IAM Blog Engine

Maverick Gabriel Marquee

Game Cultures

Final paper! (Finish him!)

                                                The trouble with games.

The trouble

Games and consoles these days seem to be out in this all-out war to offer the player better graphics, more immersive game play, and little tricks (like bullet-time) to sell copies of games. As developers try to find the next gimmick that will allow them to sell more copies in, the actual game itself gets sacrificed. Games like this include Bullet Witch, Chrome Hounds, and sports games. “It is not necessary, as some believe, to put huge resources into flashy graphics in order to make a successful game” Gee. Others fall an idea called “creeping featurism.” Creeping featurism is the tendency of software developers to keep adding features to their products. They think they’re making the product more useful, but taken to extremes, creeping featurism produces a bloated ineffective product, say you had to stop and play chess against a computer in the middle of a gunfight? And what if you couldn’t get back to your shooting until you had beaten it? That’s how it feels when I’m in the middle of a role-playing game, playing my role, and I’m suddenly asked to play chess master or some absurd skew of mini-game I have a particular recollection of playing Doom 3 in which this was my first experience with the franchise and it all seemed to be going well, noting particularly amazing but it seemed polished and at least peaked my interest to continue the game. Through out the play of the game I had to tackle specific task which enabled my other team mates to progress in some areas, or had to run task in order to get here, go through there, back track to do this which became tedious. The real dilemma I faced was after I had battled my heart out, tearing through my enemies, zigging and zaggins with my adrenaline going before I came to an empty room. The room wasn’t exactly empty as there stood a dozen or so metal tubes with an electric current running through it. After all the guns and fighting I had to sit and try to solve a puzzle and was given no interface in how to tackle it. Immediately I was sick and confused, why in the middle of all that did this make its way into the game? What purpose does it serve to the story or the game? I’d return to try this several times before finally dropping the game. That one puzzle had completely made me abandon the rest of the game and disregard ever playing another edition of the franchise. I realized though this was a frequent happening in games and particularly action titles. Every time you want to go down into your basement, you had to wait for a full moon, imbed a statue with rare jewels only found in Egypt, solve a middle school science puzzle, and then push a bookshelf so that it’s exactly symmetrical to your couch. Note all that time was spent getting to your DVD collection. Yet, this is common place in games. Resident evil is particularly guilty of this.

We are using new technology to tackle old problems; going from checkpoint A to checkpoint B. “The act of playing the character involves learning conventions and social roles that occur in the virtual world” (Gee – 2003). Today we leave traces of our identity, of our personality, everywhere we go, on every aspect of out digital life – interacting on virtual environments ranging from Myspace to World of Warcraft. The very fact that a person feeds energy into the creation of the virtual identity and also the various activities there opens a two way link between the player and the character.  Yet, sometimes we forget to include the gamer in the game and sacrifice their time and money for the next trick. To many times have we had to set the controller down and say “What the hell?” due to a concept that failed, or for inclusion of mini-games, we sacrificed the identity we were creating and the relationship with the game world and received the niche, the easy route, the blunt end of the stick. Where we could have made a choice between good and evil or one path versus the other, we instead got a point in the wrong direction and without understanding the reason why. Frequently do games break from their story and incorporate game padding in the attempt to lengthen the titles. How long would the Resident Evil games be without puzzles? How much better could they have been with better control schemes and immersion into the stories troubles?(Improve the round off, we can end this part better)

