After my last post, I realized that it sounds like I'm saying that it would be a good idea for an IP such as Final Fantasy or Gears of War to come out with a bizarre new style of game instead of a normal sequel.
I'm definitely not suggesting that! Those IPs are not built to support that kind of variation. If you came out with Gears of War the RPG, it would probably be considered a very awkward move.
If IPs like these do come out with games from outside their previous style, they tend to be fairly conservative and standard. Chances are very high that the Halo RTS will not have any amazing new dynamics in it: it'll basically feel similar to most other RTS on the market. I don't mean boring - I just mean that the mechanics will be very similar to those things that RTS fans expect.
When I wonder if it's possible to have an IP that lets you experiment with very new and unusual games as sequels, I'm not talking about any existing IPs. I'm talking about whether you can come up with an IP that would allow that.
It would need to have a specific set of attributes. For example, it would need to be diverse enough to allow for a variety of gameplay styles. Halo is better at this than Final Fantasy, because Halo concentrated on developing its non-gameplay aspects across multiple games, while Final Fantasy always develops new non-gameplay aspects. This means that Halo can abandon their typical play style and still feel like Halo so long as they keep those assets in play.
I don't think Halo is a really great example, though, because the Halo universe is very confined. It's not just a matter of how many different styles of games it can support, but also how many different styles of... narrative, for lack of a better word. You'll never get a Halo game that is about falling to your darker urges, like in Star Wars. It's just not supported by the nature of the game, and if you published such a game, it would be heralded as "a new direction for the Halo franchise". It would be hard to do an adventurous game (whether an adventure or an open-worldish RPG) because the IP is completely militarized: the lives and adventures outside of the military are not part of the Halo IP, even though they obviously must exist in a technical sense. Again, you could make a Halo the Adventure game, but it would feel very un-Halolike.
So the question is...
Can you imagine an IP and an approach that would allow you to develop radically different games from sequel to sequel without ever losing the "feel" of the IP?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
Sequels!
Most of the best-selling games these days are sequels. A lot of people don't like that.
I think it's a sign of the industry's health: it's a good sign that the first game did well enough to fund the second game, the third game, however many games come out. It's true that it seems like most people only buy sequels to games they've already played, but that doesn't mean there are no new, creative games. It just means they aren't as well marketed. In many cases (Psychonauts, cough) this dooms them to die a horrible death, but that's true even if there are no sequels running around.
For me, I like sequels because I know what to expect. I'm a little disappointed by how WELL I know what to expect, but that's a different matter. The point is that, in general, sequels are strong games made by a strong, experienced team working with an IP and tech base they are very experienced with. They're successful because they're usually quite good.
If I want to be surprised by something, I buy something that doesn't have a number in the title. Usually, I buy strictly indie games on that front: I'm nervous buying anything like, say, Mirror's Edge, because they tend to have the worst of both worlds: an inexperienced team working beneath a "creative board" that cripples any creative impulses. Creative games with inexperienced teams are fine, clones with experienced teams are fine, but clones with inexperienced teams? No thanks.
(Obviously, Mirror's edge wasn't a clone... but it was definitely rough, especially in the "writing" department. I put it in quotes because I would hesitate to call that "writing".)
For me, there is an interesting edge to new games, games that aren't cycling through an old IP. And this relates to my last post about "full characters", actually. A new game will typically revolve around some powerful organizing concept (often the main character's weird abilities) and will therefore have a very unique flavor.
Even if an IP is quite good, that doesn't happen in sequels. The powerful organizing concept might be there in the first game, but after that, it's pretty familiar, pretty well explored. There's a push to keep the nth game feeling like the nth-1 game, and that means that the edge wears off even as the team starts to come together and polish the game to a shine.
I wonder if it's possible to build an IP that explores weird new games, an IP that keeps its edge no matter how many games you release. I have a sneaking suspicion that even if you managed to come up with a way to do it, it would be instantly derailed the moment you became a success as the well-meaning (greedy) board of directors gets its talons into the project.
Hmmmm...
