm just really, super, accustomed to AI design. So I hone in on the juicy bits first. Applying structure inside an AI is straight-forward. It is important, but straight forward. I don't need to talk about how to do that, unless you want to. Applying character to AI is the new part. That part no one does well. It's the reason why when structure exists in a dynamic story-line game it doesn't matter, because the characters and conflicts are boring.

In other words, structure is a thing that the world knows about. Proc-gen stories fail from an inability to deconstruct the abstract in meaningful ways, not the logical. There will be structure all up ins my game. Don't worry about that.

Good link.


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You could say anything is about knowing when to cut an idea. Goodness comes from producing ideas. Greatness comes from cutting them.
  - Me


@1982

A lot worse. ... oh, you mean real people. Yeah, China.

Time spent isn't your core measurement. Instinct is.

By the way, you do know Prom Week, ye? You might also be interested in the presentation they held at last years Paris Game/AI Conference and in the papers listed here.

I'm going through them. Thanks.

*adding games to list*

Yes, in-game stuff like that is good. You want the player to grow. Laziness and idleness is bad.

There's a lot of stuff about "dynamic difficulty adjustment" in the design discussion. It's an area that interest me personally. Finding the right amount of pressure to put on a player is a big problem. Google that term and you'll start running into some stuff.

[edit:]

I've heard good things about BM:TAS. I'll probably have to view it some time.

Comics leave pages on a cliffhanger. A lot of games don't think about the play experience and the narrative experience as being the same thing. Each follows its own pacing rules. This is not good. There are a lot of ways one can serve the other.

In FF6/7 you get a story blast after a boss. Then you grind and wander. The story hits you when you were at your most vulnerable. You were proud and tired, more so than usual, and itching for a break in both the kind of content you were absorbing and the degree of effort you had to put into the game. This paces your grinding out, so the technical monotony is mentally refreshing. You also get more freedom at this point.

After you've had your fill of open-world you start to get pulled along again by events. A promise of an interesting boss and another story hit beckon you. One blast of energy pushes you into the void and the temptation of the next pulls you from it. The experience breathes in and out. Everything compresses and hammers you, then sighs, releasing all of your restraints.

It's even better when the story line reflects the degree of challenge you personally encountered. Secret of Evermore f-ing nails this. That's an underrated game. (It does have its flaws....)


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Nah. I don't think there is any difference in approach. I don't have an approach. I just want a good result. If a story is bad I try to make it good in the fastest way possible. That's it. No other rules.

The internet always circles.

Ok. I caught your definitions. I'll clarify some differences.

A human's behaviour is directly proportional to their goals. Values are just me looking at goals from a new angle. You can say values and goals are different, but I also think its fair to say that a value refers to less practical goals, "spiritual" (ethical) goals.

In a story we only see a piece of a character's theoretical behaviour. I could hypothetically take any human and generate an infinite set of circumstance to put him through. I put him through one and write down how he reacts. I hit the reset button, so that he forgets, then do it again, for every circumstance. What I end up with is a list of behaviours. These behaviours form a 1-to-1 relationship with that persons conscious and subconscious goals.

When I say behaviour I mean those theoretical behaviours. You're talking about the behaviours that only show up in a story. Here comes a good example of having an engine. You want to define a character in such a way so that you can shift their goals dynamically and watch their behaviour shift with it, or adjust circumstance slightly - leaving the goals - and see their behaviour shift with it also. With a system like that it becomes very easy to test the robustness of both a character's goals - i.e. how interesting they are and how well they suit the environment - and your system's ability to translate those goals into behaviour.

Since all goals should be achievable in game, and all character should have weaknesses, conflicts will arise naturally. If goals are reached too quickly that just means the character wasn't dreaming big enough. You can define them accordingly. (A plausible human-life character always dreams, at least implicitly, big. No one doesn't want the things in a big dream, whatever that may be (according to what satisfies them), even if we don't consciously acknowledge it.)

You can also control conflict by biasing goals and the environments characters are in.

mmmM.

It's all the same to me. Interesting stories are goal-based characters meeting conflict.

So, following with what I had, I could say that he's worked his way into a University department with a lot of female professors. His most important relationships are with 3 teachers in particular. We can say that maybe his social awkwardness gets him relegated to a limited role in interactions. He blinks, is generally strange, and is unpracticed at even relating to people around him. Maybe he's over-sensitive to the approval of those teachers, and often has to recoup from the damage of their off-handed manner in his other social engagements (with people his own age).

