Is it so possible to shut into a box what “experimental” means for games?
If so – couldn’t an experimental game push the boundaries of what we consider a game at all? Something that pushes against the definitions of given categories and expectations we have for them – something more than just incorporating unorthodox or non-mainstream elements?
What makes an unorthodox element? Swink says that most experimental games toy with our core notions of reality and how it behaves – and thus how we expect things should behave in a simulated environment. Don’t all games do this, to some extent?
The question seems to be simply how far does it go – that is, does the sense of reality in the simulated environment match what FEELS appropriate once we’re immersed, regardless of whether or not our sense of what feels right IS right – and how central is the unexpected behavior to the game mechanics?
Portal, Braid and Shadow Physics all make use of a simulated reality that runs strongly contrary to that of our own experience – but still make sense and are consistent, once a mental check and adjustment is made.
Mario and Sonic make use of representations of characters and elements that also run strongly contrary to our own experience in reality, but we don’t see it as experimental. With a Fire Flower I can shoot a fireball out of my hand… and through the water no less. However this isn’t the central mechanic, and isn’t violating a principle of reality as core to us as the idea that time moves only forward.
Is a truly experimental game a not-game? Most experimental games are all still games after all – systems of rules, meaningful decision-making, winning, losing, progressing.
There seems to be a split between what people consider experimental – one side looking at unusual/brain-bending game mechanics, but still couched firmly within the framework of “gamey” principles – and the other looking at more experiential interactive experiences aiming for immersion, but not being games per se.
Something to watch for from the USC EA Game Innovation Lab:
“The player’s voyage through The Night Journey takes them through a poetic landscape, a space that has more reflective and spiritual qualities than geographical ones. The core mechanic in the game is the act of traveling and reflecting rather than reaching certain destinations – the trip along a path of enlightenment.”
“It’s a game that rewards you for slowing down and for introspection,” says Viola, 59, a pioneer in the medium of video art for more than 35 years. “You’re alone and you’re not even told why you’re there. You just fall out of the sky into the middle of this amazing landscape with mountains, sea, desert, and forest, and go wherever you want,” he explains. “The more you do things mindfully, the more is revealed to you.”
The “Avatar Machine” was created by Marc Owens, a recent participant at the designers in residence program at the Design Museum in London.
Incorporating a physical, wearable costume inspired by (and apparently directly derived from) low-poly in-game character graphics, a suspended, back-mounted camera system, and a head-mounted visual interface, the Avatar Machine essentially allows a participant to move about and interact with an environment while viewing him/herself in the third person – an entity in a 3D world, viewing oneself outside oneself.
His statement for the piece:
“The virtual communities created by online games have provided us with a new medium for social interaction and communication. Avatar Machine is a system which replicates the aesthetics and visuals of third person gaming, allowing the user to view themselves as a virtual character in real space via a head mounted interface.
The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.”
Game nerds everywhere rejoice (…?). Gamers are intimately familiar with the experience of visualizing a self-representational entity from a 3rd person/over-the-shoulder/behind-the-back viewpoint, as it remains a standard convention of perspective in 3D games. With that shared experience as the context for the piece, it would be wild to be able to have it translated to your actual, physical self and environment, though I expect gamers and non-gamers would approach that experience very differently.
“The system potentially allows for a diminished sense of social responsibility, and could lead the user to demonstrate behaviors normally reserved for the gaming environment.”
For the most part, the language of third-person perspective 3D games is the language of violence. To a lesser extent, it also includes spatial navigation, exaggerated physical movement/capability, AI interaction, and so on – but pick up any 3rd person perspective game, and chances are good that the predominant way of affecting the virtual environment is through a physically destructive capability.
Is this what the statement suggests is the end effect of the Avatar Machine on the user?
Bearing that in mind, this hypothetical seems a bit bold to me. Can it potentially lead users to this conclusion? Or does it encourage it? Is that almost the intention of the piece?
Additionally, how much of this is enabled by the simple fact that a weapon representation is incorporated into the costume itself? Is anti-social behavior encouraged more by the simple fact that the Avatar Machine includes a modeled sword?
The language of 3rd-person games: arrows and guns. …And swords.
If anti-social behavior is simply suggested by a sense of viewing yourself from a traditional violent game perspective, would the implications be the same were the user unfamiliar with these paradigms of gaming? If you’ve never experienced a third-person perspective violent game, or controlled a polygonal fighter in a virtual environment, why would you have any inclination of these things in the Avatar Machine?