I think it's a sign of the industry's health: it's a good sign that the first game did well enough to fund the second game, the third game, however many games come out. It's true that it seems like most people only buy sequels to games they've already played, but that doesn't mean there are no new, creative games. It just means they aren't as well marketed. In many cases (Psychonauts, cough) this dooms them to die a horrible death, but that's true even if there are no sequels running around.
For me, I like sequels because I know what to expect. I'm a little disappointed by how WELL I know what to expect, but that's a different matter. The point is that, in general, sequels are strong games made by a strong, experienced team working with an IP and tech base they are very experienced with. They're successful because they're usually quite good.
If I want to be surprised by something, I buy something that doesn't have a number in the title. Usually, I buy strictly indie games on that front: I'm nervous buying anything like, say, Mirror's Edge, because they tend to have the worst of both worlds: an inexperienced team working beneath a "creative board" that cripples any creative impulses. Creative games with inexperienced teams are fine, clones with experienced teams are fine, but clones with inexperienced teams? No thanks.
(Obviously, Mirror's edge wasn't a clone... but it was definitely rough, especially in the "writing" department. I put it in quotes because I would hesitate to call that "writing".)
For me, there is an interesting edge to new games, games that aren't cycling through an old IP. And this relates to my last post about "full characters", actually. A new game will typically revolve around some powerful organizing concept (often the main character's weird abilities) and will therefore have a very unique flavor.
Even if an IP is quite good, that doesn't happen in sequels. The powerful organizing concept might be there in the first game, but after that, it's pretty familiar, pretty well explored. There's a push to keep the nth game feeling like the nth-1 game, and that means that the edge wears off even as the team starts to come together and polish the game to a shine.
I wonder if it's possible to build an IP that explores weird new games, an IP that keeps its edge no matter how many games you release. I have a sneaking suspicion that even if you managed to come up with a way to do it, it would be instantly derailed the moment you became a success as the well-meaning (greedy) board of directors gets its talons into the project.
Hmmmm...
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Fill 'Er Up
I hate blank-slate main characters, and here's why.
These days, most games have blank slate main characters. The idea is that the player's avatar is so incredibly nonexistent (especially outside of cut scenes) that the player can fill him with any personality he chooses.
To say this is common is an understatement. It's ubiquitous. To the point where it exists even in games with seemingly strongly defined main characters.
For example, in Gears of War, you play the improbably named "Marcus Fenix". He seems like an actual character. He's got a badass voice actor, he has lines of dialog, he's definitely not visually neutral.
But he's still an empty character. After establishing his very basic personality and history in the early cut scenes, he rarely says anything more emotional than "keep moving" and "could be a trap".
This sort of thing is easy to see if you compare the main character to the secondary characters. Compare and contrast: your main character in any Bioware RPG. Even if we take into account all the dialog you choose (and we shouldn't, because it doesn't actually constitute the avatar feeling any emotion), you STILL have less character development dialog than any given party member's left big toe. The other characters will have strong judgments, wacky opinions, fun lines of dialog, actual emotions on their faces... you, on the other hand, get to choose whether to kill the beggar or give him money.
Obviously, you can have good games with hollow avatars. The world is full of them: the Final Fantasies, if you like them. System Shock II. Fallout I & II. Half Life. However, this long list is not because of any strength in the idea of a hollow character: it's because there are ten times more hollow-character games than defined-character games. Even games that theoretically have strongly defined characters, such as the Spider-man games, end up hollowing out the character for your use.
But compare these to games which have a main character that is not afraid to have a strong personality. Psychonauts. Beyond Good and Evil. Planescape: Torment. Sly Cooper. Grim Fandango. Most of the best adventure games (and the worst, I admit).
These games have a very different feel from hollow-avatar games of the same sort. The main character's existence as an actual person shapes the whole game. It shapes the plot, the gameplay, the color, the EVERYTHING. You are living in their world.
...
The hollow avatar started back in the beginning, when you didn't really have much choice. Even if you made your avatar a bright red and blue clown, you couldn't really show him doing much in terms of emotion or characterization. But these characters were not intended to be hollow. They just HAD to be.
In the game designers' minds, the characters were fully formed. You can tell by the way the world is so strongly shaped around their personalities... even though you can't actually see their personalities. Little Nemo and Bonk are very clear examples: you don't really see much in the way of emotion or personality during the normal course of the game, but the whole world is built around their very strong personalities.
