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301  Creation / Reference / Re: Hey, anyone played Heavy Rain yet? on: March 03, 2010, 09:18:39 AM
I am not sure I will ever get to play the game, so descriptions please Smiley
302  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Rewarding the notplayer... on: March 03, 2010, 09:16:22 AM
Quote
I think it's a very clever idea, and makes a game very reactive to the player.  However, it's very directly reactive.  To me, a conversation is more indirect in comparison.

Also, it might be a little different experience if the player was not so aware of tuning the the experience and instead unknowingly adjusted the difficulty. This might destroy the whole concept though, so not sure it would work.

I am not sure that "Flow" is a holy grail either and many of my favorite moments in life have been far from flow-like. "Flow" is borderline additive behaviour (and note that many reviews describe the game fl0w as addicting!!) which is far from a design goal for me. One would like to have flow when doing something worthwhile, like building a house or whatnot and not when playing some nibbles-clone Tongue This means that developers also have a responsibility when creating games, which I think few really care about.
303  Creation / Notgames design / Re: The contradition of the narrative avatar on: March 01, 2010, 06:59:42 PM
Though, strictly speaking, wouldn't it be more appropriate to think of the player as a puppet master than an actor?
"Puppet masters" sounds so "The Sims" to me, but I guess it works for some times of games. In the end the "actor" -> "puppet master" scale should perhaps depend on the what can of experience should be intended. Will the player influence the game from within or from outside?

I think the question of what role a player has is quite interesting and might be good springboard for new ideas. In a normal point-and-click adventure game, is the player a puppet master or an actor, is the player both perhaps? How do players react when they see the protagonist on screen. Do they think "That is me" or "That is my puppet"? For my part I would say the first one and not until a game plays like the sims do I think of a protagonist as a puppet. Perhaps others think differently? And if so, does that affect how they experience and play the game?

Btw, an interesting idea would perhaps be to write the character as the game is played. For example when confronting a steak the player could choose "Yuck! I do not like meat!" or "Yummy! I love meat", thus shaping the character through choices and this could have consequences later on. Do not think that solves anything though.

And finally, it might be fruitful to try and specify what would be the goal with this. What kinda of experience do you aim to achieve? Is there something you currently feel like you are unable to create without finding some sort of solution?
304  Creation / Notgames design / Re: The contradition of the narrative avatar on: March 01, 2010, 10:49:13 AM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXperience112

is worth mentioning too. Kind of a Uplink /god-game but with an adventure game like gameplay. The implementation is kinda broken and I had a hard time playing it. But the concept is really fascinating!
305  Creation / Notgames design / Re: The contradition of the narrative avatar on: March 01, 2010, 07:41:34 AM
In role playing games players usually have to come up with somewhat detailed history about their characters before playing and then use this information when acting. This is pretty much the same way an actor works or the way a writer decides what the charaters in a novel should do. So if the player is supposed to have some fictional background, could one just not spill it all out at the start and explicitly tell the player in what ways it is proper to act (and then also have mechanics in play that helps with this). I guess the problem is that the player does not want to start the game by reading a novel, but perhaps one could begin the game very linear and un-interactive and then at a certain points let the player be free. Like a tutorial, but not on key configurations or gameplay rules, but on how to act.

Another interesting way to go about is that the player truly is herself. Meaning that sitting at the computer playing is the character, meaning that there is no avatar. Uplinkis an example of such a game and it is probably a very limited number of games that work with this, but still thought it would be interesting to mention.
306  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Scene based narrative on: February 28, 2010, 09:42:43 PM
Michaël Samyn:
Good point! I really like the idea of a player thinking:
"nooo, is the scene already over? Do I have to progress now? Can't I just play a little longer? Pleeeeeassse" Smiley

To bring in another "game being a play mate"-metaphore
307  Creation / Notgames design / Re: The contradition of the narrative avatar on: February 28, 2010, 09:39:19 PM
I believe it is also possible to mix these. When reading a book I sometimes see the events taking place as if I was a certain character and this happens when I feel closely connect to this character somehow. Other times I just watch the events take place as an outside observer. This can happen in the same book and it can slide between these two modes throughout depending on how I cannot to what is taking place.