Solution

“The act of playing the character involves learning conventions and social roles that occur in the virtual world, and involve the formation of a social practice used by the player to interact with other people in the virtual world, via his/her virtual identity” (Gee 2003). Exploring behaviors and choices someone may never experience, in the physical world is a tool that developers are going to need to explore and incorporate deeper elements of game play so that these combined identities, these projected identities, travel through the game world and come back to the players and the players grow and recognize that growth – this is critical to making a franchise work, in making great games, and great teaching models. I pointed to open world games earlier but we still need some linearity some solid foundation and our objective be to create entire worlds and areas for personal and communal exploration and learning, a true mix of creation and immersion. The open world or sandbox style game is not a gimmick; it actually creates a new style of play and becomes its own game which is why I think it’s a high valued and extremely rewarding method of game development and method of learning, the ability of being able to abstractly solve numerous problems allows for the dynamic play I feel some game titles lack. The Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion as we know it and The Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion as a traditional RPG would represent two entirely different games each with their own unique experience. The reason Oblivion was such an acclaimed title was because it’s open world aspect, because you were allowed freedom, and that freedom become appealing. There was plenty to do and it all fit within the greater context of the game. I talk about mini-games and Oblivion has them as well but they match the action which is critical, I think back to a task I was given by the mages guild. It involved me going to a set of ruins, deciphering ancient code, and being able to conjure specific spells. Again Mages, this fit with the arc of the story I was presently in as it was concerning the guild, if the Brotherhood of Darkness had sent me on this same mission I would have been very confused on how this related to me and my goals in the game at that time. Oblivion allowed that freedom to choose a path and to solve those paths troubles making a more involving experience. Mass Effect done some used some of the same conventions but established them in greater and deeper terms, giving a much more personal experience then Oblivion did and that was in part due because it did have an element of linearity which I spoke of earlier.

Like film, I believe to make a great game you have to know the rules of making games, you must understand them, and then you must, must, must throw them out the window. This doesn’t mean abandon those conventions but know that they aren’t set in stone, that they’re more like guidelines then rules, and the hand of God won’t come down and smite you when you decide not to include that crate pushing mini-game. Gaming is near as you can be to being an art form without limitations from law but one must be careful to implement the right rules and know when they can be bent. The purpose of these future games is immersion. The key is dynamics, its blending, it’s not only originality it’s something outside the box. Each of these keys is not only keys for better games but also immersion and learning. Halo done this with first person shooters and Mass Effect with role playing games. The solution is not easy, as I may point to these games and other open world games this is only part of the answer.

Again, I say immersion, exploration, “the power of games is that they put you inside the world” (Gee – 2003). With my time in Mass Effect I found myself intrigued in the world in a different way then I’d been involved in any game before, I felt myself applying different thought processes, different muscles in my mind that I hadn’t worked as much before. After what would become four, five, or six hours of game play I just had to turn it off or I would have played through that in one sit. Dynamic worlds that you see in Final Fantasy, games from the past where Blood Omen and Soul Reaver shared the same universe that would sometimes clash. Bringing something new to the table of a highly demanded genre like Halo brought a true sense of story and universe to FPS’s. These are the start of where games could lead us. They are simple and they are complex and have been some of the most acclaimed and studied games, they are on the right track onto what I feel gaming needs to do more of.

Halo took its genre and worked it into a fine compilation, everything the FPS genre was known for Halo perfected and balanced. What kept the franchise fresh and what kept it’s identity in tact was that it was persistent in doing what it was good at. They didn’t include game aspects that didn’t make sense to the Halo universe, you played a Spartan warrior, not someone on a scavenger hunt – you shot things and you shot a lot of things. They didn’t include a bizarre combination of features but instead included more options with the present tools, Halo went bigger and better and built off it’s identity it has established and the dynamics of the world it created. The result is that people playing Halo became more absorbed in that title, more immersed, and identified more with Halo then compared to other titles in the genre are often faceless, rehashed titles.

In conclusion I feel we must be aware of the difference of innovation versus features, what creates a game and what spices up a game. Though when developing a game we may be inclined to implement a really cool feature but when doing so must be aware of the players experience and if the feature fits within the parameters of the game world. To create a truly dynamic world that players can grow in and learn from is what I’d like to see more of and that’s where several games are heading, the dynamics, the story, and the reward of the player. It’s no easy task, I’m sure its easier to look at the next project and throw in hovering air combat into the fighting game and call it innovation but it’s not, that’s inclusion, innovation and immersion lay outside the box and general rules we’ve established in the industry. The game industry has grown and substantially and so our box of ideas, conventions, and norms must grow with it; then we’ll be able to once more think outside the box, we may even tear the box to shreds,( stomp on it, shoot it, whatever) but that’s where the next great level of innovation well come. The box outside of the box.