In some games, hollow avatars are used to great effect. System Shock II being an excellent example, or Half Life if you prefer the wussy little brother. These games make use of the same basic limitations: you never see your avatar's emotions because A) you never see your avatar and B) your avatar never runs into anyone he can have a chat with.
Similarly, Ico and Shadows of the Colossus both have hollow main characters, but, again, they are hollow because their personality rarely gets a chance to show. The worlds and plots are built around a very strong personality and set of emotions, and this shines through.
That's not the case in a game like Gears of War, where you spend the majority of the game staring at an armor-plated football player hanging out with other armor-plated football players. Obviously, your avatar has a billion chances to show emotion and personality. You can always see his body language, you almost always have people within talking distance, so why is it that the other characters all have interesting lines and you always just grunt? Why is it that the OTHER characters express all the things I, as THE PLAYER, am feeling?
Even in games where you make your own character, such as Oblivion, I think I would enjoy playing someone with a personality.
I think people assume that a hollow character is the best thing because it allows anyone to give any personality to the character. But that's stupid. If you've played Beyond Good and Evil, which avatar feels more real? Which avatar adds more to the game? The photo realistic, extremely cool Fenix... or the cartoony, slightly insipid Jade? I'll give you a hint: it's Jade. If you doubt it, go play both games again.
In honesty, I would have preferred to play Cole or either of the Carmines in Gears of War. I have a feeling I would have felt the war far more personally that way.
It's not as if a hollow character can be filled with any given personality, either. Even if we're playing something like Oblivion, with an almost unlimited set of options, the personality we give our character is going to be tightly linked to how the character plays. A good example is the assassin: a lot of people wanted to be assassins in Oblivion, but you can't make your avatar feel like a dangerous assassin. A) Assassins have to frolic (literally) through the woods picking daisies and B) bows suck. The "dangerous assassin" personality dies quickly, mutated into something bizarre and perhaps hilarious.
To me, this means there is no excuse not to give the avatar a strong personality. Make it permeate every facet of the game.
"But what if the players don't like the main character?"
That actually happens pretty rarely in decent games, and the reason is because the quality of the gameplay and plot will change their judgment on the quality of the character. Jade's character is actually quite irritating, taken out of context. But the gameplay is good and the way she's exposed to plot points takes the butter out of the smarmalade and lets us admire her.
Sly Cooper's about as interesting as a piece of cardboard, but he's got an extremely STRONG two-dimensional personality, and the rest of the game supports it. The main character from Destroy All Humans is practically ONE-dimensional but, again, the game makes him interesting to play as.
So... characters. Yeah. That feel things. And have personalities.
It's cool.
I think.
You?
These days, most games have blank slate main characters. The idea is that the player's avatar is so incredibly nonexistent (especially outside of cut scenes) that the player can fill him with any personality he chooses.
To say this is common is an understatement. It's ubiquitous. To the point where it exists even in games with seemingly strongly defined main characters.
For example, in Gears of War, you play the improbably named "Marcus Fenix". He seems like an actual character. He's got a badass voice actor, he has lines of dialog, he's definitely not visually neutral.
But he's still an empty character. After establishing his very basic personality and history in the early cut scenes, he rarely says anything more emotional than "keep moving" and "could be a trap".
This sort of thing is easy to see if you compare the main character to the secondary characters. Compare and contrast: your main character in any Bioware RPG. Even if we take into account all the dialog you choose (and we shouldn't, because it doesn't actually constitute the avatar feeling any emotion), you STILL have less character development dialog than any given party member's left big toe. The other characters will have strong judgments, wacky opinions, fun lines of dialog, actual emotions on their faces... you, on the other hand, get to choose whether to kill the beggar or give him money.
Obviously, you can have good games with hollow avatars. The world is full of them: the Final Fantasies, if you like them. System Shock II. Fallout I & II. Half Life. However, this long list is not because of any strength in the idea of a hollow character: it's because there are ten times more hollow-character games than defined-character games. Even games that theoretically have strongly defined characters, such as the Spider-man games, end up hollowing out the character for your use.