He needs the approval to be confident. He needs to be confident to be respected by his peers. He needs the respect of his peers to have the insight necessary to show his better side to the female authority figures. He has to balance a loop.

If he shows his passion too easily to the teachers they'll pull away. So he has to develop closeness gradually. The situation for him is like keeping a beast on a lead, moving at a steady pace. His hyper-activity and absent mindedness do not make this any easier.

Maybe his mother had low expectations because she was drugged up all the time, so largely oblivious. Ok. Now he wants tough love. He wants an opportunity to be given to him, then challenged to improve. But he has difficulty showing his passion for a more meaningful project without dipping into his desire for a mother figure - and making someone awkward. So he tries to do his menial tasks to an incredible degree, to get recognized for it, then be given something more substantial.

Maybe he's trying to hang with a tougher crowd to put the "I'm already a little tough" attitude into himself, so that the profs he works for will treat him more aggressively, apply more demanding tasks to his workload. But he has trouble doing this without sacrificing some of his moral standings, often staying silent about critical issues when they arise when trying to fit in, consistently applying pressure that tries to marginalize his role within that group. The cycle repeats.

Past creates goals, goals inspire action. Personal weakness finds natural conflict. Journey is produced.

The problem you're referring to is like when the guys who built the Jack character model for Mass Effect 2 - she's the one with a zillion tatoos, is angry, is destructive, can have sex with - said, "we have a story for every one of those tats!" This made the tats more meaningful, and I'm sure made the game a little more interesting if you paid attention to her markings, but it does not fill out her character. A lot of writers misunderstand the point of having a past. The only relevant past is the one that drives a goal the character pursues in the story you are telling.

There's no point creating goals that aren't worked towards. Details have to be relevant. If there's a detail then there better be a conflict in which the owner makes a decision that serves his goals that is based on it. Keep everything in proportion. The more central the goal in the story-line, the more detailed the reasons for pursuing that goal need to be.

We're both talking about the same thing. All of the elements of a good story need to be considered at the same time. A procedurally generated story will come out of good characters doing things. A character "with goals" that isn't pursuing them doesn't actually have those goals. In that case the writer is just saying that some goals exist, but the story says otherwise. A character who actually has goals acts on them and meets conflict.

If there's no conflict then there is no goal because it has already been reached. If there's only a small conflict then the goal is reached quickly and the game is short, and that's fair. If the conflict prevents the character from progressing at all, then the goal doesn't make any sense because a character can't desire something that is impossible. (That last sentence may take some explaining).

If the character's progress is uninteresting then they aren't goal-oriented. That's a common occurrence in real life. To make a passive character interesting on their own you need cut out parts of their story where progress wanes. You can also make them interesting by presenting other truths about life through their passivity, creating an implied conflict within the viewer about what will be revealed.

This is all just terms I think. Maybe mine are unclear.

@Daye

Dropping gamerscore is a dangerous path.

You don't want to force the player to do something that may not be beneficial to him. Say the player is having a fight with his girlfriend. I mean shit is serious, his whole life is in disarray. The thing carries on for weeks. The whole time his gamer score is dropping? What is the game saying? It's saying that he should be playing instead of doing whatever he is doing. Same thing when he's working, or sleeping. That's kind of commanding.

You only want to punish the player for doing something that is unproductive. Punishing not playing, or punishing anything too harshly, can be effective in the short-term, but over time it erodes the relationship between game and player. It can become abusive. WoW, for example, implicitly demands grinding. Players become addicted, or they move into a love/hate relationship with it. That's not good.

If you want to go down that road the better option is find ways to punish the player for not playing at times when it would be constructive. For example, soccer youth leagues punish you for not participating, partially. If you don't show for practice you might get benched more, unless you're the star. Kids choose how intense of a program they want. They can commit to houseleague or rep, then adhere to that commitment accordingly.

There are a number of online workout schedule management systems that do similar things. That's a much nicer road to travel.

Semantics.

Traits are driving forces. The two are different sides of the same coin. We behave according to our goals. A goal is an abstract thing. It is the idea that we relate to that allows us to act towards what we want. A behaviour is a real thing that serves our goals. One is the other. You can take a character's goals and derive their behaviour. You can take their behaviour and derive their goals.

