Story Now in video game design

[zakarntson]

Reading Mike's entry on two anime series, I was struck by what turns me off of so much anime. Namely, the substitution of story happening at that moment with either a) mysterious backstory or b) mysterious current events, both handed out in small doses over many, many hours. My favorite anime (among them Paranoia Agent, Tokyo Godfathers and Totoro

Comments

[strangea]

I thought I'd also mention the ever present groan-inducing metric for computer RPGs - hours of play. Your "Story Now" would move this metric into a more attractive range system (e.g. 20-60 hours).

Let me know when you need developers for your game co. :)

[zakarntson]

It's not my Story Now, but yeah, I would LOVE to freaking play a game like this. The replay value could be enormous.

And yes, I will let you know. In fact, I'll let you know for the game company I'm working at right now.

[locke61dv]

Awesome ideas. (I linked them on the 10x10room.) It's cool that you're going to try building this into the roguelike. I actually once had a project in building natural language interfaces into Nethack (so stuff like "kill all the monsters in the room and open the door" would work) but that code is somewhere in thes stratosphere. Let me know if I should hunt for it.

[zakarntson]

Thanks! Except I went over to 10x10 room and saw your mention, but no link back to this page!

I can't imagine trying to write a natural language interface for any game! Interactive fiction is hard enough, and that is filled with requirements for user input. How far did you get? (Oh, and don't bother hunting for the code just yet -- I'm on a self-imposed programming hiatus for at least the next two weeks)

I'm also nervous that I may be presenting a strawman in my sample scenario. Does all branching dialogue involve Hidden Story? Can you construct Story Now through branching dialogue? I need to come up with more examples, since the Kidnapping scenario is almost too fitting of an exmaple.

On the other hand, Jake read this article and then discovered Hidden Story in Morrowind. He was sent on a mission to kill some kind of crabs because they were attacking livestock: Exposition in dialoge! If Story Now were applied, the player would come across a group of livestock and the farmer being attacked by crabs.

[jakefish]

Yeah, that part was SO Hidden Story. I was told that mudcrabs were pestering a local woman's livestock. I visited her and she said that the two crabs had dragged away one of her beasts to the south. When I found them that had already finished with the captured animal. I was never "in the moment". Every step of the way, something had just happened. What if I could have stopped the crabs from taking the animal? What if I could have killed them before they killed the animal? Morrowind's (only?) downside it that TIME DOESN'T MATTER. Once I had to escort a woman in two day's time, but other than that, nothing. Merchants keep shop 24 hours a days. 99% of the quests have no time requirement, even if you are rescuing or saving someone.

I heard you were a hit with the 3rd Graders.

[zakarntson]

Hah! I was just reading something on Slashdot about how Oblivion lets you get really immersive, and the quests are really varied and whatnot. They're still quests!!!

I was working on a roleplaying game, and grabbed an old Planescape adventure book, Well of Worlds. I remember it being a classic, amazing example of how to do the weird D&D gaming thing. So I open it up and every adventure is predicated on some kind of on-rails opening or a quest (that inevitably goes awry or has a twist). It hit me that this isn't something new to computer games. It was directly inherited from tabletop roleplaying games.

Then I got depressed until I remembered my Christmas Conan session from 2004.

As for the 3rd graders, one little boy even put his arm around me and leaned his head against mine, like I was his big brother or something. It was so fun! If I ever have to rethink my career, I'd definitely consider teaching third grade. Or at least that class.