Papy on 6/5/2009 at 02:58
demagogue : Most games have an "economical" gameplay. An F1 simulator has it, an RPG has it, a good number of FPS have it, even games like chess or go have it. The presentation is not about numbers labeled "happiness" or "fear", but the gameplay is the same. If the player buys the "happiness" and "fear" numbers, that is if he stops viewing them simply as numbers and start imagining emotions behind them, than you can have something special, but otherwise it's the same gameplay as everything else.
In the case of games like Civilization, the economical game is weak because solving the problem is really about solving a very simple equation (at least for people who micro-manage everything). There is very little variables and very little unknown. Civilization has a lot of things going on, it is somewhat complex, but it has almost no depth. A game like "Annals of Rome" had a much better "economical" aspect (in fact, it's the best example I can think of right now).
Chade : You don't really need the player to make "bad decisions" to push the story's message, you just need to give him incomplete information. The lack of information will make him think a lot about the situation and even if he doesn't make mistakes your message will probably come through. Manipulating someone, that is selecting the information he knows to indirectly making him think what you want him to think, is a lot more efficient than simply presenting a message. Politicians are a lot better than scientists to communicate a message. Anyway, if you give the player incomplete information, you can always punish whenever you like (just don't abuse it).
Also, games do not have to really be difficult, they just have to look difficult. The decisions the player has to make do not need to be crucial, they just have to look important. As long as the player thinks a lot while playing, the game will not be seen as trivial.
dethtoll : I never really played with The Sims so I can't be sure I know what this game is about, but based on descriptions I read, I'd say that no, what I described has absolutely nothing to do with The Sims. I can also say that what I described has also absolutely nothing to do with Fallout. So I'm not sure how you came to the conclusion this is a mix of The Sims and Fallout. Would you care to explain?
june gloom on 6/5/2009 at 03:22
psst:
(
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sim_games) there was a Sims series before The Sims
And you clearly don't know what Fallout is about. I was attempting to make a joke and you had to fuck it up by not getting it.
SimFallout. A post-nuclear simulation game.
Do you get it now?
Chade on 6/5/2009 at 04:01
Quote Posted by demagogue
for some reason I don't get into the Sims much ... the kinds of feelings I want to plumb are more ... drama-based?
Hey, sure ... I love The Sims, but it's only one game, and I'd definately like to explore a wider range of feelings.
Quote Posted by demagogue
I hate when games push agendas into their mechanics ... Game-freedom should be like world-freedom, totally valueless. It shouldn't be like you can frob an object in exactly the way that solves your problem ...
Hrmm, I wouldn't put it quite as starkly as this. I think pushing an agenda into mechanics is great. But it should be done in such a way that the game still plays well and the optimal strategy is not obvious. Which I think still leaves you with some room to manouvre.
Whereas, typically in RPGs, it is often possible to choose from competing actions, not because you know which one is best strategically, but because you know what sort of message the developers are going for.
While low-level and indirect choices can be combined in interesting ways, I can also imagine situations where a well designed game presents climaxes with a discrete choice that either solves the game or doesn't. Making the choice more discrete (and less emergent) increases the importance of that individual choice, making the moment more climatic.
Take a hypothetical detective game, for instance. The game could involve the player scrounging around for clues, culminating in a scripted "fireside chat" scenario where the player gathers the NPCs together and announces who the murderer is. If he gets it right, he wins the game. If he gets it wrong, his reputation with the NPCs suffers and he is sent back to the drawing board.
LATE EDIT: Wow, QA fail ...
You don't really need the player to make "bad decisions" to push the story's message, you just need to give him incomplete information. The lack of information will make him think a lot about the situation and even if he doesn't make mistakes your message will probably come through. Manipulating someone, that is selecting the information he knows to indirectly making him think what you want him to think, is a lot more efficient than simply presenting a message. Politicians are a lot better than scientists to communicate a message. Anyway, if you give the player incomplete information, you can always punish whenever you like (just don't abuse it).Quote Posted by Papy
You don't really need the player to make "bad decisions" to push the story's message ...
I think you make a lot of good points. Ultimately, however, it still boils down to giving the player something to think about. So there has to be some sort of complexity (real or apparant) in either the theme or the way in which it is applied during the game. This is something our current crop of moralistic RPG's don't do very well.
