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[FatHat]

(kind of)

My last post made me think a lot about how I would actually accomplish what I was talking about (making a dynamic story that evolves out of the game world), which sure as hell isn't easy. I still don't have an answer, but I have a few thoughts.

What are the constraints you run into when you try to do a dynamic story?

Dialog

Text based dialog is obviously right out the window, but this is ok. People usually skip over the dialog anyway once they have the gist of what the NPC is saying.

Even in real life this happens -- its very rare that people listen exactly to what you say. They listen up to the point that they think they have the gist of what you're saying, and after that they're really just patiently waiting for you to shut the fuck up so they can get a word in. Ever notice how hot girls interrupt people all the time? It's because they can.

So, with all the talking out of the way, dialog becomes more about a back and forth exchange of.. something. Gestures? Symbols? Emotions? Punches?

One factor to consider is that, often the interesting message is in the subtleties. Body language, motivations, facial expressions, emotions. Those are usually the important bits of communication. Narrative games do a shitty job of conveying this anyway. And they're limited, because their characters can only think things the designer intended for them to think.

The Sims managed to make highly expressive characters that never actually say anything at all. Meditate on that.

Abstraction and social games

The reason why The Sims got away without dialog is they managed to convert most social interactions into more simple abstract forms. Most social interactions are really games anyway, which is why nerds tend to be baffled and frustrated by the way normal people act. Nerds expect social interactions to be rational. They view most interactions as shallow and devoid of content, but they're missing the point. The content of a social interaction isn't usually important, the game and its outcome is. Most people are just playing social games that are very opaque to outside observers, and even to themselves, but which are highly structured.

(If you're wondering what the fuck I'm talking about you should probably read this.)

Similarly, if you want to make believable characters they have to be able to interact in these social games, without it being obvious how mechanical it is. Abstraction pays huge dividends here, because the more that is left to the imagination, the more we can attribute to the AI being "smart" and having personality.

Characters

Characters are of utmost importance in creating a dynamic story. They should probably fit into various archetypes to make is easy for the player to identify who's who and identify the key players. Like "oh that guy is the villain" and "oh that is the love interest" or whatnot.

Timeline

An interesting question is: if the other characters have agency, do you allow the timeline to flow constantly? Or, do you make it more action-reaction, in that NPCs tend not to do too much until a players actions provoke them into some sort of action? I'm leaning more towards the second one, as the first option seems like it might lead to the player being lost in all the events occurring around him.

Explaining things the player didn't see

How do you explain things that have occured outside of the players immediate area to the player? Some sort of abstracted symbol language? Or do you not bother to explain it at all, and leave it to the player to piece together the clues?

And stuff..

Anything I'm leaving out?

[FatHat]

Another thought: mystery. Great stories are full of symbols evoking mystery, and the authors constantly raise questions that demand answers.

(Sadly we don't see this nearly enough in games, but it's worth pursing)

How to do this in dynamic storytelling? The player has to be the one to find meaning in things, in the end, of course. But how to generate things that the player will find meaning in?

[SirNiko]

This post addresses a lot of points at once. I think it would be more helpful to focus on one point at a time so we can provide specific examples, or address all these points in regard to a single genre or game as sort of a "what went wrong/right" deconstruction.

The one point I like is "Explaining what the player didn't see". I think it's best to minimize the number of events that occur outside of the player's experience. There's nothing worse that loading up a fun-looking RPG, and then being stuck reading pages and pages of help files trying to familiarize yourself with the background of some complex political drama.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a prime example of a game that fails on this front. You're stuck trying to differentiate between three different princes who only exist in cutscenes. You're expected to read up about some conflict in the past that occurs during a short cutscene. You're frequently introduced to characters (like the twins with the random magic powers) who really don't seem to have anything to do with the plot unless you read their dossiers word by word in order to connect them with all the other characters. The whole thing feels like a history class rather than a game.