Gee, James Paul

What’s wrong with serious games?

http://www.news.com/Whats-wrong-with-serious-games/2100-1043_3-6052346.html

By Daniel Terdiman
Staff Writer, CNET News.com Published: March 22, 2006

Gee, James Paul

Identity shaping through technology

http://www.key64.net/content/post/619-Identity-shaping-through-technology

Published November 16, 2006

Gee, James Paul

What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy?

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; 1 edition (May 16, 2003)

Use of chapters 3 and 7.

Halo, X-Box 360,  Published by Microsoft game studios. 2001, 2004, 2007

Mass Effect, X-Box 360, published by Electronic Arts. November 2007,

Legacy of Kain, Playstation 2, published by Eidos Interactive.2003

Final Fantasy XII , PlayStation 2, Published by Square Enix.2006

Resident Evil, PS1, published by Capcom, 1996

The Elder Scrolls VI: Oblivion, X-Box 360, Bethesda Softworks/ZeniMax Media, 2006

Doom 3, X-Box 360.  published by id Software, 2004.

In the digital world where Massively Multiplayer Online games (MMOs) rule a large section of the world and everything may seem peachy, but in fact everything is not all right. One of the major issues with MMOs is that the game is changing the reward curve. By this I mean that rather then giving the players just rewards to further their game experience the game developers dumb down the difficulty to get rewards and hence dumb down the game and its content.

This issue will come up when ever the game developers try and add new things into the game. When they add new content, new worlds, new races, new dungeons, etc. they add better and better items. This itself is not an issue at all and it almost always starts off great. New items and content are not intrinsically detrimental to the game play, instead the problem that arises is the game developers choose to make items that used to require lots of hard work and time, easier and easier to get. So in the end new players are able to get items that used to take hours and hours of work to get in less then half the time and effort. Not only that, but because of how items are in MMOs, since they are, or were, hard to get items, they are usually extremely good, and it soon puts the new players nearly on par with players who have the best gear. This has happened in numerous games, but has more prominently happened recently in World of Warcraft (WoW).

One of the first things that WoW did in its expansion, The Burning Crusade (TBC), was add in something called Arenas. Arenas were a new system for player versus player (PvP) and a way to get new PvP items. What you did was you had to join a team and with that team you went up against other teams of the same number of people as yours. Originally this was a great idea; you could fight against others with friends of yours and see how well you did against others. The items you got from it were originally specifically for PvP and were used for that. But as time went on the Arena gear became better and better, in order to keep up with the advancing player versus environment (PvE) gear. So soon enough the PvP gear was being used in PvE and ended up surpassing the lower end PvE gear. Basically, to put it simply the creators were making PvP gear that was easy to obtain, and that had the same stats as gear that came from high end instances (PvE). So anyone who was new to the high end content could have PvP gear that was just as good as anyone who spent hours in instances or raids. By making these PvP items so easy to get, they have unbalanced another aspect of the game, crafting.

In Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Player Suit MuDs we are presented with the idea that different players are drawn to MuDs or MMOs for different reasons. One of these ideas is that people will join a game so that they can achieve stuff, and one of these things that achievers can aim for is crafting. What the PvP items have done is that they have unbalanced the need for crafters, making it so that they are unbalancing the game play for people who don’t live only for PvE and PvP. As the reading says, “It’s a question of balance: if something is added to a MuD to tilt the graph one way, other mechanisms will need to be in place to counterbalance it…” (Bartle, 783). Clearly WoW does not have this in place. It is destroying the Achievers way of playing the game and replacing it almost entirely with the Killers method.