But compare these to games which have a main character that is not afraid to have a strong personality. Psychonauts. Beyond Good and Evil. Planescape: Torment. Sly Cooper. Grim Fandango. Most of the best adventure games (and the worst, I admit).
These games have a very different feel from hollow-avatar games of the same sort. The main character's existence as an actual person shapes the whole game. It shapes the plot, the gameplay, the color, the EVERYTHING. You are living in their world.
...
The hollow avatar started back in the beginning, when you didn't really have much choice. Even if you made your avatar a bright red and blue clown, you couldn't really show him doing much in terms of emotion or characterization. But these characters were not intended to be hollow. They just HAD to be.
In the game designers' minds, the characters were fully formed. You can tell by the way the world is so strongly shaped around their personalities... even though you can't actually see their personalities. Little Nemo and Bonk are very clear examples: you don't really see much in the way of emotion or personality during the normal course of the game, but the whole world is built around their very strong personalities.
In some games, hollow avatars are used to great effect. System Shock II being an excellent example, or Half Life if you prefer the wussy little brother. These games make use of the same basic limitations: you never see your avatar's emotions because A) you never see your avatar and B) your avatar never runs into anyone he can have a chat with.
Similarly, Ico and Shadows of the Colossus both have hollow main characters, but, again, they are hollow because their personality rarely gets a chance to show. The worlds and plots are built around a very strong personality and set of emotions, and this shines through.
That's not the case in a game like Gears of War, where you spend the majority of the game staring at an armor-plated football player hanging out with other armor-plated football players. Obviously, your avatar has a billion chances to show emotion and personality. You can always see his body language, you almost always have people within talking distance, so why is it that the other characters all have interesting lines and you always just grunt? Why is it that the OTHER characters express all the things I, as THE PLAYER, am feeling?
Even in games where you make your own character, such as Oblivion, I think I would enjoy playing someone with a personality.
I think people assume that a hollow character is the best thing because it allows anyone to give any personality to the character. But that's stupid. If you've played Beyond Good and Evil, which avatar feels more real? Which avatar adds more to the game? The photo realistic, extremely cool Fenix... or the cartoony, slightly insipid Jade? I'll give you a hint: it's Jade. If you doubt it, go play both games again.
In honesty, I would have preferred to play Cole or either of the Carmines in Gears of War. I have a feeling I would have felt the war far more personally that way.
It's not as if a hollow character can be filled with any given personality, either. Even if we're playing something like Oblivion, with an almost unlimited set of options, the personality we give our character is going to be tightly linked to how the character plays. A good example is the assassin: a lot of people wanted to be assassins in Oblivion, but you can't make your avatar feel like a dangerous assassin. A) Assassins have to frolic (literally) through the woods picking daisies and B) bows suck. The "dangerous assassin" personality dies quickly, mutated into something bizarre and perhaps hilarious.
To me, this means there is no excuse not to give the avatar a strong personality. Make it permeate every facet of the game.
"But what if the players don't like the main character?"
That actually happens pretty rarely in decent games, and the reason is because the quality of the gameplay and plot will change their judgment on the quality of the character. Jade's character is actually quite irritating, taken out of context. But the gameplay is good and the way she's exposed to plot points takes the butter out of the smarmalade and lets us admire her.
Sly Cooper's about as interesting as a piece of cardboard, but he's got an extremely STRONG two-dimensional personality, and the rest of the game supports it. The main character from Destroy All Humans is practically ONE-dimensional but, again, the game makes him interesting to play as.
So... characters. Yeah. That feel things. And have personalities.
It's cool.
I think.
You?
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
If You Can't Kill the Children, It's Not Fun
I'm sure this is familiar to some of you, but I need to type it out anyway.
Bethesda released a new Fallout game, which is a good example to use, although the same complaints can be aimed at a wide variety of games. In Fallout 3, you can't kill children. In the earlier games, you can. In fact, it's something that can happen by accident, especially if you're having a firefight in the middle of a village. Using plasma cannons and missiles. Which happens fairly often, actually.
Non-gamers (and probably most gamers) will stare at you in horror when you say that the game is not as good because you can't kill children. "You want to kill children?!"