For non-gamers, people unfamiliar with this viewpoint and its conventions in games, I think what would be most notable is a sense of detachment; a sense of being outside yourself.
Therefore, does Owens suggest that this sense of detachment would lead a user to said gaming-environment-type actions without having game experience? That the natural conclusion of a sense/perspective of physical personal detachment is this diminished sense of social responsibility, contextual game experience notwithstanding?
Another thought: what would be the difference in self-perception if there was no “costume,” no polygonal wearable parts? Having the outfit – clunky, low-res models reminiscent of late 90s era 3D game tech – adds an immediacy, a visual impact to the piece, but doesn’t necessarily say anything about self-perception; the user’s place in the environment as an individual. Rather, wearing it, you become a generic bunch of abstracted polygons.
What if it incorporated appropriately digitized textures of your face, clothing, hair, etc. to a generic model, a la some existing attempts at in-game player texture mapping for custom characters? What if you were no longer “blond spiky-haired hero” and instead a differentiated, distorted representation of yourself as an individual? How then would you approach your place in the environment?
Keeping cartoon characters trapped in amber is one of the surest routes to irrelevancy. While Mickey remains a superstar in many homes, particularly overseas, his static nature has resulted in a generation of Americans – the ones that grew up with Nickelodeon and Pixar – that knows him, but may not love him. Domestic sales in particular have declined: of his $5 billion in merchandise sales in 2009, less than 20 percent will come from the United States.
“There’s a distinct risk of alienating your core consumer when you tweak a sacred character, but at this point it’s a risk they have to take,” said Matt Britton, the managing partner of Mr. Youth, a New York brand consultant firm.
Nintendo, Miyamoto, take note! Capcom, take note! “Keeping … characters trapped in amber is one of the surest routes to irrelevancy.” Mario and Link are not sacred! Megaman is not sacred! Give us something new, something relevant! These characters and franchises are sorely in need of some new ideas.
They’re still fun, but they’re safe, guarded. They aren’t moving games forward.
Right now Nintendo is caught between taking advantage of nostalgia (New Super Mario Bros. Wii) and presumably finding the best direction for the next big Mario and Zelda productions. If I were them, I would be pushing for a major reimagination.
I came across this Fumito Ueda quote as I browsed through a few recent articles on Gamasutra:
Gamasutra: All the games you’ve worked on are centered on a really important relationship, like with Ico and Yorda, or with the boy and the creature in The Last Guardian. What do strong relationships mean to you in your games?
Fumito Ueda: Well, there’s a significant relationship between the main character controlled by the player, and then the AI character — Yorda for Ico, the Colossi, and also the horse in Shadow of the Colossus, and in Last Guardian it’s the beast — but I don’t have an intentional plan or some big concept, or anything like this. But I think, maybe, I’m thinking that there’s something that can be said about relationships, between the AI and the player, that can only function in the computer entertainment world.
Compelling yet minimally presented character relationships are a memorable hallmark of Ueda’s games, the effect of which is made possible by the interactive nature of the medium. How could the player-AI relationship between Ico and Yorda be possible otherwise – where the player isn’t personally calling Yorda to grab his/her hand and run for their lives? Although to be sure, some gamers found her neediness irritating, I would argue that the atmosphere created by the simple moments of Ico-Yorda communication and interaction lead to something very rare in games. Very few titles succeed in having a similar effect.
I’ll hold off on rambling about this for the moment (and for Ueda’s games, ramble I indeed can), to bring up an ostensibly unrelated bit of game news; specifically that WayForward’s A Boy and His Blob remake has been released last week for Wii.
Its too early for me to comment on the remake, as I haven’t played it yet, but I’d argue that the original A Boy and His Blob on NES has a lot more in common with the aforementioned illusive qualities of Ueda’s games than one might realize.
GAMEPLAY-ORIENTED CHARACTER INTERACTION
Trying to draw a connection between A Boy and His Blob and a game like Ico or Shadow of the Colossus might seem like a stretch… but hear me out. This is bound to be a rambling post so bear with me…
Ueda’s character relationships are highly minimal in a sense: they are typically characterized by a lack of traditional narrative, and instead are built entirely through player action. Even when cutscenes are in play, they don’t aim to hit the player over the head with the relationships between the character – they are understated, simple, and serve only to direct player attention to issues involving advancement of the plot (which is minimalist to begin with).
Cutscenes illustrating the relationship between Yorda and Ico involve simply setting the context and finally at the end of the game, its resolution. Ico and Yorda can’t understand each other, but they’ll need each other. There is little to no narrative drama or complexity that isn’t equally matched by the drama created from playing the game itself.
