The Forge Archives

Somewhere else, Mike Holmes said this:

Quote from: Mike HolmesIf, on the other hand, you want to go with a real narrativism based [computer] design, then we're talking about getting into an area of development that's never been tried before. Never. I've postulated such games before, but have never gotten beyond the idea stage.

I've done a little thinking on the topic of Nar facilitating CRPG's lately. I think the form they would have to take is what I'm going to call "Binary" Nar. Basically, the player would be confronted by a string of binary choices. Either you pick A, or you pick B. The designer could then map out a tree of possibilities based on these choices.

Do y'all think this type of binary decision making would satisfy the Narrativist player? At first glance, it sounds like it would work. I think that many bang-type decision points in tradtional RPG are often more "binary" than they first appear. What does everyone think?

I don't think it's the binary issue that's the problem. It's that the computer has to predict somehow that the choice being offered the player is somehow meaningful to that player. I'm not sure offhand how a computer would be able to judge that. Even with loads of input at the beginning, it'd be hard to make those choices somehow player driven.

I mean, what if the computer decides that I must choose between freedom and justice, and I don't really care about either, so I just pick one at random. Is that narrativism?

Quote from: Matt WilsonI don't think it's the binary issue that's the problem. It's that the computer has to predict somehow that the choice being offered the player is somehow meaningful to that player...

I mean, what if the computer decides that I must choose between freedom and justice, and I don't really care about either, so I just pick one at random. Is that narrativism?

Hmmm, I'm just throwing things out right now, but can't the designer just say, "this game is about freedom and justice, if you're not interested go play something else"?

You don't think a branching structure would work? If you pick choice A, B, & C, that means such & such must be important to you?

Maybe it would work, maybe it wouldn't.

I'm in between these two positions.

Tim, what you've described has been done before, of course. It's the "choose your own adventure" style of game. Though it's mostly done in books, I'm sure that there are computer versions. Moreover, I'm sure that there are games that have done it on computers a tad more complexely.

Here's the thing. Narrativism as a form of play doesn't require any skill in terms of making the the decisions that identify the play as narrativism. Once you've gotten to a narrativism deciding point you can't make a wrong decision. It's like falling off a log. You just make a decision you like, and you're done.

The skill in narrativism is discerning during play what situations are going to make for this sort of decision, and maneuvering into them.

Now, yes, you can make situations that are "asutomatically" of the sort that are likely to be interesting to everyone - this is what the writer does when writing a book. And one can make bangs for characters, yes, before play. But sans a player having some input into the process of deciding what the character is like, and what issues are important, it's all very problematic. Like playing with a really bad GM who has written up characters for you, and decided on all of the conflicts before hand.

Now, what I can see working is having the player allowed to indicate what's interesting to him via the character. The player might, say, choose values for the character and issues. Then the computer uses some algorithm to create conflict around and between these values or issues. The player chooses to maneuver the character through these multiple situations as he sees fit (in fact these become "meta-narrativism" decisions - do I deal with the choice about my brother, or the problem with the slaves?) As the issues are resolved, values change, the computer randomizes, and new situations are generated.

I think it's entirely possible. Not simple, but possible. And It might be really cool. Somewhat like Gamism computer RPGs. Yeah, the computer can't choose really interesting tactics or anything - it's limited to what the interface will allow. But the series of events can be really interesting. Instead of, "And then I fought the dragon and got the sword of Arasis which allowed me to defeat Lord Zerxar" you'd get, "And then I decided I had to sacrifice my brother so that the army would be able to win the war, so he ran off, and then I had to decide if I would stay and face the council or if I would chase after him so that I could catch him and bring him back."

Give any vision?

Mike

I would think that a "choose your own adventure" type of Narrative-style computer game is possible if the player is made aware of what he will have to give up whenever he makes a decision. He might not know where a decision will lead, but the game must force the player to make hard choices to explore a Premise.

An "undo" or "save and restore" feature might be interesting for such a game. Did your choices lead to a conclusion that does not satisfy you? Back up and explore a different path.

I don't get this 'it must customise premise to the players wants' thing. Why?
As Timothy said:

QuoteHmmm, I'm just throwing things out right now, but can't the designer just say, "this game is about freedom and justice, if you're not interested go play something else"?

Exactly. And even if your not particularly interested in the premise given, why wouldn't you like it atleast a bit. For example, recently I was playing GTA: San Andreas and it sort of had a premise there where I had to keep choosing between my girl and my turf. I didn't even buy the game for such a thing (totally unexpected), but it was there and I enjoyed it.