Tch, that's not the point. This is not a matter of programming children to be killable. This is a matter of programming children specifically to be exempt from death in a world where you can kill anything and everything else. It's roughly the equivalent of going to see Blade Runner or some other beautifully atmospheric movie, only to have a corner of the screen filled with a cheerful cartoon animation doing the Macarena. For the whole movie. But it gets bigger when the movie is at its darkest and most atmospheric. After all, you wouldn't want anyone to get depressed by the dark and atmospheric nature of the movie!
Let me see if I can explain it in another way.
You want to live in that game's world, at least for the moment. You want to live in that world, but THE CHILDREN AREN'T LIVING IN THAT WORLD. They are exempt from the world. They are immune to its dangers, pressures, etc. They are the equivalent of a comic book character breaking the fourth wall, and that's not always suitable.
So, YES, if you can't kill the children, it's no good. Not because killing the children is good or even because I want to. It's because if they're immortal god-beings, it completely ruins the immersion. Destroys the reality of the game. For the sake of some little old lady's heart?
It's rated M, lady. Kill the children.
Bethesda released a new Fallout game, which is a good example to use, although the same complaints can be aimed at a wide variety of games. In Fallout 3, you can't kill children. In the earlier games, you can. In fact, it's something that can happen by accident, especially if you're having a firefight in the middle of a village. Using plasma cannons and missiles. Which happens fairly often, actually.
Non-gamers (and probably most gamers) will stare at you in horror when you say that the game is not as good because you can't kill children. "You want to kill children?!"
Tch, that's not the point. This is not a matter of programming children to be killable. This is a matter of programming children specifically to be exempt from death in a world where you can kill anything and everything else. It's roughly the equivalent of going to see Blade Runner or some other beautifully atmospheric movie, only to have a corner of the screen filled with a cheerful cartoon animation doing the Macarena. For the whole movie. But it gets bigger when the movie is at its darkest and most atmospheric. After all, you wouldn't want anyone to get depressed by the dark and atmospheric nature of the movie!
Let me see if I can explain it in another way.
You want to live in that game's world, at least for the moment. You want to live in that world, but THE CHILDREN AREN'T LIVING IN THAT WORLD. They are exempt from the world. They are immune to its dangers, pressures, etc. They are the equivalent of a comic book character breaking the fourth wall, and that's not always suitable.
So, YES, if you can't kill the children, it's no good. Not because killing the children is good or even because I want to. It's because if they're immortal god-beings, it completely ruins the immersion. Destroys the reality of the game. For the sake of some little old lady's heart?
It's rated M, lady. Kill the children.
Open World Games
... They're very popular, these open world games. But I think it's worth considering their strengths and weaknesses rather than simply screaming "open world!" and spending ten million dollars on it.
The core idea of an open world game is that you can interact with the world in any way you see fit, rather than being stuck in some kind of linear mission progression. The truth is usually that you're stuck in a linear mission progression, but you can ignore it and go diddle around.
I don't like open world games.
Okay, that's really wrong. I love open world games. I love them so much that I hate them for falling short so much.
For example, Crackdown is an "open world game". You have the whole city. You can go anywhere you want. You can even take your starter pistol and baby-fat starting character over into ninjas-kill-you land. If you're good enough, you might even win. And the game can handle that.
The issue here is that this is not a simulationist open world. You can tackle the quests in whatever order you like, you can collect orbs, you can even fight the cops, but none of this stuff is terribly emergent or adaptive. Even the cops get tired of chasing you after a bit.
This is true of every modern open world game I've played, except maybe some of the roguelikes. GTA3 and Mass Effect are the same way, as simple examples: you can do the missions, you can explore the city/universe, and maybe you can play with the cops for a bit until you get bored.
There are things to do in the city - steal cars, do races, etc - but these are simply side missions scattered around the city just for kicks. They are scripted in, preprogrammed pieces that change nothing except, perhaps, your XP meter.
I find that these are a disappointment. I feel that an open world game should maybe be about THE WORLD. Hence, you know, "open WORLD".
Fable II offers a very basic glimpse into this kind of idea, although I only bring it up because it's recent: half the space-adventure games since 1993 have done the same thing. It's relatively easy to model the economy of a system if you ignore realism, so these games all have an economic system for you to open-worldly abuse.