Vandal Hearts for the PS1 presents a very similar story in a much more pleasant way. There are very few non-combat characters, and most of them are presented in quick, important roles. Once their role has passed, they don't appear again, so the player is focused on the latest event in the game. At one point in the game, your main character is sent forward in time by three years, during which point the evil senator takes control and becomes a dictator. There's no complexity here. A war starts, dictator rules the world, some characters are thrown in jail and you rescue them from jail. Five battles later, you've concluded those plot points and you can move on to the next event in the game. It's a simple design, and yet the story is heroic and memorable for the events you participate in, not the ones that happened during a cutscene.

Moral of the story, focus on what the player is seeing all the time. If there's background, either make it simplistic, or pull it into the game somehow to be experienced by the player.

The other way you could interpret "Things the player didn't see" would be events that the player COULD have experienced, but chose not to (For example, the optional cutscenes in FF3 to learn about Edward and Sabin's past). That's a topic to discuss another post, though.

-SirNiko

[Perrin]

Ever notice how hot girls interrupt people all the time? It's because they can.

Most social interactions are really games anyway, which is why nerds tend to be baffled and frustrated by the way normal people act. Nerds expect social interactions to be rational. They view most interactions as shallow and devoid of content, but they're missing the point.

I hope these were jokes, you're very quick to throw out sweeping stereotypes about people.

[s0]

Yeah, seriously. Most of the "hot" girls I know don't interrupt people more than anyone else does, and I know a lot of pretty "irrational" nerds (including myself).

[FatHat]

Whatever, if you want to play the politically correct police then fine, they're obviously generalizations and obviously not always true, I added them just to give a bit more flair to the post. I didn't feel the need to add a bunch of weasel words like "some" and "sometimes" because I figured the people of this board are smart enough to focus on the intent of what I was saying instead of looking for opportunities to be offended. Are we done with that now? Awesome.

[FatHat]

This post addresses a lot of points at once. I think it would be more helpful to focus on one point at a time so we can provide specific examples, or address all these points in regard to a single genre or game as sort of a "what went wrong/right" deconstruction.

Yeah, I probably did put too many ideas in here. I figured that all of this has to integrate with each other for the experience to work though, so for example how something like dialog works has a very direct impact on how other aspects of the story is conveyed also.

The dialog part is the most interesting aspect of this to me at the moment, because I think so many games get this wrong. It needs to be expressive enough to convey an idea and feel human, but abstract enough that a computer can generate it and the player can imagine parts of it. Symbols/pictures might work along with emotional cues, but I'm worried they might be too abstract. I mean, just using computer software, how many times have you seen an icon and thought "I have no idea what that's representing"

The one point I like is "Explaining what the player didn't see". I think it's best to minimize the number of events that occur outside of the player's experience. There's nothing worse that loading up a fun-looking RPG, and then being stuck reading pages and pages of help files trying to familiarize yourself with the background of some complex political drama.

Yes, I definitely want to avoid this. A tiny bit of backstory goes a long way.

Final Fantasy Tactics is a prime example of a game that fails on this front. You're stuck trying to differentiate between three different princes who only exist in cutscenes. You're expected to read up about some conflict in the past that occurs during a short cutscene. You're frequently introduced to characters (like the twins with the random magic powers) who really don't seem to have anything to do with the plot unless you read their dossiers word by word in order to connect them with all the other characters. The whole thing feels like a history class rather than a game.

Vandal Hearts for the PS1 presents a very similar story in a much more pleasant way. There are very few non-combat characters, and most of them are presented in quick, important roles. Once their role has passed, they don't appear again, so the player is focused on the latest event in the game. At one point in the game, your main character is sent forward in time by three years, during which point the evil senator takes control and becomes a dictator. There's no complexity here. A war starts, dictator rules the world, some characters are thrown in jail and you rescue them from jail. Five battles later, you've concluded those plot points and you can move on to the next event in the game. It's a simple design, and yet the story is heroic and memorable for the events you participate in, not the ones that happened during a cutscene.

That does sound much better.