I believe the same can be true for games and we can not assume that the player will always feels as if she IS the avatar at all times. I think it is possible to switch between to two, as I said above, in games too and that people do this without realizing it. While the problem remains I think that one does not have to assume that has to be either A or B, but that it can be a little bit of both and that there is a gray area between the out most limits.

The first step is to immerse the player and once immersed the player will accept more of she is told and even be able to handle inconsistencies without think about it. In Penumbra the protagonist, Philip, spoke and had feelings. There where comments like "oh my what a horrible spider!" (emotion beloning to character) and "This looks like volcanic rock." (knowledge belonging to the character). Yet, when player describe events taking place they do not say that "Philip" did this and that. They say "I" did this and that. Even though the protagonist expresses things that are clearly not their own, they can feel as if other stuff is happening directly do themselves. This is just speculation though and I am working on blog post where I will ask player's about how they experienced stuff, so funny you brought it up! Smiley

Also, this relates a lot to this thread:
http://notgames.org/forum/index.php?topic=47.0
308  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Scene based narrative on: February 27, 2010, 01:17:32 AM
What if the interaction that gives you the means to go to the next scene is simply very interesting in and of itself? More interesting than getting the reward.
This you need to expand upon Smiley Are you talking about a sort of like an engaging conclusion to the scene? Or do you just mean that the most interesting interaction (which players will be drawn to) is also the interacts that locks up access to the next scene?
309  Creation / From the ridiculous to the sublime / Re: A comic about games on: February 26, 2010, 07:50:12 PM
Jeroen D. Stout:
I like your idea! Would be be fun to see it made, even though I know the twist now Smiley

I really like small games with where the design is more "holistic" and where you need to play it to the end to grasp it. It especially works nicely for smaller games and "Everyday the same day" and "Beacon" are really good interesting example of this.
310  Creation / From the ridiculous to the sublime / Re: A comic about games on: February 26, 2010, 01:14:48 PM
If you make this into an actual game (which I would advice) it would be a nihilistic version of You Have To Burn The Rope...

Actually that would be a great mini game, that sort of focus on the pointlessness of games. That sort of mocks the player, telling them how they are wasting their lives (preferably not directly but making the player realize it their selves).

I am really tempted...
311  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Scene based narrative on: February 25, 2010, 09:56:40 AM
Need to give The Path a stab one of these days. I have been meaning to for a year or so Smiley

While I do think that back story and forced narrative are not bad things (and I guess you do neither), I agree that one should not be to hung up on them (as in first create a story and then find a way to force the player through it). Although I have written about this, I seem to kind of stuck in in myself. Once the fixed story is removed a lot of problems go away, such as "what if the player fails to notice this!".

Perhaps each scene could be seen as some kind of experience chamber that shapes itself after the player's interaction. As a sort of play mate (like you have been talking about earlier). That way it should not be a matter of having a set interaction space to explore, but rather to make it inviting for interaction and then provide interesting feedback for the player. Once the experience chamber has nothing more to offer, the player should feel compelled to move on.

Now this sounds all nice, but the problem is of course (as always) to implement it properly! Having a game shape itself after the player is far from a trivial problem, so I guess some sort of cheating is must. And as you say, I am cheating already by imposing a linear scene structure Tongue The big problem, as I see, is getting away from having an set number of interesting things that the player simply goes through and instead as this personal experience to it. That is something we have covered elsewhere so skipping that for now.
312  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Scene based narrative on: February 24, 2010, 11:30:12 PM
Yeah string of pearls seems pretty much like it. Although he examples are not games I would consider good examples Smiley The main thing about each scene (to me at least) would be that everything should be very close spatially and would easily give the player a good overview.

Regarding the "Next Scene" button, I guess it could be disguised as a sort some sort of event that the player knows is final. For example: "Click here to enter escape pod" and then just letting the player experience the scene until they feel satisfied. I like your suggestion that instead of blocking the path forward, one could let the activities surrounding seem interesting. A good design might then be to make the "Next scene" button not so interesting at first but more and more attractive as the scene is explored. To go on with the "escape pod"-example, the player could notice how the ship falls apart when it is examined more closely, giving the message that entering an escape pod is a good idea.