This is also not only an issue for the overall balance of the game, but it is also very important to think about if you are the developer of a game. By making high end items easier and easier to get you are cutting down on the content that players are able to experience. If you are cutting the content for people to experience you are cutting the amount of game that players are experiencing which hurts you as a developer. Wasted content is player time spend other where, making it so they never get to see places that would regularly require lots of time spent in. If developers make it so that players cannot skip over places, which means that they will be playing the game more so that they can catch up to the high end people. Not only that, but players enjoy a challenge, and by giving players high end stuff you are making it so they get bored of the game faster. As James Paul Gee points out in his book What Video Games Have to Teach Us: About Learning and Literacy “The learner gets ample opportunity to operate within, but at the outer edge of, his or her resources, so that at those points things are felt as challenging but not “undoable.” (Gee, 71). By giving the player more chances to challenge themselves the game is rewarding them to a much greater level then just by giving the player the really good items.

With as large of a market base as MMOs have it would be wise if they try, and target all the players instead of just a few types of players. By doing this the games will be more challenging, involving and overall something that players will be happy with and keep coming back for more. Also by creating a game that is balanced it will make every one a lot more happy and will also create a game that people will feel rewarded playing, not just with what they get, but with that they do.

Works Cited

Bartle, Richard. “Hearts, Clubs, Diamonds, Spades: Players Who Suit MUDs.” The Game Design Read: A Rules of Play Anthology. Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman, eds. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2006.

Gee, James Paul. “Learning and Identity.” What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. New York, N.Y.: PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2003.

Grand Theft Assumption

Nowadays it seems that petitions are being rallied every day against violent video games, and with the recent release of Grand Theft Auto IV the industry is under heavy fire yet again.  Jack Thompson, an attorney and activist, and is known for frequently speaking out against games he deems violent, always assuming the worst from video games, and making attempts in getting them banned.  The problem I see, though, is that it is the same people and the same organizations every time and the entire time there is nobody in a position to defend video games.  Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there is nobody defending video games at all.  There are numerous mainstream figureheads (developers, game journalists, and hosts of TV shows are just a few that come to mind) that are very willing to state their opinion the defiance of anti-videogame lobby however they are all known for what they are rather than the “defender of gaming” which I think the industry could really use.

Recently when you see a popular video game in media there’s a good chance that it won’t be because it got a good review.  You’d mainly see it on a cable news station, CNN for example, because of its ‘gratuitous amounts of violence corrupting today’s youth’.  “…everyone dismisses their favorite media to contributing to a more coarse society” (Beck).  This is so true, and it blatantly shows when video games come under attack.  What we are led to believe today is that video games are corrupting our youth more than anything else, completely ignoring other medias.  What I would honestly like to see is anti-gaming lobbyists sit down and talk with some sort of sense.  To try and not be so completely one sided on their debate, and maybe see someone else’s point of view for a change.  I know that may not sound like its asking for much, but considering the arrogance of certain lobbyists it really is asking a lot.  We need to come to a middle ground.  Both sides need to their faults, but more importantly both sides being reasonable to each other.  Every generation has its specific “scare” in media, we can all look back and say “why did they make such a big deal about x, when y was obviously the real problem?” and realize that society today may be more coarse, however that is the progression of human society in general, because if that wasn’t the case we would still live in a time where a girl showing her ankle would be too “risqué”. Author Steven Johnson goes further elaborates on this point stating a scenario when books are new and video games have been around all along:

“Reading books chronically under stimulates the sense. Unlike the longstanding tradition of game playing—which engages a child in a vivid, three dimensional world filled with moving images and musical soundscapes, navigated and controlled with complex muscular movements—books are simply a barren string of words on the page. Only a small portion of the brain devoted to processing written language is activated during reading, while reading games engage the full range of the sensory motor cortices.”(Johnson, 19)

While this is obviously a mockery of anti-gaming lobbyists, turning their argument against them it goes to prove that when targeted, any medium can come off as unworthy of society’s attention.