Moral of the story, focus on what the player is seeing all the time. If there's background, either make it simplistic, or pull it into the game somehow to be experienced by the player.

Maybe then, (important) actions only occur when the player is in the vicinity? That would save a lot of complex processing.

[Perrin]

Whatever, if you want to play the politically correct police then fine, they're obviously generalizations and obviously not always true, I added them just to give a bit more flair to the post. I didn't feel the need to add a bunch of weasel words like "some" and "sometimes" because I figured the people of this board are smart enough to focus on the intent of what I was saying instead of looking for opportunities to be offended. Are we done with that now? Awesome.

There are no words... no words.

[FatHat]

There are no words... no words.

Because you have nothing to say?

Look, since this is already derailed, let's delve into this. You seem to have taken offense at two of my contentions that weren't even the main point of the post.

Contentious point #1: Hot girls (or guys) are more prone to act rude, because society lets them. --

An anecdote: last summer I went on a few dates with this extremely cute girl. One of the first things she admitted to me was that she came across as a "bitch" to people a lot of the time, but really she was a nice girl under the surface. And she was, in a lot of ways she was a great person. She was funny and kind. But she was also cold and arrogant and really hard to get along with at times too -- often without even realizing it. Mostly not even with me: I saw it in how she'd treat other people.

The problem is, she grew up very privileged. She was one of the most beautiful girls in a small town, and she was also very smart and talented. She didn't ask to be treated special, she just was, because a person like her is rare. I don't blame her for acting rude to people (she'd interrupt people all the time), because often I don't think she even realized she was being obnoxious. Most people wouldn't tell her, in the same way that people won't usually tell you if your hair is cut badly or you're wearing unfashionable clothes; because people don't like conflict and they don't like making others feel badly. Its very hard to live a life with that much attention and adulation without it changing how you act.

If I had said "royalty is more prone to act arrogant" I don't think it would have raised any eyebrows, but it's pretty much the same social effect.

I'm not suggesting that all good looking people are going to be arrogant, only that there are a lot of invisible social pressures that can lead to that which don't exist for their less attractive peers. I didn't spell it all out in my original post because, honestly, I just figured it was obvious, but I guess it's not.

Contentious point #2: People participate in a lot of psychological games

This is probably more contentious. I think most people find this notion rather unsettling.

Here's how Berne defines social games:

"A game is an ongoing series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome. Descriptively, it is a recurring set of transactions... with a concealed motivation... or gimmick."

The canonical example is a game called "If it weren't for you (IWFY)":

Mrs. White complained that her husband severely restricted her social activities, so that she had never learned to dance. Due to changes in her attitude brought about psychiatric treatment, her husband became less sure of himself and more indulgent.  Mrs. White was then free to enlarge the scope of her activities.  She signed up for dancing classes, and then discovered to her despair that she had a morbid hear of dance floors and had to abandon this project.

This unfortunate adventure, along with similar ones, laid out some important aspects of her marriage.  Out of her many suitors, she had picked a domineering man for a husband. She was then in a position to complain that she could do all sorts of things "if it weren't for you." Many of her woman friends had domineering husbands, and when they met for their morning coffee, they spent a good deal of time playing "If It Weren't For Him."

As it turned out, however, contrary to her complaints, her husband was performing a very real service for her by forbidding her to do something she was deeply afraid of, and by preventing her, in fact, from even becoming aware of her fears. This was one reason... [she] had chosen such a husband.

His prohibitions and her complaints frequently led to quarrels, so that their sex life was seriously impaired.  She and her husband had little in common besides their household worries and the children, so that their quarrels stood out as important events.

In a relationship mind game of IWFY a generally insecure or passive person subconsciously chooses a domineering partner who restricts her/his activities....usually the female partner is the one restricted.

Perhaps the player selects a domineering partner because s/he does not like to take risks and try new things, such as taking up photography or going back to school... The domineering partner's controlling nature keeps the player from getting into frightening situations -- perhaps for fear of failure or fear if success -- it gives the player an "out" or a way to "save face" and not have to take the risk.