What do I remember about Yorda? I remember holding hands, sitting down to save, coaxing Yorda into making a jump, calling her name to come to me. I remember running desperately to her as the shadows tried to hold me back, and pulling her up to safety. I remember her absentmindedly strolling and losing herself in her surroundings as I try to understand what to do next. I remember her fear as I try to defend her. This was truly the stuff of interactive drama, all told through the gameplay experience itself.
What about Wander and Agro? Why is it any different from Link and Epona; from the protagonist and dog of Fable 2? Wander’s relationship with his horse is much less complex and emotionally charged, some would argue, than that of Ico and Yorda. There is less of a protective instinct at play, less of a feeling of personal responsibility. In its place is a partnership of mutual respect – just as archetypal and immediately recognizable as Ico and Yorda’s relationship, but triggering different instincts and emotions in the player.
As characters, Link and Epona have a similar relationship, but to very different effect. The game continually illustrates their relationship through cutscenes, but the gameplay doesn’t reinforce the emotions that the narrative is meant to promote. Although expressed as a central character figure and is often supposed to tug at our heartstrings (“Look, he’s hurt his foot!”), in the game Epona fills the sidekick role, the tool of the player.
Additionally Epona is approached more as a traditional “game” element, rather than trying to express him as a living, breathing, thinking entity. If you have the means to summon him, he could be theoretically around the world somewhere, but he comes. He disappears and appears and there is little expression of realism in communicating that Epona acts like something approaching a real horse. Finally, controlling Epona is simply a matter of extending Link’s controls to the horse itself, with exceptions being digging in the spurs, and so on. Tilt the analog stick left, Epona turns left in response to the movement. But how is that functionally different from controlling Link himself?
At the start of the game, Agro also seems to be simply a tool for the player, but the shared experiences of fighting the colossi and wandering the landscape bring the player and Agro together. Although you control Wander, gameplay is a shared experience, in a sense. Rather than being an accessory to the experience, Agro is a necessity; dashing in and out of a colossi’s view, leaping onto Agro’s back as an enormous foot crashes down where Wander would have been. The sheer repetition of these events have a constructive effect on this formation of a player-AI bond. After Agro has saved Wander’s life for the 10th time, its hard not to appreciate him, and even harder to be unaffected by a certain moment towards the end of the game.
Agro, like Yorda, has a mind of his own. The player doesn’t control the horse itself, he/she controls Agro’s actions as they relate to the horse – pull back the reins. Give a little kick, or dig in the spurs. Lean back. By tilting the analog stick to the left, Agro doesn’t move – Wander moves the reins. Agro responds to Wander’s direction in a believable manner; protesting, or acquiescing accordingly.
The hero’s dog in Fable 2? Again, he’s approached as a game element – a feature to expand on the player’s experience, but not as something central to the game experience itself, despite what we were expecting out of the game. There’s no opportunity for the player’s relationship with the dog to grow beyond what it is at the beginning – he learns new tricks, he gets better at finding treasure and fighting bad guys, and so on – but no growth. Now this was still enough for me to be outraged at his fate in one particular ending of the game, but again – there’s no drama through the moments of gameplay themselves. The character of the dog is an accessory, a supporting role – made even more so by the lack of his (her?) centrality to the gameplay experience.
Now that I have outed myself as a rabid, possibly incoherent Ueda fanboy, let’s move on (back) to 1989.
DON’T FROWN, BLOB :-(
There is obviously much less to write about A Boy and His Blob. Its a simple, quirky, flawed game that manages to exhibit a nascent version of the same player-AI relationship that Ueda’s games are known for.
“Blobert” is extremely simple. He follows the player; he likes to eat jellybeans. When he eats a jellybean, he transforms, and later transforms back to his original blob form with a big smile on his … er … face. When he tries and fails to catch a poorly thrown jellybean, that big, broad smile transforms into an equally broad frown. Blobert wears his heart on his sleeve, and a few moments go by before the smile returns. Another jellybean helps ease the healing process, of course.
Simple, right? So what’s in common; what’s compelling? I would argue that the centrality of the AI character to gameplay, as well as the shared experience progressing through the game are where the similarities lie. You need your Blob, your Blob needs you. The early tech ensures that the entire experience of the character relationship is told through gameplay, not through heavy-handed exposition – it’s minimalist by technological limitation. Blob’s emotional expressions are effective through their simplicity; there is no attempt at raising the level of narrative to grasp at a cinematic quality that so many modern games try to emulate. Blobert follows you because he needs you, and you need his help in order to help him. Theres a simple honesty to the relationship that is unfettered by clumsy narrative – the game doesn’t attempt to be E.T., it lets the gaming experience speak for itself.