I would like to point out the fact that if anyone wants to get anything banned for whatever reason- it is always done to protect the children, building up parental suspicion about whatever claims you are making.  Some anti-videogame lobbyists choose not to see the ‘M’ rating on a title, while the ESRB rating system acts as a voice of reason in most cases. The rating system of the ESRB has gotten to the point where game content is so specific on the label it is hard to confuse who the audience is meant for, thus why Grand Theft Auto comes under fire so much boggles my mind because it is an adult game made for adults; clearly stated on the cover of the game. Now if a copy of a violent, controversial, game comes into the hands of children it is automatically the game developers fault for putting such content in the game even when the child playing the game wasn’t the target audience. Why is it that video games are as frequently targeted as a violent media and other medias like movies and TV shows get off seemingly scotch free. Is it harder for a child to walk into a game store and purchase a hyper-gore filled game and not getting asked for I.D., or is it easier for them to sneak into an R-rated movie after purchasing a ticket to the most recent Pokémon movie? And I’m sure people are familiar with the South Park franchise. While I am a huge fan of the series I can recall it being under similar pressure from the news and media for being a cartoon that uses curse words. Eventually the creators of South Park expressed enough that the show wasn’t intended for children, thus the reason for the disclaimer at the beginning of the show, and the rating of the show as well, and the media backed off. In no way am I stating that video games are not violent—they are nobody can argue that. However all I simply ask for is the equal treatment of the violence in all media, and to stop isolating video games as the sole problem of what is wrong with society today.

Who knows where gaming will be years down the line, it will obviously keep evolving, gamers are very aware of this. Will gaming be the target of the press twenty years later, when it becomes a much more established form of entertainment? As much as I don’t agree with a lot of the things James Paul Gee says, he makes a valid point when he says:

“Video games are at the very beginning of their potential—“we ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” They will get deeper and richer. Eventually some form of conversation between real people and computer-created characters will occur alongside the conversations among people in their virtual and real identities that already take place in internet gaming. There are and will be vile games, and eventually there will be some “canonical” games, games that lend themselves powerfully to elevating the aspirations and imaginations of all people for better and more just worlds. These may be new aspirations and imaginings or ones that fill old visions with new meanings and hope (Gee 205).

Gamers will continue to play controversial games, mainly because games that are controversial have newer ideas that challenge modern society’s thoughts on what we should be doing for entertainment. I think that it is just a matter of time before anti gaming lobbyists will start to reconsider their crusade and move on to other medias to lash out at, because honestly—you can only act outraged that ‘you can hire a prostitute, beat her to death and then steal her money’ because apparently society has not turned to the dark side so far and yet they are always clambering about it years later.

Works Cited

Beck, Glen. 05/12/2008. <http://www.cnn.com/cnn/programs/glenn.beck/>.

Gee, James, Paul.  What Video Games Have to Teach us About Learning and 

               Literacy.  New York: Palgrave MacMillan,
2003.

Johnson, Steven. Everything Bad is Good for You. New York: Penguin Group,

2005.

Andrew Harvey        

Final Project

05/13/08

                                    Artificial Intelligence in Games

Smack. Smack. SMACK. “Turn around!” Smack. “Frigging just turn around!” Smack, smack. “Just…..” Smack. There he goes into the wall again. If this was in real life, this guy would definitely need a bottle of aspirin, if not a checkup for a concussion. No, it’s not that he’s not stupid; although depending on your view, maybe he is. He’s actually not a he at all, ‘it’ is an AI; a counter-strike bot to be precise. And it is intent on smashing its head through the offending wall in its way. Smack. Ouch.