By staying unaware of his or her part in the game, through the use of repression or suppression, the player's complaints of "If it weren't for you..." keeps her partner feeling uneasy and gives the player various advantages in the relationship -- i.e., a "card to play" in a disagreement etc.

Once you start looking for games, you start to realize a lot (not all, but a lot) of human behavior can be described as a game. There are obvious character archetypes, and predictable plot lines.

And this idea makes a lot of people really really uncomfortable, I think.

One thing I'd like to point out is that these social games aren't always a bad thing. Some of them are destructive, others are constructive.

So, the reason this line of thinking is interesting to me, and why I mentioned them in this thread: social games are very algorithmic, and if it's algorithmic...

[hatu]

You defended your stereotyping with anecdotal evidence?

[Perrin]

You defended your stereotyping with anecdotal evidence?

Indeed, the plural of anecdote is not fact.

In all honesty I am neither politcally correct not offended by your comments. But I higlighted them because to me they indicated a particularly arrogant attitude in your line of reasoning. I could be wrong.

The comments just overshadowed any valid point you may or may not have had.

[Gnarf]

You defended your stereotyping with anecdotal evidence?

Not what he did. It's a reading comprehension thing.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

i think nerds are bad at social things due to lack of practice, not due to being more rational than the average bear; i'd say the opposite is true, nerds tend to be the least rational people i know.

also, i do not want dynamic stories, because i've never played a game with a good dynamic story. instead of explaining how to make something that has never existed, why not first try to make one, as a proof of concept. this post feels like a 'i'm gonna explain to all you peons how to make a game with 5D graphics!' post. it's all theoretical until you have a proof of concept.

i also have problems with a particular few key points:

"People usually skip over the dialog anyway once they have the gist of what the NPC is saying."

no, that's just people with ADD and people who hate reading. i would hope that most people actually read dialogue.

"The Sims managed to make highly expressive characters that never actually say anything at all. Meditate on that."

people who like stories in games do not think the sims is a particularly good example of a game with a good story

"Characters are of utmost importance in creating a dynamic story. They should probably fit into various archetypes to make is easy for the player to identify who's who and identify the key players. Like "oh that guy is the villain" and "oh that is the love interest" or whatnot."

thereby destroying any chance of good characterization -- archetypes may be recognizable, but they don't make for good characters

[Gnarf]

i think nerds are bad at social things due to lack of practice, not due to being more rational than the average bear; i'd say the opposite is true, nerds tend to be the least rational people i know.

It's worth keeping in mind that at this point, you're not disagreeing with anything FatHat actually said. He said that nerds expected conversations to be rational, not that nerds were more rational than other people.

Anyway. I kind of agree with you. Sort of. At least, it doesn't really sound like something that people who like stories are (necessarily) going to find particularly awesome.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

hmm, that's true, i didn't catch that distinction. but in any case that social interaction is a type of game is one thing in the OP i agree with, but i'd say that most people recognize it as a game, it's just that some are more skilled than others at the game, due to more practice. just like, say, starcraft. the more time you spend doing something, the better you'll get. and just like in starcraft, people who are newbs at it are easily recognized.

i also want to qualify something earlier: i think some characters can be good despite fitting into archetypes, provided they aren't *only* archetypes. for instance, darth vader clearly fits in the 'villain' archetype, but that doesn't make him a bad character, he's still a pretty good character due to other things, such as his voice, mask, general "badass" nature, and his history of being luke's father and such.

[Perrin]

.... and his history of being luke's father and such.

SPOILERS!

[SirNiko]

Players skip dialogue when it contributes nothing to the experience. This is not a flaw inherent in the player. If I'm playing Super Paper Mario, I don't have any interest in reading ten pages worth of two main characters bantering back and forth about their love, or bowser gibbering about how much he hates Mario. I want to get back to fighting goombas, solving puzzles, and actively trying to stop the end of the world, not watch NPCs yammer about tangential subjects. Brevity is the soul of wit. Make the conversations short and functional, or tie them in with gameplay.

