[...] a PC World interview with the lead designer of Dragon Age, a major single-player game from Bioware. Mike Laidlaw on single-player games talks about the idea of creating such games today, when games such as World of Warcraft and even [...]

[...] October 2009 missed Leave a comment Go to comments Holy crap! That’s my response after I read a post on Raph Koster’s site (I’m playing feed catch-up) which quote from/linked to this [...]

How to take the initial constraints that set the gestalt and then figure out how to evolve it to get more seasons without jumping the shark… well that’s the trick ain’t it?

“I banged your Mother!” I’m still not sure that’s brilliant or just over the top.

The problem is always ‘say interactive; say programming’ so it becomes necessary to provide a means to add modules adaptively and recode their properties on the fly. It takes a helluva team to grok that and not fall into the traps of either a) over authoring so no non-deterministic branching or b) making is loose to the point that the magic circle or suspension of disbelief is frequently shattered by the need to take off the masks and work on the scripts.

And of course, someone has to have a real talent for situation design, seeing the tension and release (to musicians, the ADSR paradigm) and being to the game what a composer is to the orchestra: a thematic/action engineer so to speak.

I’m not a game programmer, but this all looks familiar. Advice? Don’t over rehearse and don’t stick to a setlist if you can avoid t.

My leaning would be towards a modular system. The modules would be scripted, but customized on the fly to fit the previous modules as well as the individual or group playing them. The code to choose the next module would take into account not only player actions and choices but the dramatic structure of the quest.

The outcome of the module string need not be meaningful to the broader game world — the sun will still rise and set whether the tailor’s daughter is rescued or ravished. But it should be meaningful to the player, a story that is uniquely his or hers, and perhaps one with some small consequence any time the player needs a new doublet.

I don’t think we can dismiss the potential impact of a flexible, dynamic quest system until somebody deploys one. UO’s broken quest system was so back-burnered that it fell off the stove. Nobody much cared. Then EverQuest exploded onto the scene, and part of the reason for its success was its robust quest system.

Now, in the age of WoW, the linear quest is so firmly established that it’s hard to imagine a mainstream MMO without such a system. What I’m hoping to see is another EverQuest-style revolution — somebody who takes the static, stagnant quest and shocks it back into life with an infusion of choice and consequence, not because current players are clamoring for it, but because once they play it, they’ll take it as the new standard.

Then again… it’d probably require a significant investment to develop, and it seems like huge development budgets mitigate against innovation (“We don’t want something fresh! We want WoW in Space!”). So I may be waiting for awhile… until some indy genius does an end run around the dinosaurs.

But stories aren’t static.

As long as they aren’t in a static format (eg, print), that’s true. When a story is retold and modified by the teller, that is a refresh similar to the game player refreshing the db with different values or as you illustrate, the player who seizes control of the situation to the chagrin of others. Sometimes that’s good but like an improvisatorial actor who goes off script live, mileage varies. The creator of Family Guy talking about their process said improvisation played a role but that in the end, the same process that makes Second City work live is terrible for television and that by the time the final product is presented, every line is hammered in stone. The costs will go exponential if the improvisation process is taken too far into the production schedule although this varies by format (eg, extra footage in movies, extra scratch tracks in song recording) and presentation and genre (eg, live comedy vs dramatic theatre).

Note ‘presentation’ and ‘format’. When an audience is watching, it makes a difference to process. When an actor is ‘participating’, it makes a difference. Is a game with an audience the same presentation as a game without one this side of sports (excluding hockey)?

Speaking as a player, I care. It frustrates me to waltz into an ambush like a lamb to the slaughter, even though it’s blatantly obvious that it’s a trap, because there’s no other way to advance the quest. It thwarts my narrative vision of what my character would do in such a situation, and substitutes the designers’ vision of what a generic character should do. If I can’t make meaningful decisions that affect outcomes, it’s less the experience of telling stories around a campfire and more like listening to a tape recording of stories around a campfire.

Except that for every person that cares how many are there who do not? Few MMOs allow for multiple solutions to quests and that hasn’t stopped them from gaining market share. I happen to agree with you, but the market doesn’t seem to.

I think it would be great to have more things like what happened in the UO storyline happen, but how many players would care? Enough to actually support the development cost for something like that?

I play a lot of Puzzle Pirates and with my flag we have a goal to take an island and change the game state. Or change the economy by attempting to manipulate the market. Or just hang out and defeat computer pirates (which doesn’t change the world) until we are Legendary or Ultimate (which changes everyone’s comparison rankings).

But is taking an island in Puzzle Pirates really any more meaningful than defeating some instance in WoW? One changes the world and one doesn’t but does anyone really care?

I remember one occasion in UO, during a player-run storyline, when one player who was supposed to be kidnapped by the evil forces of darkness (culminating in an epic battle, of course) instead grabbed the MacGuffin and ‘ported out. The fellow who had scripted the encounter was livid; I was in stitches. The player whom he had cast in his mind as a hapless victim had rewritten her part on the fly and become a bold hero instead.

Much wringing of hands ensued, but eventually the storyline was massaged into a new form, arguably stronger for the unexpected twist of the damsel getting herself quite handily out of distress.

That flexibility and collaborative approach to storytelling is one of the greatest innovations of the tabletop RPG. Obviously, there are technological limitations to incorporating that into computer RPGs. But just as obviously, it’s a temporary obstacle, and one that is begining to be dismantled.