Tonamel on 6/5/2009 at 06:11
From the Pervasive Gaming/ARG side of my head:
I'd love to make an MMO with a GPS component. By which I mean using a specially made GPS unit to play parts of the game in real world locations. Special loot becomes more frequent the further you get from your hometown, or you actually have to go somewhere to pick up a quest item. Parties might get bonuses if the members of the group are in the same physical location, that sort of thing.
Sort of like (
http://playfoursquare.com/) Foursquare, but even more gamelike.
Papy on 7/5/2009 at 03:30
Quote Posted by Chade
Ultimately, however, it still boils down to giving the player something to think about. So there has to be some sort of complexity (real or apparant) in either the theme or the way in which it is applied during the game. This is something our current crop of moralistic RPG's don't do very well.
In the case of an RPG, I think making the player wanting to think about what's there, that is the world and its characters, is better than using artificial complexity. There is no need for difficult mathematical puzzles or complex tactical gameplay to make the player think. You just need to show people, their ideas and their emotions, and let the player think by himself about them. I don't mean there should be no puzzles, and I certainly don't mean there should be no bad consequences for the player, but problems and complexity should first and foremost arise from understand NPC and the world, not from things.
I believe one of the reason RPGs can't achieve this is because their characters are simplistic and one sided. They are the kind of characters an 8 year old could imagine (and understand). And even if the author try to give some depth to those characters, the player spend very little time with them compared to the time he spend revealing an arbitrary map and fighting enemies. Characters are secondary within the gameplay. The focus is on things.
Another reason they fail is, in my point of view, because the morality is already decided by the game. It doesn't let the player judge what's good and what's bad, it decide itself what's good and what's bad and then it asks the player if he wants to play the role of the good guy or the role of the bad guy (with the bad guy being a pure caricature). This is not morality, this is, at best, asking the player to be an actor (and at worst considering the player as a kid who can't judge complex concepts like morality). Acting can be fun, but when the player acts he doesn't really think for himself, he just follows a model. It's not him who kill, steal and lie, it is the model he's following. A good actor can become the model, but very persons are good actors. Anyway I'm a grown up now. I'm more interested with being myself than with imitating.
I almost forgot... the player's character should not be the formidable super hero who can solve everything with his own mighty powers, as we can find in stories for kids. If you don't need anything from anyone, if you can just more or less take whatever you want, there is no need for morality. Ultimately, even the most complex moral system is always about personal gain.
Chade on 8/5/2009 at 05:24
Quote Posted by Papy
In the case of an RPG, I think making the player wanting to think about what's there, that is the world and its characters, is better than using artificial complexity. There is no need for difficult mathematical puzzles or complex tactical gameplay to make the player think ...
Well sure, I didn't mean to imply otherwise.
But characters that you can interact with in complex ways do imply a certain amount of mathematical complexity. I don't think you can get around that.
Papy on 9/5/2009 at 02:23
Knowing what to answer to "does this robe makes me look fat" is a very different kind of problem than aligning three knobs to open a secret door. They may be both "mathematical" from a programming perspective, but psychology is not mathematical from a player perspective. I'm pretty sure those two problems will use completely different parts of the brain.
The best proof I can give is myself. I'm quite good with the three knobs problem, but absolutely clueless to the "makes me look fat" problem. And I really mean it. And I mean I realized today I am a fucking idiot. I really need a game to train me to female psychology. Really.
greypatch3 on 9/5/2009 at 04:09
I'm actually putting this out there in the hopes that I could put together a demo with people who are either very good at level design in either DromED or something similar, because I REALLY want to make this. The trouble is, I can do some programming (though only logic-based crap, I can't stand anything with the word floating integer in it), but I cannot do art or level design worth crap. And like I said, demo...just something to show it can be done and, hopefully, get a bunch of good programmers and artists noticed.
I came up with this after reading a book about design documents, and though I only have a one page treatment, I can pretty much sum it up as follows:
You are a college student at a local university, inconveniently located in the middle of nowhere; the closest town is at least a few miles' away, and getting there means either having a car or taking a hike through the scenic woodland trails. Naturally, this spells trouble when a professor decides to dig through a book of ancient, deadly rituals and opens the gateway to another world.