Tales of Symphonia's final battle includes a voice-over of the villain calling out the hero, and the hero insisting he has to save the world. This occurs while the player is inputting commands and fighting back. This is more engrossing be cause this does not take away control from the player. Kirby Super Star did the same thing in revenge of the meta-knight, with the crew of the halberd discussing evacuation while you trolled along the deck smashing turrets. Gunstar Heroes accomplished this by playing the final level from the view of the enemy commander's viewscreen, and you saw the reactions of the villains each time you defeated one of their number.

Also, Metroid Prime featured large volumes of text in the form of computer logs and enemy scans. The scans were actually useful, as they provided hints for fighting the monsters in addition to pure flavor text. The computer logs were typically 100% flavor, but they were arranged in rooms that typically had no monsters. The pacing of the game would often go from a room with lots of machines to manipulate as part of a puzzle, then you'd have several rooms with monsters and platforms for some action, then a room or two with lots of computers to scan in case you wanted to learn more about the facility you're exploring. An added bonus is that a player disinterested in reading text was directed towards critical hints with special colored icons, and could skip the flavor in lieu of moving on to the next puzzle/action segment. This is great for players who have already completed the game, and want to do a second playthrough.

If players are skipping text in a game, it's usually a sign the game did something wrong, not something wrong with the players.

-SirNiko

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

this is getting a bit off topic, but all the games you mention though are not usually brought up when people talk about games with great stories -- it's hard to imagine the story of, say, planescape torment, or xenogears, or photopia, or narcissu working in any way other than text that you have to read.

also, i enjoy reading text, i find it more annoying when there are just voice-overs over the gameplay, because then sometimes i can't even figure out what they are saying (unless there are subtitles). i also find optional background logs like the ones you find in fallout 3 typically boring when compared to npc dialogue. it feels less active to read through a history of a world than to see interesting characters interact with one another.

[FatHat]

Players skip dialogue when it contributes nothing to the experience. This is not a flaw inherent in the player.

That's true, though I never meant to suggest that the player was in the wrong for skipping anything.

I think, even if you do make the text contribute to the gameplay, it could still be really boring. I remember in Doom3 when you read through peoples emails/journals, you'd sometimes get useful pass codes or information... but reading through everyone's email was still really really dull. It sounds like your examples are far more interesting, but I still suspect that playing is more fun than reading.

people who like stories in games do not think the sims is a particularly good example of a game with a good story

Hmm, I'm probably being really vague with terminology as I have a habit of doing. I don't think Sims is a good example of story (it has no story), but, I think its a good example of a game that /creates/ stories. Like, my friends are full of stories of things their Sims have done. Often they're reading more into what their sims have done than is deserved, but that's still part of the fun. On the other hand, you don't hear many stories from people playing Halo, even though Halo has more of a story. The story is consumed rather than manufactured. (leaving out the multi-player component of course)

What I'm more interested in is having players manufacture story, rather than consuming it. But I'll admit both approaches have their appeal, so maybe that's more of a personal preference than anything

[Ben Kuhn]

Am I in the minority in thinking that it wouldn't be that difficult to make NPCs talk procedurally? I mean, obviously it would be harder to make them talk with proper content, but given a rich enough representation of the semantics of what they want to say I don't think it would be that hard to come up with natural-sounding procedurally generated speech. Sure, you'd have to make a dictionary of words and their various forms, but creating sentences from semantics generally doesn't have much subtlety. It's going the other way that's hard.

Also, this is probably just a pipe dream, but what about a game that procedurally generated plot? The player would feel more like it was "their" experience and more empowered if their actions would actually change the villain's behavior - that is, if NPCs were essentially free unscripted agents who would take actions based on some AI instead of a pre-scripted story. I feel like you could probably get away with blatant archetyping that way, because stories don't have to be as intellectually interesting if they're emotionally engaging because you own and control them.