I am really interested of doing this in a way that:
1) Makes sure that the player is never stuck (in many games, even without puzzles, one can get stuck at "guess the verb" or pixelhunting).
2) Does not keeps the player at scene through meaningless or additive awards (like achievements)
3) Still makes it possible to tell a story.

I see a little dilemma though. If one has a room where there is a certain number of possible interactions to be made and the player can choose to exit at any moment, what shall one do to limit the player's feeling of missing out on stuff. Either one can make sure that all that can be done is super obvious, but then I think a lot of the immersion is lost (just a matter of working through a list). Or if it is always unknown if all is done (and what can be done), and the player might a) get stuck looking for more interaction b) leave the scene with a feeling of missing important things.
It seems to me that these two things are opposites and fixing one makes the other worse. Or is there some way of solving this?

As for Amneisa: Hidden items work really well to force some exploration, but it also seems a bit cheating to me, so I hope to improve for upcoming games. Nobody seems to mind it, but I guess people are just indoctrinated into gaming standards Wink
313  Creation / From the ridiculous to the sublime / Re: Generative/procedural graphics on: February 24, 2010, 07:54:04 PM
This talk about Jonathan Blow is kind of related:
http://braid-game.com/news/?p=666

He kinda speaks about letting the game design itself from a set of simple rules, which is pretty much was procedural content is about too. Jonathan seem to focus on ordinary gameplay aspects but perhaps it can be expanded to include nottier games too. I find this kind of exploration of a hidden universe endlessly interesting (which my fractal program shows Smiley ), so I might be a bit bias towards the usefulness of the stuff Jon talks about.
314  Creation / Notgames design / Scene based narrative on: February 24, 2010, 07:18:50 PM
I am looking into the usage of scene based narrative a bit and think that it can be quite effective. What I mean by scene based narrative is that the player is confined into a smaller area and after some kind of criteria is fulfilled the game moves on to the next scene (there can of course be branching scenes and so on). Example games of this would be Heavy Rain and Photopia.

The reason I think it is a useful (meta?) design is that it confides the space of possible interactions, so it is easier for the player to navigate through the game. It also acts as a sort of engage and reward feature. Players feel "progress" when coming to a new scene and feels pushed towards continuing the game since they want to know what the next scene will look like. It also mimics the way many books, films and plays are built up where the scene-design is a very effective mechansim.

First of all I would like to hear your thoughts on this. What do you think of this kind of design? Do you see any drawbacks by using it?

Next, I would like to hear your thoughts on what kind of progression criteria one should use. More "gamey" games could have a puzzle needed to be solved or some other kind of obstacle, but that would not be in the spirit of not games Wink Instead I am interested in mechanisms that does not filter players (in the way a puzzle or skill based challenge do), but instead arer straight forward focus on improving the experience of the scenes. The most simple would be to just have "Next Scene" button and allow players to progress when ever they feel like it. Another way is to require some simple interactions to be made and one could highlight these so they are impossible to miss. To me the previous two ideas does not seem very immersive when just implemented in a straightforward fashion though. Perhaps one could hide them a bit, but how obscured can these things be until they become puzzles? Any other ideas?

Finally, I am very interested in hearing examples of games that use this approach and your thoughts on how the scene-based design worked in these.
315  Creation / Reference / Re: Hey, anyone played Heavy Rain yet? on: February 24, 2010, 04:05:43 PM
I have not played the thing but glanced through a lot of reviews and player comments on it and caught some interesting stuff.

For example, people seem to find action sequences tense even though failure is not possible (or at least highly improbable, characters will only die at very rare scenes as far as I know). We know that this is true in books and films, but there seem to be some sort of common-knowledge in games that you need to have a possibility of death in order to create tension. Heavy Rain pretty seems to disprove this and I think that is a very important thing. It might be because that there has been a lot of talk along the lines of "every choice as a consequence" (which as far as I know not true), but I do not think that is all there is to it.

I am also wondering if the interaction system in Heavy Rain is a one-trick pony. Would another game using the system be as well received? There seems to be so little exploration left for the player, especially compared to plot heavy IF where there is always a lot of extra things to do (examining environment, interacting with "meaningless" objects, etc). Am I mistaken about this? If true, did you feel a limitation while playing?
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