One could argue that there is far less drama in singular moments of gameplay than Ueda’s games, but the idea is the same.
Another thing: an area where these games have something strongly in common is a sense of isolation, of solitude. Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, through their minimalism, are incredibly lonely games to play. There are no friendly villagers to chat up, no quest-givers or merchants, in some cases, not even regular hostile encounters. A Boy and His Blob is the same way – there is the empty, quiet street, and the strange and dangerous caves below the subway lines. Finally there is the hostile and deserted alien world – no friendly Blobs to be seen. Isolation helps to drive the bonding process with the AI character – its the classic feeling of “two of us against the world.”
EMOTIONAL IMPACT THROUGH SIMPLICITY
What can the similarities between these ostensibly highly different games teach game developers in building emotional impact through AI-player interaction?
Simple, archetypal, minimal presentation helps to let relationships develop through gameplay, rather than cinematic narrative.
Don’t underestimate the impact of simple, everyday moments as player-controlled actions – holding hands, calling out to someone, and so on.
If scripted sequences are necessary to progress through the plot, use them to capitalize on what has already developed in the player through gameplay.
Creating a sense of isolation and dependency can be a powerful thing in building player-AI relationships through gameplay.
Quick thanks to Justin for helping me brainstorm on this topic.
Among all the AI issues commonly encountered in contemporary shooters, tactical and traditional RPGs, and other games involving combat, by far the most frustrating – and most neglected – issue is that of a true sense of self-preservation.
ACTING TACTICALLY
A sense of self preservation in game AI usually refers to AIs knowing to seek cover when under fire, knowing when to flank or camp, when to hold higher ground, strafe, or provide suppressing fire. The implementation of these AI tactics has taken tremendous strides forward since the early days of Wolfenstein 3D and its ilk, resulting in more immersive and believable combat in games. Games like Half Life and Halo raised the bar – and the advances they made were a mix of moving towards more accurately modeled AI as well as illusions to that effect.
The complaints about deficiencies in this type of AI ultimately point to two main issues: suspension of disbelief and realistic challenge for the player. That is, firstly – when an AI does not realistically react to an attack, by standing still or otherwise, immersion is broken and what usually is intended to be a dramatic moment of combat becomes exasperating or comical. Secondly, when the AI or groups of AIs do not move tactically in response to engagement, challenge disappears for all but the most novice of players.
When I write that a true sense of self-preservation is lacking in game AI – it is not a criticism of these existing measures to improve challenge and believability of combat AIs. These tactics are in high use now with varying degrees of success and I expect that they will continue to improve.
RUNNING FOR IT
What I mean is that there is a dimension of self-preservation which goes nearly completely unaccounted for. To the best of my knowledge, in most tactics-based combat games, AIs dont run for it, don’t surrender, don’t give up. Every battle is total war – the goal for AIs is destroy or be destroyed, nothing between. The only exception to this rule seems to be retreat as a scripted event.
This dimension of self-preservation is highly dependent on game context. In many games it is entirely believable that a retreat may not be possible, or that there is no choice or desire for anything but destroy or be destroyed – zombies, areas where retreat is impossible, and high stakes battles are some examples.
The Japanese soldiers featured in Call of Duty: World at War are another prime example of fighters who would not back down.
Also some exceptions include games like SWAT 4, where getting a suspect to submit peacefully is often a major goal of gameplay. Finally, strategy games usually incorporate retreat as a viable AI tactic.
RETREAT IN FAR CRY 2
One game where this is not the case is Far Cry 2. The setting of Far Cry 2 is a war-torn fictional African landscape of mercenaries paid to fight by rival factions and warlords. Foreign mercenaries make up the vast majority of AIs the player interacts with, and they aren’t fighting for the homeland, defending an ideal, or anything else – they are there to make money. If we accept this as a reasonable background for AI fighters, it is reasonable to believe that these characters are not there to be martyrs. Mercenaries are, as defined by Geneva Convention protocols, “motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain” (Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Convention of August 1949). It can be assumed that mercenaries are less willing to throw their lives away, since their cause is purely material in nature. Based on the nature of the setting, Far Cry 2 is rich ground for potentially highly diverse and meaningful interactions with enemy combatants.
