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346  Creation / Reference / Re: Heavy Rain on: January 28, 2010, 02:55:44 PM
I brush my teeth too. And I shower. But I am not boring!  Shocked
Didn't you know missing some teeth and smelling bad are the first steps towards becoming interesting? Wink

Jokes aside, from a game standpoint these are the acts of a really boring characters (Kratos sure never brushed his teeth). So for a player it conjures the feelings of a "boring" (average better word?) character and thus is a help in conveying emotions. I think this can be a good thing to have in games  but perhaps not so early (since one usually wants to grab attention at the start).

Do not think I am some heavy rain fan boy now Tongue I am actually quite skeptical about it (not liking Fahrenheit very much) and this opening scene could probably have been made better.

To do some constructive work. Does anyone have any ideas on how to make it more interesting? If the meaning (guy wakes up an prepares for childs birthday) needs to be remain, how can one do this better? I am think perhaps adding a glimpse of something to come (hinted by flashes or whatnot) + cutting down on the toothbrush and shave mini games is start. Interested in hearing what all else think!
347  Creation / Reference / Re: Heavy Rain on: January 28, 2010, 10:58:41 AM
I still think it nice that they try this kind of stuff in games. Although the shaving and toothbrushing seems a bit too much. I think it could help build the character although boring. I mean, he is supposed to be a boring guy right? Smiley Also this kind of mundane stuff could be a large contrast to upcoming events and make these stronger.


Speaking of mundane gameplay. Here is an IF game with a very boring (and non-gamy) start, but it has an excellent twist to it:
http://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=qzftg3j8nh5f34i2

It only takes 20min or so to complete so I encourage all to check it out!
348  General / Check this out! / Re: Dear Esther new look? on: January 28, 2010, 10:54:14 AM
I think the graphics look really impressive. I hope this gets finished.
349  Creation / Notgames design / Re: My research: Player, Agent, Designer and Symbiosis on: January 27, 2010, 05:33:57 PM
I have been making first person games for something like 8 years now, and over time I have been more and more interested in this relationship you describe. Since the genre I have been working in have been horror games, having the player relating to what is happening on screen is really important. In our previous games (Penumbra) we had a protagonist with feelings and own will (for example: character said that he did not want to enter a tunnel because it was too dark, etc). In our upcoming game (Amnesia) we have a character with no feelings or will at all and have designed the game around the player "being" the protagonist as much as possible. Since the game is not done yet, it will be fun to see how this works out and what it does for immersion. I leaning towards that is a non-feeling protagonist (which we have in Amnesia) will have the highest sense of "being", but I am far from sure. I am sure it also depends a lot on other issues (like the type of mechanics, etc), but it would be interesting to hear your thoughts on this.

Also, did you check some Swedish research (cannot recall the uni) that created "out of body experiences" by placing VR googles on subjects and then having a camera somwhere else? It actually turned out that one could to some extent make a person believe that they where inside another body by using this sort of feedback. For example, they put the camera on a mannequin and showed a knife close to its stomach and this would make the pulse on the subject go up. I did not read the paper (only show a short news clip) but thought it was quite interesting.
350  Creation / Reference / Re: The Scale of the Universe on: January 27, 2010, 09:02:03 AM
Really excellent! I would really like to see more like this! Using (not)games to get across a scientific message is a really nice thing!

I did not really like the presentation though. There is a lot of improvements to the graphics, animations added , different levels could have different sounds, and so on.

This is also a simple of example of learning oriented goals. You stop "playing" when you had enough and can go back until you feel you learned all there is to explore.
351  Creation / Reference / Re: Heavy Rain on: January 27, 2010, 08:44:25 AM
I really like the mundane events that is going on, it is really unusual to find this kind of of stuff (outside of IF games).That said, it looks a lot like Fahrenheit (Indigo Prophecy) which I did not really care for (except for the first 10 min, what was in the demo essentially). I do not like seeing all the options (which mostly is one option) seem so limited to me.

One thing about Heavy Rain that I am not sure about is the promise of the branching plot. While it sounds nice that all actions have consequences and that one never has to do anything over twice, it also makes me wonder with how many interesting stories they can come up with. Most games/books/films have trouble getting one narrative good Smiley I also wonder how much they can really branch. A branching story line grows exponentially it would be impossible to support this after just a few choices. My guess is that most choices are either superficial (will I drink juice or milk) or converges back to the same path after a while.