Now, while a 'dead on your cup of tea' premise is great, why does it have to be dead on to be a premise? It doesn't...it makes financial sense if its a premise lots of people would enjoy exploring, but it doesn't make it any less a premise.

I think perhaps one of the huge advantages of playing with other people (highly customised content) is being percieved as a need rather than a want. It isn't. It'd be great if the program could customise, but if it doesn't the bottom doesn't drop out. Just like all the soap opera's out there, you don't have to be right on target to get people thinking 'what would I do (or someone else in that position)'

It's sort of like how one game might be about car racing and another about first person shooting. If two games present two premise types over and over, their both as valid as the car and FPS, even though the FPS doesn't customise to be a car game (if that's what I like) and vise versa.

I agree with you Callan.

My point is merely that this has been done before, and that I think it would be pretty easy to do better. That, basically, you're not tapping the resources of the computer well with the original model. It'll work, it just misses out on what I think computers could do in this area.

I'd like to hear from Walt on this topic if he's reading. I'd bet he'd have something important to say about it.

Mike

I've been thinking about posting in this thread. My thoughts are still a bit unformed, but here's where I currently stand.

I don't think there's any fundamental reason why computer games cannot be created to facilitate Narrativism. But I think there might be a fundamental difficulty with any solo game, computer or otherwise, facilitating Narrativism.

See, half of the Narrativist equation -- am I, the player, addressing (I like to say, expressing myself about) a Premise of emotional import? -- can in theory be satisfied with any game including any computer game. Give me a flight simulator, and I can use it to examine, in my mind, whether it's more important to fly safely or to keep to a schedule that might require pushing the safety margins. This is a question that anyone who drives a car can relate to, and one of literally life and death significance. I can imagine, as I fly through the simulated weather patterns and so forth, that I've got a passenger named Penny who really has to get to Chicago in time to say goodbye to her dying father, and another passenger named Mr. Higgs who's suffering panic attacks every time we hit an air pocket and is demanding that we land immediately, and a co-pilot who's a week away from retirement who doesn't want to take any chances and tempt fate, and a boss back at the airlines who's telling me I'll be fired if I don't fly through the storms to arrive in Chicago on time. What will I do? And what will the results of my decision be?

Of course, I have to imagine all those characters and situations on my own. The simulator doesn't help me do this (though it does supply the storms). So the simulator certainly isn't facilitating this "narrativist" play on my part.

But in theory, it could. It wouldn't be difficult to add to the flight simulator a bunch of such characters yelling in the player's ear and reacting to what the player does. Not connected to any scoring mechanism, you understand. No "you get 100 points for arriving on time but lose 40 points if Mr. Higgs freaks out before you get there," which would turn it all into a resource management (Gamist) problem. Just the characters acting and reacting so as to make a meaningful decision (turn back, go around the storms, or push through) necessary. So, would that be a good idea? Would it result in a Narrativist flight sim?

This is where I get into hazier territory. I think there's something still missing. The problem is that the program doesn't actually give a crap what the player does. The player might be addressing (expressing himself about) a Premise but nobody's listening. Can that be Narrativism?

Before anyone pops up with a quick and easy "no" answer, though, consider that computer programs don't actually give a crap about who wins or performs well in a Gamist game either, and yet that hasn't stopped computer games from being acknowledged as providing or facilitating solo Gamist play. Most game programs, or the characters they're portraying, do a pretty good job of pretending to give a crap, and that's apparently good enough.

But it's a little different, when we're talking about traditional computer game scoring and feedback. Because a computer game program can score and adjudicate a game so as to determine e.g. who won or who performed well, it's not unreasonable to say that the computer program actually does "understand" those aspects of the game. "You found eight of the ten hidden mushrooms. Good job!" says the machine. The "good job" part is questionable, but we (the audience) let it slide. Presumably the programmer knows that finding eight will require some effort and therefore merits a "good job!" assessment of the player's performance, but we also know that neither the machine nor the programmer actually cares whether you found the mushrooms this time or not. However, the machine clearly does know that you did in fact find that many mushrooms, so that part of its statement is completely credible.

By contrast, there is no doubt that no computer program can "understand," by any stretch of the meaing of "understand," a Narrativist Premise or a player's actions as they relate to the Premise. By limiting the player's fundamental choices, the designer can provide canned feedback for the choice made ("You decided to fly the safe route, showing that you hold your commitment to your passengers' safety above other concerns -- or perhaps that you lack confidence in your flying skills! Penny is upset that her father passed away before she could get to his side, but at least she's still alive herself. Your boss tried to have you fired but the Union intervened and blah blah blah...") But the player has no opportunity to add nuance and have that nuance be recognized, which I think is where Narrativism really lives (rather than in the instantiated yes-or-no Premise "answer," if any). So can this be facilitation of Narrativism? Still up in the air, so to speak.