One of the common complaints of the game is that in the countryside, at checkpoints, and essentially everywhere but the cease-fire zones, mercenaries of both factions shoot on sight – simplifying what could otherwise be a much more complex set of interactions. In addition to this, mercenaries attack consistently despite apparent situations of high risk. Driving directly into the midst of a checkpoint is one thing; the player would find himself surrounded and under heavy fire by multiple AIs. However consider this situation: the player drives down a dirt road in a truck that happens to have an easily accessible high caliber mounted gun, as a coupe with a single occupant suddenly appeared in the distance. The driver of the coupe notices the player and floors it, ramming the truck head-on. Meanwhile the player has stopped and moved to the gunner position, having trained the sights of the weapon directly at the driver. So what does the driver do now that both vehicles are immobile? He gets out, pulls up his rifle and starts shooting, regardless of the fact that he was in the sights of a much more dangerous weapon before he even stepped out of the car. …Er…naturally. Obviously its a breeze for the player to gun down the merc without taking a hit.
What would have been a believable response of the AI? To judge this a number of factors should be considered. The merc was a single combatant, facing a single player. Both are in vehicles. The AI’s vehicle has no weapon, the player’s vehicle has a mounted gun. The player has moved to the gunner position, aiming directly at the AI before he has stepped out from the drivers seat. An intelligent AI ideally should be able to recognize some of these factors and incorporate them into tactical decision making, which in this case would have had the merc attempting to drive the hell away before the player opened fire. Launching a suicide attack was not an intelligent decision.
Another situation: about a dozen AI mercenaries are manning a post of some kind. The player begins a surprise attack, launching rockets at the post from distance, killing the majority of the combatants. The remaining fighters attempt to seek out and engage the player down to the last man, despite the player potentially remaining hidden or maintaining some other highly advantageous position. Again a reasonable assumption would be that a merc AI that survived the initial attack would determine the potential risk to outweigh the benefits, and try to hightail it away from the combat zone or hide in the brush.
To realistically depict an AI’s retreat, the game could consider an average merc as having successfully escaped once reaching a certain distance from the player, and that would be the last the player saw of him. Alternately, mission goals could be dynamically altered if a more high priority target managed to escape. What if the game design incorporated such possibilities? The next step would be to assign a new location for the target and give the player additional information to track him down.
POSSIBILITIES
A number of metrics could be incorporated in determining an AI’s morale check in Far Cry 2 – how many in the merc group are alive or dead, the degree to which group outnumbers player, the position the player is aiming compared to the relative readiness of the AI, the weapons, equipment, or vehicle of the player, the reputation or notoriety of the player (which in Far Cry 2 was an prime example of unexplored potential), environmental factors (time of day, weather, etc.), as well as potentially randomized social factors (personality traits of mercs, relative pay amounts of mercs). Ultimately these metrics could potentially clutter the AI decision-making process with a huge range of factors to consider in attempting to reach more complex and realistic behaviors, but the resulting decision itself is simple – fight or flight – one of the most primal of instincts.
Far Cry 2 was overall a very well made and beautiful game that felt slightly unfinished in some areas and highly polished in others, which often contributed to the inevitable breaking of immersion and the fourth wall. Getting realistic AI reactions in all situations is of course a lofty goal, but giving AIs additional depth in representing that they value their lives in commonplace combat situations would have given the encounters, storytelling, and setting additional consistency and gravity.
– The imagery of Love made me recall discussions I periodically have with my artist girlfriend. I show her various videogames that I considered to have new and unique art styles. She responds that it looks almost the same as every other 3D game, even ones i would consider to be very different. These conversations lead to the realization that “large differences” in art direction of most 3D games in reality are only slight differences when considering the overall effect received by the viewer. While the differences in atmosphere, color tone, detail of textures & shapes, and light’s interaction with the environment may be significant between games like Shadow of the Colossus, Half Life 2, Gears of War 2 & Okami, the similarities outweigh the differences. They all consist of objects of certain colors and shapes placed within a 3D environment where light sources determine color intensity & darkening viewed from a mobile camera: essentially, the modern definition of rendering a 3d environment.
– Her primary question is: With technology at the state it is, why isn’t exploration of other methods of visually representing space more common? Can we visually create the atmosphere of walking down a city street without attempting to recreate each individual lamppost or garbage can? Can we rethink digital 3d space in a manner distinct from the legacy of games like Wolfenstein?
– As far as I can figure, there are 2 general methods of at least partially achieving this goal.
– The first is to create a 3D space in the traditional sense, but then apply complex filters to change the viewer’s perception of the world.
– The second is to rethink from the ground up how to make the viewer perceive movement through an environment while viewing a 2D screen.
DON’T FROWN, BLOB :-(