What you're talking about are characters with inconsistent mannerisms that either point to a goal that can't possibly exist, or one that isn't rooted in detail i.e. it is isn't interesting. Skyrim's NPCs have mannerism based on goals that have 0 detail. For example, "character who wants to be loved and is wary of strangers" could be a possible Skyrim NPC description. "Loved" is the goal and "wary of strangers" is a behaviour the implies a goal such as "strangers are normally implicitly condescending to him because he can't relate to them because he grew up under a rock (and is socially isolated), so he rejects them to protect his self image as someone who is worth talking to". Actually, that implied goal is probably flattery to Skyrim NPCs. (The goal is: to protect social self-image).

Anyway. Both goals can be summarized very quickly. To make the character interesting he would have to be injected with a lot of relatable details. A goal such as, "to be loved," is generic. "To be loved by a maternal figure who expects a lot, is rough around the edges, and forgives frequent blunders... because he is hyper-active, unstructured from a lack of belonging to a formal institution such as work or school - due to rejection for a slight oddity to blink too much - and in constant conflict with his passive mother," is a little more detailed. You can keep going and going. The more detailed you become the more naturally behaviours will emerge, and the more likely that they will appear consistent and trigger the player's imagination.

"Details" was a dangerous word. I meant critical details. The details you're implying are just poor ones. Good details and bad ones are totally different things.

Maybe I should describe the engine this way.
  1. Detail a character's goals and input it into the system.
  2. The system translates these goals into behaviour for the character.
  3. Interact with said character, as the player, to see if it is interesting.
  4. Repeat.


edit:
Enslaved is on my todo list. Monkey is played by "Golem" from LOTR.

I'd have to disagree on these first sentiments, create an interesting journey and then make the heroine react believably to the events that unfold during it, whether the player/reader relates or not is largely out of your hands. The goal creates the journey, the journey incites the reactions, the reactions define the character.

It depends which character you are talking about.

Start with the player character, Skyrim's for example. This is a game where the events are chosen independently of what the character might want to do. Its approach is to flatten barriers between the player and his desires so that he(/she) can roam wherever he pleases. The issue with this is that none of the player's actions connect together in a meaningful way. Every decision exists in an independent silo and has little to no affect on how other events play out. ... I'm talking about in-game connections. The character's "story" exists in the player's mind.

The core engagement of Skyrim is to do whatever you want. Since there are so many things to do, and each thing is given a lot of character and detail, its flaws are a worthy trade-off. However, if it tried to be Final Fantasy and retain a comparable degree of player choice, the plot would feel contrived... or the player would feel forced along a path i.e. there would be very little freedom.

Characters have to be built out of details. Humans are built out of details. We experience one thing then the next. Our personalities are a reflection of all the things that have happened to us. Each event we experience produces a reaction in our minds that stitches itself into our selves. When we act, spectators see pieces of that fabric reveal itself in varying ways. The fact that everything within us is intricately connected, using some twist of reality as the thread, is what makes us relatable and interesting. Other people watching us see pieces of our experiences through our behaviour.

Flat characters are products of non-relatable details. They are built out of experiences that the writer didn't think hard enough about, didn't feel very strongly in the first place, or didn't translate to the page effectively. They are also, often, inconsistent. Each part of them doesn't seem to connect to the other parts in a way that seems believable to the audience. This is often because the writer didn't spend enough time understanding why each character makes the decisions that they do, how each decision connected to the owner's past, and how that past is a plausible reality in the manufactured universe.

Maybe it would've been better for me to say that characters and their journeys should be constructed in-tandem. If you construct the journey first, the characters have a higher probability of being weak because you'll need to invent reasons for them to continue through each leg, meaning you'll probably choose traits for them that you don't relate to, meaning they'll become less believable. If you construct the characters first, you don't have this problem - a character can go anywhere - but you may find him(/her) ill-suited to the journey you'd like to see him in. You may have picked that journey because you happen to find it interesting and want to tell that story.

Forgetting NPCs, if you want a player-controlled character to make meaningful decisions and be reacted to in meaningful ways, you have to restrict what options he has to a certain degree. If he can do anything, then it becomes much harder to build a believable world around him. Every game has invisible tracks. There is this hallway that the player walks down that may be very wide but still gently guides where he can go. Even Skyrim has one. If you want to make connections between the player-character and the world you need to restrict what decisions he has available and how he reacts to events, intricately. NPCs, in-order to be interesting, need defined personalities. That limits the range of interesting interactions they can have. Either you flatten the plot so that it has no structure (Skyrim) or you restrict the PC.