For a micro example of this approach, where you make a brief series of "significant" decisions and get canned feedback on the big ideas your decisions seem to be epressing, see this game. Try it two or three times with different answers. Small-scale as it is, I think it might provide a useful example for further discussion.

- Walt

Quote from: Walt FreitagBut the player has no opportunity to add nuance and have that nuance be recognized, which I think is where Narrativism really lives (rather than in the instantiated yes-or-no Premise "answer," if any). So can this be facilitation of Narrativism? Still up in the air, so to speak.

I think this is similiar to alot of my thoughts on the subject. Honestly, the thing that concerned me about trying to design a Nar CRPG was the whole player authorship thing. That is to say, the feeling that the player is in control of the story. I think that looking at individual decision points, there's little doubt that a 'binary' choice would support Nar. But I think the real question is whether an entire game of binary choices would support Nar.

I could understand an argument that the the feeling of authorship is found in the "nuances" as you say. These 'nuances' make the players feel that they are in control of things.

But it's hard to discuss this without real examples to look at. I did look at the 'game' Walt linked. Interesting. Maybe after things with my game slow down, I'll try experimenting with some of the cheesy RPG-makers I have lying around my hard-drive.

Mike: Ah, gotcha!

Hi Walt,

Why would someone else have to be listening for it to be narrativism? We might be thinking a little bit too much in our table top roots here, as though we need others present. Tons of other media like movies or soapies present address of premise all over the place for us to observe. We can watch these by ourselves (or with others but with no real discussion afterward on the media) and it doesn't change the nature of that media. In a computer game where we decide the address of premise ourselves, it's the same except its more intimate.

I think what you might find missing is the massive reward of addressing premise in front of other people. I think there are many types of rewards inherant to doing that. And in contrast addressing premise alone may seem...flacid. This sudden contrast is like going from a bright area to a shady area...it makes the shady area seem pitch black at first. Likewise, there may seem to be no reward at first. But I think if one waits for ones 'eyes to adjust' you'll see it there.

As for 'nuance', I think this is where the player doesn't just address premise but addresses it in a particular way they have customised. This adds special meaning to the address. And the probs I think you've identified are: The comp may not accomidate how you want to add nuance and it wont recognise what you do anyway.

To this I say that in the company of other people, are they really absorbing all the nuance you generate or are you just hoping they are? And if they aren't absorbing it all, then was adding nuance special to begin with?

I think adding nuances can be very rewarding with other humans though, even if they don't really get why you put that nuance in. And lacking that reward with the comp means the player is less likely to go to the effort of generating nuance that goes unrewarded (and if he does, comp limmitations may mean he can't add some nuances as well).

Personally, looking at that link you gave, it left me thinking about difficult issues. This isn't in the short term, rewarding. It's difficult. However, if I'd gone through such a thing with others there is the reward of answering such things in front of others and getting a lot of rewarding feedback from them instantly. If that's a problem, I think that's your main prob with C narrativist.

Additionally, in that last question I didn't consider the soul described as what I think of a soul. I considered a thirty percent chance of living and loss of what the question described as a soul and living on as being like living as only 30% of a man. I basically chose euthenasia because of reduced lifestyle, rather than to save this eternal soul described (which I, as another address of premise, decided not to recognise as a soul. Recognised it as perhaps something important to me, but not a soul). Sort of like a nuance, this is a switch in the problematic issue really. And in a C RPG if I had to make a choice like this early on, where I could only address it from another angle, I'm sort of out of kilter with the rest of the game. I can see that prob, but mostly because in that links last question, I feel there were two addresses of premise, not one (the first is, do you believe what they describe is a soul). In writing a CRPG, it might be important to make sure you seperate out your problematic issues (ie, ask if they believe that is a soul...if they don't, they can't really answer that third question as put).

I recently played the second of the Deus Ex games, after recommendations on this baord although I forget by whom.  It's reputation as amongst the most intelligent of the first person games is not undeserved IMO.  It;s basic format is in no way novel, but it does make the transition to asking relatively tough questions about values, or at least, presenting the player with such dilemmas.

Essentially, in each level the player will receive at least two and probably more conflicting goals.  Choosing which goals to fulfill and which to ignore cannot be done without some sort of moral contemplation in most cases.  This works unusually well IMO if only by contrast to the multitude of games that only ask questions about How you achieve goals.

It's not really open ended, and not really that free (I hear the first one was better in this regard).  It's also not so world-shattering that I want to over-hype it.  But I do think that this shows the way forward; presenting options that are about the people in the game and how the character relates to them through the players decisions, rather than merely efficiency measurements.