Still, I would really like to try it out and see what it all feels like.

Some more info in case anyone is interested:
http://www.gametrailers.com/video/japanese-special-heavy-rain/61125
352  General / Check this out! / Re: Frictional: “How gameplay and narrative kill meaning” on: January 22, 2010, 08:51:25 AM
alphonse:
Yeah, that is pretty much what I mean! I think that was a nice summary. This also means that good stories can be created with gameplay, but it will greatly limit what they can contain.
353  General / Check this out! / Re: Frictional: “How gameplay and narrative kill meaning” on: January 21, 2010, 11:24:06 PM
Having thought about this point a bit, I am not sure that what I how express is veryclear and it might even by that I am not entirely correct in my thinking. Here is another attempt to expand, please comment!

The most basic point I am trying to make is that the goal generated gameplay does not go in the same direction as the narrative. And here is where I should have described it a bit differently. Because, thinking about it, the problem is not so much that gameplay is in the way of narrative, but more that the goals of the narrative can be very different from the goals of the gameplay. As long as goal is to slaughter monsters, all is okay. But when it comes to talking to other people or something like that the gameplay totally fails to portray that. So usually you have to end up in a cut-scene or something similar to force this narrative into the game.

That said, there is also the problem of pacing the story correctly and if you want a scene with a lot of emotional impact then replaying it will seriously damage the feel. But, repeating might be important for the gameplay (here I mean repeating as in failing and trying again) and thus you either have to cut down on gameplay (make it easier) or cut down on narrative (loose impact on the scene).

There is of course also the problem of freedom, and this does not have to be sandbox game like freedom. This can just be as simple a room with several doors and a narrative that demands that the player a certain door, while gameplay wants the player to visit them all. The same problem is with gameplay allow (and encourage) the player to kill people, and narrative demands that some are interacted with.

Also, unless gameplay is very connected to the narrative, it will detract as they will not have much to do with one another. If the narrative has some love plot, it will be a lot harder to care, when all you want to do is to blow shit up Smiley

Hope that cleared it up! I am trying to wrap my head around all this too, so very happy for any feedback. I have gotten these feelings about it gameplay and narrative after working for a while and part of reason for writing it down, is to make sense of it all Smiley
354  Creation / Notgames design / Death on: January 21, 2010, 06:08:32 PM
In many works of fiction death play a large role, so it is not strange if it does so in games too.

In normal games death is very common and comes in the form of a trial and error mechanic. If the player cannot overcome a certain obstacle, she dies and has to try again. In a notgame, obstacles like this are best avoided, so how to do death?

For me death, symbolizes the ultimate loss and think this is why it is so common. At first glance one might think that games have a much more simpler way to incorporate death, but in reality the death normally found in games is not much of a loss (unless one is playing some hard core perma-death game). It is just a form of set back and not at all the kind of "ultimate loss" that it is in other media. This makes me feel like there is a lot more to explore regarding death in (not)games.

Other than having the normal "character dies as part of plot", what sort of way can it be implemented? I am really interested what you all think about this and if you have any good examples of games that deal with death in an interesting way.
355  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Rewarding the notplayer... on: January 20, 2010, 11:17:17 AM
I think it should be possible to have knowledge as a reward. One first needs to hint to the user that there is some understanding to be gained and then hint at what needs to be done in order to understand it. Then the world would needed to be explored and interacted with in order to gain this knowledge. Even better would be some kind of layered knowledge where one piece can be used as a building block for some other greater knowledge.

This is not a trivial thing though and I think it is a bit like a puzzle, with the major difference that you can partially gain knowledge of something (not really possible for a puzzle). As for an example of what I am thinking about, it could be some kind of ecological connection in the virtual world or it could be something that connects to the real world more directly (like learning physics). At least for me, knowledge is a great carrot when reading some kind of books, and it also allows one to come back to a work, since the more can be understood each time.

A bit connected to this is listening to classical music and for me there are two things that reward me when listening. First of all it is the beauty of the experience and one can sort of dream away to another world when listening. Secondly, especially on subsequent listening, more details start to appear and one can focus on certain aspects of the music that will reveal more of it. For me that feels a bit like gaining knowledge. Especially in complex music like Bach, it can be very rewarding to listen to a piece several times, each time discovering something new.

