Shakey-Lo on 9/2/2009 at 06:49

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It's not just player choice though, for example two powerful AIs might get along quite well with one another, but then one of them discovers a particular technology that makes them found a new religion - the difference in religion causes a rift between the two allies that ultimately leads to a world war. That can all emerge without any player input - in fact it may occur before the player has even discovered that part of the world - and without any direct input from the game designer; it simply comes from the rules put in place (eg. progress leads to tech, tech leads to religion, religion might lead to diplomatic tension, tension might lead to conflict, conflict might lead to war). It then of course leads to situations the player must react to and make decisions about, while the next game will have wildly different situations thanks to different variables coming into play. You might look back at the previous religion example and find that one civ discovered the tech first thanks ultimately to the advantage originally offered by their founding city being randomly placed next to a source of wheat. It's chaos theory man!

And again, Far Cry 2 made a few tentative steps in this direction, where a whole half an hour of 'narrative' might be due to you having to fight your way through to a source of medicine because you're running low on malaria medicine. A lot of people hated the malaria mechanic, and I can see why, but like in Civ it was a variable that led to narrative outcomes. Similarly a lot of people disliked the way the game gave you a simple objective on the other side of the map and you had to fight your way through multiple camps to get there, but to me this was a strength - a simple objective means the designers are interfering with your play session as little as possible, and the obstacles between you and it allow for creative gameplay. For that matter I don't see how it's any different to, say, Call of Duty or Halo where you're given an objective a long way away and have to fight your way through a long corridor to get there.

It's not hard to imagine a game like Far Cry 2 but with a fully procedural narrative like in Civ. Take the other mercenaries in FC2, make them free-standing entities and give them a simplistic diplomacy engine like the AI civs have in Civ (there is already a bit of this with the player history in FC2) and have a simple end goal for you all to aim for. Then like Civ, stories emerge from the shifting diplomacy between characters as they all compete towards a common goal. You could still get the sort of changing relationship like your character has with the Jackal but it would be unscripted and procedural (ie. game-like). Of course there may be technical hurdles and so on but the theory is easy.

Anyway I could write an essay on all this stuff and might just do that some time soon, its been bubbling away in my mind for a while. This post started off as a couple of sentences :erm: At this point, I am considering doing some post-grad. Oh and I didn't mean to list my 'credentials' to try and give off authority :p just to show I'd been "in the trenches" and try to give a first hand student's account :D

edit: Dwarf Fortress is again the sort of thing I'm talking about, it sounds great and I've tried to get into it but just couldn't get past its user-unfriendly nature. Another slightly different example would be all the incredible stories that emerge out of (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/02/05/internet-spaceships-super-drama/) EVE Online and other MMOs like (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/09/05/planetside-the-1/) Planetside.

edit edit: another example of a hybrid between a scripted/systems approach to narrative would be singleplayer or co-op in Left4Dead, with the AI director. Though that is a little heavy-handed for my tastes, rather than being a logical closed system of variables, it seems more like a rigidly defined set of reactions to certain events.

edit edit edit: or... you could do a (http://www.collegeotr.com/college_otr/uc_berkleys_starcraft_class_is_all_sorts_of_awesome_18451) course on (http://www.collegeotr.com/college_otr/first_video_from_berkleys_theory_of_starcraft_class_18611) starcraft instead...

Pidesco on 14/2/2009 at 02:02

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You could use the Final Fantasy games and, to a lesser extent, Bioware's games as examples of how not to do narrative and writing in games.

Tonamel on 14/2/2009 at 03:43

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I disagree with it being of questionable value. Knowing what doesn't work (and why) is just as, if not more, important than knowing what does.

Think of it in terms of having a checklist to follow. A checklist of "don't do these things" still allows for a great deal of creativity in what you end up doing, whereas a checklist of "these things work" encourages formulaic design.

But if the schedule's full, then there's not much you can do.

Wormrat: It's an independent study. He's teaching nobody but himself (and his friend, I guess).

Shakey-Lo on 14/2/2009 at 04:08

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My games lecturer did his PhD on narrative in Final Fantasy :sweat:

Pidesco on 14/2/2009 at 10:37

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I wasn't thinking so much about sub-par narratives but, rather, about weaving narrative and gameplay. I'd say that for your course, a game with a badly written plot which is well weaved with the gameplay is more important that a game with an interesting narrative that has bugger all to do with what the player is actually doing in the game..