If you want to develop a story you have to develop all the pieces together. You have to iterate. You can write in a linear way, defining the world and characters as you go, but you'd still be deepening each element at each stage. If you developed 1 character's move set in Smash Bros completely, then another, then another, and so on, you would end with a very disjointed game. Doing that would be similar to designing chess by choosing how one piece moves at a time. The depth of chess emerges from the intricate relationship all the mechanics have. The relationship between depth and internal dependencies is just as true for interesting stories.

I'm not planning to develop all my character then construct scenarios. I'll be developing both at the same time. The mechanics, the structure of the narrative, the characters, the artwork, the sound and music, will evolve one step at a time. That's how most games should be made, and I think that's how most people do it here.

What I am saying is that good games are built on good fundamentals. Lemmings were made cute and interesting before the idea of a "level" arrived. Prince of Persia was fluid animation, a couple mechanics, and artistic influences before it become a game. I'm probably preaching to the choir. I think believable interactions with NPCs, that allow you to express yourself, that produce naturally emergent consequences, that suit the world, and that flow out of and back into the mechanics, are just as hard to build as any other mechanic. Most games that try for these things, and fall flat, do so because they shove the development of the character interactions in at the end.

Mario is fun without coins and mushrooms and moving platforms, or death and time limits. All of those things, plus secrets, power-ups, bosses, and funny-moving enemies, build around the solid foundation. You could say that Mario was a "platforming" engine before it became a game. Mario 64 was just Mario running around in a white room, to nail the feeling of motion, before it was anything else. Creating that first was a command from Miyamoto. I'm suggesting building the comparable white room for characters, in which NPCs are interesting all by themselves, and react to the player in compelling ways before anything else is added. I want the act of expressing oneself, seeing the consequences, then acting again to be engaging all by itself.

Naturally everything will continue to develop as pieces are joined.

If you need a journey to make a player's choices interesting then the player's choices probably aren't that interesting to begin with. That's where I was coming from with the walls+roof comment.

Though I think we're just talking about semantics. Game dev is game dev.

Or they try to manufacture "relatable" personalities only to make them seem contrived and flat.

Yeah, that's even worse. Flat characters have no personality and are uninteresting. Manufactured characters are flat and insulting.

It's like you want more a social simulation than a storytelling generation engine

Stories are built on characters.

Story telling engines are built on social simulations.

If I said to you, "let's focus on making our heroine more relatable," would you say to me, "no, let's make her journey more interesting first!"

Can't build the roof without the walls. etc.

Create an NPC that reacts believably and you are in a much better position to manipulate the story. So many dynamic story lines in modern games feel contrived because the devs try to manipulate weak constructs that weren't designed with dynamism in mind. etc.

moi has a good point.

edit:

Still going through those articles.

I liked that GDC vid with the Wooga guy talking about core gameplay loop. Best social/casual games talk I've seen.

@Daye

I have some education in film as well. I think a lot about a dynamic camera, and a changing environment that adjusts to create the most artistically meaningful presentation, based on what the player is doing etc.

I'm excited too.

The 1-life shell is a good example. Every time I get that life I feel like I'm the one that did it. You have to employ just a tiny bit of skill.

The Sonic "oh shit, you're running out of time" music freaks me right the fuck out.

HL2 does a lot of light direction to grab your attention. Underground after Ravenholm you see the literal and metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel.

At the beginning of the game you are chased by the Combine. There's a section where you're running through an abandoned house, picking your way through rafters in the roof. Shit is behind you. The light pours in from the holes in the ceiling. You run towards it and out onto the surface, where you're 2 seconds away from an assault of bullets. You burst along the edge and in through a broken window in another building. It's dark and safe inside. The combine can't see you in there. Their sounds muffle in the distance as you head deeper in.

Later in that sequence you're going through buildings that are being broken into by the enemy. They're breaking down doors, assaulting people. Some of them are looking for you, others are not. You can hear sounds that indicate how hostile they are, how many there are, how much time you have, where safety is - the friendly people sometimes shout out to you. The noise and visuals consistently funnel you in the right direction.

The entire experience is fairly linear, but it feels like you're making all these decisions on your own. HL2 is very good at that, giving you the illusion of choice then providing hints towards the right direction, not enough to give it away but just enough so that you don't miss it. You always feel like you figured it out, and you're always pressured just enough to not figure out how linear it really is.

HL2 is a big inspiration.

I like the Super Mario World ref.

@Stark.

We'll get to the beyond. Fuck movies.