The problem with these kinds of games is that I find them a bit unsatisfying. Once you've bought the city (or learned that buying the city will take all year and isn't worth it), what's the point? All of those stupid prescripted missions do have a purpose: they give the world texture and flavor. They make THIS planet different from the last one you landed on more than superficially.
But the missions are boring! Not only are they only minimally adaptive, they're not "open": the mission goes no deeper or shallower than scripted. For example, if I save a group of slaves from Plorbax the Grundarian, I'm generally given a good option (let them go, even though we're in the middle of a jungle full of fifty foot high monsters) or an evil option (usually, kill them. Occasionally, sell them).
I can't actually interact with these newly rescued people. I can't offer to schlep them back to their homeworlds, can't offer to make them my crew, can't try to date one of them, can't try to settle down in the jungle like the Robinsons, can't do anything.
Obviously, simulation of PEOPLE is a bit more difficult than simulating an economy, not least because we can't easily simplify people without losing what makes them interesting. It's a bit more difficult, yeah, like 'nobody's ever done it' difficult.
...
But what, I thought, if we're coming at this from the wrong angle. What if instead of trying to simulate the people, we just try to simulate the illusion of emergent behavior?
In my mind, the point of an open world game is that I am permitted to explore the universe as quickly or slowly as I see fit, in as much or as little detail as I wish.
Let's say that we build a typical open world with all its kajillion little side quests. But, instead of placing those side quests in the world, we leave them floating free in the database.
As the player explores our world, we can assign these side quests. So, he's trying to chat up someone on the street? Now she's the main character in the "I'm being chased by the mafia!" side quest. Going down a dark alley? Now it's the "out of control car!" alley side quest. Looking more closely at a corpse? Now it's the "mysterious letter in my pocket!" side quest.
Furthermore, using this method it would be easy to release supplements or mods, free or for a price, to instantly integrate into the world. You would keep the density down, obviously: you don't want every random passerby to hit up the player with a side quest, you don't want every new building to be a weird new situation: just the ones the player seems to show an interest in. It's also quite possible to string them together: while rescuing the slaves, you can take special interest in one and they will have a suitable side quest assigned, just as if they were an actual character with an actual, meaningful existence.
In addition I think this would permit a whole new set of "flavor" subquests. For example, if you're on top of a building, admiring the view, it could spawn the "side quest" for someone else admiring the view with you. There's no competition, no challenge, it just adds some targeted flavor to the world.
What do you think?
The core idea of an open world game is that you can interact with the world in any way you see fit, rather than being stuck in some kind of linear mission progression. The truth is usually that you're stuck in a linear mission progression, but you can ignore it and go diddle around.
I don't like open world games.
Okay, that's really wrong. I love open world games. I love them so much that I hate them for falling short so much.
For example, Crackdown is an "open world game". You have the whole city. You can go anywhere you want. You can even take your starter pistol and baby-fat starting character over into ninjas-kill-you land. If you're good enough, you might even win. And the game can handle that.
The issue here is that this is not a simulationist open world. You can tackle the quests in whatever order you like, you can collect orbs, you can even fight the cops, but none of this stuff is terribly emergent or adaptive. Even the cops get tired of chasing you after a bit.
This is true of every modern open world game I've played, except maybe some of the roguelikes. GTA3 and Mass Effect are the same way, as simple examples: you can do the missions, you can explore the city/universe, and maybe you can play with the cops for a bit until you get bored.
There are things to do in the city - steal cars, do races, etc - but these are simply side missions scattered around the city just for kicks. They are scripted in, preprogrammed pieces that change nothing except, perhaps, your XP meter.
I find that these are a disappointment. I feel that an open world game should maybe be about THE WORLD. Hence, you know, "open WORLD".
Fable II offers a very basic glimpse into this kind of idea, although I only bring it up because it's recent: half the space-adventure games since 1993 have done the same thing. It's relatively easy to model the economy of a system if you ignore realism, so these games all have an economic system for you to open-worldly abuse.