Sorry for the rantish nature of this, hopefully something made sense Smiley
356  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Making the player examine the world on: January 19, 2010, 10:14:17 PM
Haha! What an awesome trick Cheesy
357  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Making the player examine the world on: January 19, 2010, 09:27:45 PM
Although not very good at magic, I know bit of the theory behind it and have also been thinking about making use of it in games. Like you said Erik, it can be a very good way of setting the player in a certain mindset and I am very interesting in exploring that more!. The kind of magical thinking I have used is to repeat something for the player so that they will assume it will always happen like that and then do some trick Wink For example, you can make players do a choice that will end up with bad consequences if wrong and then you can give more similar choices further on, but without the consequences. This way one adds tension without the need to have a win/loose mechanics since the player will think that they barely escaped at each choice.

Another thing (a bit unrelated to the topic) is to have a "magicans choice". I saw a clip of Penn and Teller pulling a lil prank on some computer science guy (cannot recall name otherwise I would have searched for clip), where some people set him up to test a new computer program. At the beginning of the program he was given a choice of what he wanted to see and one of these choices where "magicans". Now by making the other choices boring, they made him pick the "magicans" option and by that kinda forced him into a certain path, even though he thought he made a free choice. This is just a simple example, but I think that by giving the illusion of choice an experience can be greatly enhanced. Like magic, it does not hold up for replay, but not all media needs to be replayable Wink
358  Creation / Notgames design / Re: Existence on: January 19, 2010, 04:58:33 PM
If there is some kind of procedural generation built in to it, I think that traveling to these virtual worlds make it even more exciting, because then it truly feel like you are exploring. Recently I heard of something called the mandelbulb, which is a mathematical fractal that when rendered is truly fascinating to explore. I actually made my own app to be able to do it in real time Smiley I have put hours into this app and explored this fractal and it has given me the same kind of experience as if I where visiting some far away place. I am not sure if this is the lil platonist in me speaking, but it truly feels like a real place to me. I think this comes from the fact that some algorithm creates it + that the same object can be explored by others so I can share experiences

Imagine having something like this, but with animals, etc to explore. That would be truly awesome.
359  Creation / Notgames design / Making the player examine the world on: January 18, 2010, 08:15:40 PM
This is sort of a sub-topic of the whole reward topic, but I think it deserves its own thread.

Once a virtual world is modeled we obviously want the player to examine it, interact with it and take in all that it can offer. The "naive" approach is just to assume that the player will look at it because of its intrinsic beauty (or what not). To understand why I think this is a bit naive, consider going to an old castle with or without a guide. When you are just walking around by yourself you will take in impressions but will not be sure exactly what is worth focusing on and will have a harder time to remain interested (at least this the way I mostly feel). On the other hand if you have a guide (and this does not have to be a person) you will be told what to focus on and also be told more information about objects and get more out of the experience. Getting to know an object (where it came from, what it is used for, etc) will greatly enhance the experience of looking at it.

How to do this in (not)games? In normal adventure games they do it by simply having descriptions and while that works it kind of forces an impression on the player and will not be doable sometimes. I am not sure if it was the meaning, but I think it was nicely done in Fatale where the player had to light candles around the scene. I found that this made me inspect it more closely and I also liked playing around with the physics I was close in. I would not have gotten to know the scene as well without this mechanic. It would be really interesting to know if this was your intention Michaël.

In other games like Bioshock scavenging for items make one investigate more closely, but as this is highly connected with how gameplay mechanics of running around killing stuff, it will not work in a notgame. In Amnesia we have been considering using a similar approach, but only using items that are related to the story and will in turn enhance the environment (like finding the dagger used to committ a murder), etc. Siren uses a system like this.

I think this is very interesting as examining and interacting with environments is at the core of experience, but is made a lot harder when the simple gameplay (like shooting, etc) is removed. Would be very interested in hearing ideas and/or examples from other games!
360  General / Check this out! / Re: Frictional: “How gameplay and narrative kill meaning” on: January 18, 2010, 05:50:21 PM
I really like to have hard definitions Smiley It helps when discussion, but more importantly I think it makes you think through what you really mean with something. If one has the goal to get "meaning" into games, how can that be accomplished if one does not have a clear vision of what that meaning would be?

*Starts doing another round of proof reading*
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