A range of obviousness would also be useful: some secrets are super obvious, some near-impossible, and a nice pattern of varying obviousness in between.

You want to be able to train the player in finding secrets.

Sounds cues are basically non-existent in games. A lot of people set the sound at weird volumes. Or the creators just make the voices too quiet or whatever. Some devs are f-ing high.... Make critical sounds super quiet: force players to turn up volume. Make other common sounds too loud (if the volume too high): force volume down. You can control the player's volume, sneakily. .

Silly people.

You can do a lot of gesturing just with the way things look. My web background says the following... how a product looks is super critical to getting a user to understand how to use it. Web sites go nutso over the positioning of every little thing. This is something game designers are still coming to appreciate, in menu design and so forth. Aesthetic/sound cues are a part of this.

Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines would highlight collectible items in the environment to different degrees depending on the level of a certain stat. Very cool.

Dude. I was playing Star Ocean: Till the End of Time last week. The sound it makes when you level, or even f-ing save, is very rewarding. I love saving! It even congratulates you for opening the menu. "Yay!" it says.

The sound of knocking koopas out of their shells, say with a thrown shell, in side-scrolling Marios is very satisfying.

The cheers in Smash Bros start-up when you start kicking ass. That's a huge motivator for players, for something so simple. They also go "oooh" when you hit a guy far. There's a lot of stuff you can do with dynamic recognition of player success like that.

In Silent Hill you can often hear the enemies long before you see them, shuffling around. It is very tension building. It often sharpens your nerves and makes you fuck up because you over-analyze before the battle begins.

There's a beep sound in Skies that goes off when your transformable pet smells a "cham." Chams are very valuable - depending... - so you go bananas when you hear that shit. The sound acts like a homing beacon, getting faster/louder as you get warmer.

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time does a lot of good visual direction stuff. At the beginning of a level it does a camera fly-through of the area, showing you all the key parts. Also, much of the puzzling involves getting to a location just so you can see another location and maybe get an idea.

Not from a game... when I go camping I often go out into the woods because that's what you do. Sometimes I get lost, sometimes intentionally. If it's nighttime it can be very hard to find my way back without a light source, which I rarely have - more fun. The sounds of the campfire and the people around it, and its light, is really wonderful when I turn the right corner, getting closer to it.

etc.

Thanks.

I think the best way to group people is by finding stuff about the way they play in-game.

For example: in WoW you care about your guild. The game is setup such that guilds are necessary, and possible, and attractive. A lot of stats should pour out relative to your guild, or your guild relative to others.

WoW doesn't have constructs that help create guilds, not really from what I know. You have to go out and build relationships on your own. Though it does provide environments that help foster communication. *not a WoW player*.

Journey did the opposite by making you care. Games can do that too.

Also, games can find people for you to play with that it thinks will create an interesting session. Based on how the session goes it can determine relative chemistry, use that to put you in groups with certain players more often etc.

It can ramp up to the Journey experience, in which you are forced into these long sessions with other people. Then it can label those people and create groups of them to compare your playing against, either live or with stats.

Even just some logic for setting up servers I might want to play on in competitive online shooters would go a long way. The people I play with more regularly could form the stat group I compare myself to.

We also just need better stat reporting. Score is super 1-dimensional. A play experience is so super diverse.

I don't know either. They recommended that in the article.

It's stuff like that that encourages me to get my game to link into a Facebook account and so forth. The console has little personal knowledge on its own. Besides, connectivity is the future.

My current work is setup to connect out to other services as much as I can, when I get there.

#3 Out of the people in your friend network.
#6 Out of people on TIG
top 1/3 of people your age
top 1/5 in your clan
top 30% of people currently online within your skill group
top player of the week in your friends list
fastest improving this month out of the 20 guys you've gamed with the most

I don't know. Just brainstorming. Tired.

Sometimes hate is nice. Hate is like fear or humour. It's one more ingredient for the mixing pot.

You can use it or not use it. Normally I just think about characters that are interesting and varied. I think about hate but I don't normally try to construct it.

In the end all you care about is engagement. I suppose it comes down to the mechanics, maybe. Different feelings suit different games. "Rage" induction might be good for a boxer, at least some of the time.

I like the idea of playing with the player's interpretation with the antagonist, like: I make the player feel one way, then make them feel another and just move the needle around, just to show 'em how variable their feelings can be based on perception.

But that's me.

Yam fries and a hug are all I need.