The problem with these kinds of games is that I find them a bit unsatisfying. Once you've bought the city (or learned that buying the city will take all year and isn't worth it), what's the point? All of those stupid prescripted missions do have a purpose: they give the world texture and flavor. They make THIS planet different from the last one you landed on more than superficially.
But the missions are boring! Not only are they only minimally adaptive, they're not "open": the mission goes no deeper or shallower than scripted. For example, if I save a group of slaves from Plorbax the Grundarian, I'm generally given a good option (let them go, even though we're in the middle of a jungle full of fifty foot high monsters) or an evil option (usually, kill them. Occasionally, sell them).
I can't actually interact with these newly rescued people. I can't offer to schlep them back to their homeworlds, can't offer to make them my crew, can't try to date one of them, can't try to settle down in the jungle like the Robinsons, can't do anything.
Obviously, simulation of PEOPLE is a bit more difficult than simulating an economy, not least because we can't easily simplify people without losing what makes them interesting. It's a bit more difficult, yeah, like 'nobody's ever done it' difficult.
...
But what, I thought, if we're coming at this from the wrong angle. What if instead of trying to simulate the people, we just try to simulate the illusion of emergent behavior?
In my mind, the point of an open world game is that I am permitted to explore the universe as quickly or slowly as I see fit, in as much or as little detail as I wish.
Let's say that we build a typical open world with all its kajillion little side quests. But, instead of placing those side quests in the world, we leave them floating free in the database.
As the player explores our world, we can assign these side quests. So, he's trying to chat up someone on the street? Now she's the main character in the "I'm being chased by the mafia!" side quest. Going down a dark alley? Now it's the "out of control car!" alley side quest. Looking more closely at a corpse? Now it's the "mysterious letter in my pocket!" side quest.
Furthermore, using this method it would be easy to release supplements or mods, free or for a price, to instantly integrate into the world. You would keep the density down, obviously: you don't want every random passerby to hit up the player with a side quest, you don't want every new building to be a weird new situation: just the ones the player seems to show an interest in. It's also quite possible to string them together: while rescuing the slaves, you can take special interest in one and they will have a suitable side quest assigned, just as if they were an actual character with an actual, meaningful existence.
In addition I think this would permit a whole new set of "flavor" subquests. For example, if you're on top of a building, admiring the view, it could spawn the "side quest" for someone else admiring the view with you. There's no competition, no challenge, it just adds some targeted flavor to the world.
What do you think?
Monday, November 24, 2008
Poor Bill Paxton
So, yesterday someone was watching TV and I heard a very familiar voice. It was saying something boring about some TV series, but in my head I clearly heard "That's it! Game over, man! Game over!"
I wonder what it must be like to have your WHOLE LIFE defined by one relatively minor role. I mean, does anyone see him as Bill Henrickson, or, like me, is it all "Why is Hudson wearing a suit?"
Twenty years later, and I still can't picture this poor guy as anything other than a doomed space marine. Yeah, I know he starred in Twister and played a big role in Apollo 13. At those times, I thought "Why is Hudson driving a car?" and "Why is Hudson wearing a space suit?"
Oh, no, wait, that makes sense.
Sorry, Bill!
I wonder what it must be like to have your WHOLE LIFE defined by one relatively minor role. I mean, does anyone see him as Bill Henrickson, or, like me, is it all "Why is Hudson wearing a suit?"
Twenty years later, and I still can't picture this poor guy as anything other than a doomed space marine. Yeah, I know he starred in Twister and played a big role in Apollo 13. At those times, I thought "Why is Hudson driving a car?" and "Why is Hudson wearing a space suit?"
Oh, no, wait, that makes sense.
Sorry, Bill!
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Transition Team
As a side note, I'd like to point out that Obama's various transition teams contain a nobel-prize winning chemist and two people who actually know something about virtual worlds/the internet. This so far makes his teams the most qualified we've had in eight years. (Actually, any one of them makes his teams the most qualified we've had in eight years.)
What bad news! I'm not happy about him assigning people who actually know their business to the FCC transition team. I prefer my oppressors inept, you know? ;)
What bad news! I'm not happy about him assigning people who actually know their business to the FCC transition team. I prefer my oppressors inept, you know? ;)
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