Within a few hours, the campus is overrun. Students are being overtaken by ghostly beings that possess them with demonic will. Giant monstrosities patrol the science building. Nameless things swim in the Olympic-sized swimming pool.
You are otherwise unaffected, but as a typical 2.8 student, you aren't exactly the people's hope to save the day. But, thanks to radios you find around, the on-campus DJ at the radio station informs you that there are some others that are unaffected, whose stereotypical skills just might tip the balance in your favor: the chemistry nerd, the journalist major (with the handy-dandy digital camera), the suicidal goth kid (who is more than willing to distract the monsters), and the jock who used to beat you up for your lunch money.
Here's the real trouble, though; campus is a 'gun-free' zone. If you want to shut the portal and send the monsters packing, you're going to have to rely on your cleverness and wits. May God have mercy on us all.
Gameplay is 1st person and very Thief/Deus Ex/Bioshock/System Shock-like; there are numerous monsters crawling the buildings and alleys of campus, and though you can try to beat them to death (by grabbing a fire extinguisher or frying pan, among others), you may be better served through stealth (sneaking through the roof of the English department instead of the front door), finding various monster weaknesses (i.e., giant floating eyeballs are vulnerable to the pepper spray you found in a locker), or distracting them (via the goth kid or by other means). There would be another element to worry about, though; smell. Depending on whether you were just in the showers or the school sewage system, monsters may be distracted from their routes to find out what smells so interesting. Even hiding in a locker may not be good enough. I was even recently considering that the more you use certain methods, the better you get at them (i.e., fighting the monsters makes you better at it, whereas sneaking by without conflict gives you stealth bonuses...you can probably tell I've been playing Oblivion lately). The other cool thing? Anything you find (and I mean...well, almost ANYTHING) can be used as a weapon or tool to aid you on the way.
On the one hand, now that I write this, it sounds sort of derivative; on the other, I think in practice it would stand on its own. The tone, while horrific and scary, is also supposed to be extremely humorous, too. Think Slither-type humor.
I also had another one about a haunted house, a time travelling-clock, and a way for the game to randomly select 1 of 4 different events to occur when you first enter a room (i.e., ghosts attack when you enter the living room, but start a new game and zombies crawl out of the floorboards...or something to that effect). But even that one is way too crazy to put here.
EDIT: Went and read the rest of the thread...Sulphur, I've actually been bouncing the last idea about the house thingie as a text adventure, and I've yet to learn how to use Inform 7 correctly (I tried creating a prologue and bungled that pretty good), but I've always loved those games and wanted to make a huge, epic one of my own. I understand those games are nowhere near popular these days, but it doesn't mean there isn't a market for 'em if done right. Besides, it's probably the only game I could make on my own without a talented team helping me.
Tonamel on 9/5/2009 at 04:42
A 2D platformer, where the game world is a jigsaw puzzle, and you can swap pieces around to change the map, or some pieces are missing and you have to find them somewhere else, or you can swap in pieces from other levels to give it a more patchwork feel.
A game in which the PC is a swarm of bees. You can keep them all together to keep attack power up, or you can have them split up into tens of smaller swarms (down to individuals!) to scout faster.
An RTS in which you're not in control of the lone hero, but rather the evil army. But YOU'RE not evil. Your goal is to manipulate the unwilling hordes such that the hero survives each map.
demagogue on 9/5/2009 at 07:46
Quote Posted by greypatch3
Within a few hours, the campus is overrun.
Here's the real trouble, though; campus is a 'gun-free' zone. If you want to shut the portal and send the monsters packing, you're going to have to rely on your cleverness and wits. May God have mercy on us all.
Gameplay is 1st person and very Thief/Deus Ex/Bioshock/System Shock-like
Sounds very much in the vein of
Midnight at Murkbell. Crack that open in Dromed and see how it was done for some inspiration.
Quote:
I've yet to learn how to use Inform 7 correctly (I tried creating a prologue and bungled that pretty good), but I've always loved those games and wanted to make a huge, epic one of my own.
Just my friendly opinion, but try TADS 3 instead of Inform. It's a little more flexible and powerful, and between the two I personally like TADS better.