Sounds cool. Is it completely about these decisions, or is it intermixed with the standard CRPG gamism? That is, do you hack your way from one decision point to another? How do you get from point A to point B in the decision tree? Does this merely "branch" like Tim's original suggestion, or do the situations evolve in a more multivariate fashion as you play?

Can the player have any impact on the situations themselves, other than the choices made at decision nodes? That is, do they have some input on what the situations are going to be like? Perhaps via chargen? Or in-game play? Do they pick up the values in question in play, or are they preset?

Mike

Quote from: Mike HolmesSounds cool. Is it completely about these decisions, or is it intermixed with the standard CRPG gamism? That is, do you hack your way from one decision point to another? How do you get from point A to point B in the decision tree? Does this merely "branch" like Tim's original suggestion, or do the situations evolve in a more multivariate fashion as you play?

Strangely it neither branches nor evolves.  As I said I don't want to over-hype it so I'll try to be more specific.

Basically, the character is always in contact with at least two major factions, both of whom seek to persuade the character as to the rightness of their cause.  Both will offer missions, even if that mission is just to go somewhere and be briefed by someone.  There are also a bunch of minor characters and factions who can provide mini-missions and opportunities.  None of this is particularly ground-breaking; in fact it would be better if it had been more strongly branched because it was in practice difficult to sever your ties completely with either of the major factions.

What IMO made this more than the run of the mill is that the arguments presented to the player, while not too deep, are essentially ethical ones.  As a result these conversations are not JUST clue exposition and plot development as is so often the case.  So, you are not just figuring out optimum decision paths - you are deciding who you are and implementing those decisions through action.  As I said - the NPC's do actually try to persuade you of the rightness of their cause, they do not just offer bribes and sweeties to make you go from point A to point B.  In fact I don't think either of the major factions ever offer to actually pay you for your services.

Thus one side might ask you to kill a scientist, and the other that you capture them for interrogation.  Obviously you cannot do both - you must pick a side, and that selection is based on your own assesment of the NPC's and the stories they have been telling you.

Quote
Can the player have any impact on the situations themselves, other than the choices made at decision nodes? That is, do they have some input on what the situations are going to be like? Perhaps via chargen? Or in-game play? Do they pick up the values in question in play, or are they preset?

Not as such; your decisions are not going to make much of a difference to how the map spawns or anything.  As I say I don't want to overhype this and it is not hugely different in mechanical terms from most first person shooters (although rather more varied than most and with a good cyberpunk feel).  But you are very definitely not running around like pacman gobbling up goodies just because they are there to be gobbled up.  You do HAVE to complete missions that constitute decision nodes, but there are a variety of other things you can do - some pro bono, some mercenary - as a part of fleshing out the experience.

And then... they do something of a bait-and-switch with the plot and introduce a whole new level of back-story with which to understand the present situation.  And in the end, they deliver a quite sophisticated spiel about the nature of this society and the destiny of humanity and oblige you to pick a position, and then act on it.

This is why I described it as intelligent, and why I thought it was relevant for this thread.  Most games just give you a purely nominal sort of problem to think about, some sort of trite evil-smiting or outright mercenary badassness.  This is a game that has rather more Stuff To Say, and does leave you sitting there wondering "am I doing the right thing"?  The right thing, not the efficient or effective thing.  Quite startlingly for a first person shooter, you very seldom actually NEED to kill, because you can incapacitate enemies with tasers or drugs, and even in combat severely wounded opponents will actually throw down their weapons and run away.
Its full of ambivalence, and you have no guide but your conscience.

It's not a game so different from others in the genre that it breaks the paradigm, but it does show how a smart game can be built with the entirely orthodox tools in the FPS box.

Cool, that's much clearer.

Does the endgame change depending on the selected choices? You say that it makes some statements - are those in any way affected by your choices? Or does the statement come out the same no matter what you chose?

I'm not saying that wouldn't still be narrativism, just that it would be narrativism only in short limited bursts.

Also, this seems to be a case of "partitioned" CA again. That is, you go from narrativism moment, to gamism "shooting", and back and forth like this until you get to the end. This is similar to my claim that TROS is patitioned in a very similar way. (Which, again, I think is cool).

Mike

You need to claim that Mike? I thought it was pretty obvious that TROS was all 'oh, I will do anything to save my love...now watch me kick this guys ass with my leet moves!'

In CRPGs it'll probably become the new black in five or ten years, if they grasp the facts of it (ie, they see nar but manage to avoid implimenting typhoid mary programming). Especially because I think it will draw in that otherwise elusive female demographic.