AI, or artificial intelligence, is an integral factor in many video games. Whether they’re called bots or npcs, they are found across the genres of games from first-person shooters or role-playing games to real-time strategy. The flavor of AI however, its depth, intelligence, and adaptability vary from game to game. In games where the AI factor is fully explored and developed, it can be a welcome and enriching component of the game experience. But when implemented poorly, AI can often be a detriment to the game.

Galactic Civilizations 2, a turn-based strategy game, is an example of where AI has been implemented well enough that playing with other people is often the exception to the rule. Their in-game options allow the player to allocate any extra available processor power from dual or quad cores to the game’s AIs to enhance its intelligence and computing power. As such, the AI is very, very challenging. Star systems you previously conquered and pacified are stirred to revolution by enemy spies, supply lines are cut where they are most vulnerable, and previous attack routes are fortified against you. Multiply that by the maximum 15 AI you can play against and the level of difficulty apparent shows why larger games can last for several days’ worth of playtime.

Another great example of revolutionary AI is in the game Black and White. The game used a complex AI represented by an animal demi-god that was not only capable of learning from you, the keeper and teacher, but learning a specific mindset of ruling. If you were gentle with your charge, even when he did things like defecate all over your village or decide to eat a peasant when he was hungry, he could eventually become a kind and benevolent shepherd to your towns and growing kingdom, complete with a golden aura and friendly features.

On the opposite side of the coin, if you decided to slap him around (literally) too much when he misbehaved, or simply taught him to be evil by rewarding bad behavior, he would grow up to be cruel and monstrous looking, dominating the land and set to conquer. In this way, the game added a whole new dimension to the gameplay. Rather than what could have been a glorified Tamagatchi game, Black and White was a deeply immersive game. You cared about your little guy like a puppy; I personally hated to have to punish him. It was lauded as a breakthrough in game design, and received several game of the year awards.

There have also been attempts at interesting AI concepts that fall short because of other difficulties that lay in game design or mechanics. One such try was the game The Thing, which was based on the movie by John Carpenter. An alien that can take the form of other people by absorbing them has infested an Arctic research station and killed all working there. You have to move your character through the levels all while keeping the trust of your teammates and trying to manage their fear. If a teammate doesn’t trust you to be ‘one of them’ they can challenge you to prove your humanity by using a testing kit, a scarce item in the stations levels whose loss could prevent you from testing another teammate who is infected. If you can satisfy them they can even try to kill you. Npcs struck with by terror from encounters with the monstrous shapes-shifters can have actions ranging from just being more cautious to committing suicide from fear depending on their fear level. It’ was a very good idea, but it fell short because of several design and game flaws.

First, you could simply gain trust by giving a person a weapon. To start with this was a good idea; in many movies a larger or more impressive weapon often gives a psychological boost to the characters. The problem was that just giving them a gun less useful than they had would still improve their courage, even guns lacking ammunition. You’d think they would check their clips.

Second, there was no AI interaction beyond simple dialogue and trust/fear actions like giving a weapon, sedating someone, testing them, or killing them. The npc player models had no real variety beyond hair and skin color. You couldn’t get to know a npc or get attached to them; they were simply another no-named paramilitary type you’d keep around until their usefulness ended.

Lastly there were scripted events where teammates metamorphosed into a thing, despite any previous tests for infection. Teammates who had just been tested and hadn’t had contact with any things since their last test would sometimes just turn, not because of a bug, but because it was scripted for them to. This last one most of all ruined the trust/fear concept entirely because if happened too much and made it pointless to test some of your teammates. If there were random infections through contact only or even scripted contact events where some would inevitably get infected, then it could have worked.

Giving an infected more interesting actions would have been good too; rather than just play along until they morphed, they could have argued with you like a real teammate. Having a thing under the guise of a teammate working against you to undermine your authority to the group and remove a threat to themselves would have been a great gameplay element. Not only would you have to keep your teammates in line, but you’d be constantly wondering if the ones arguing with you weren’t simply infected trying to remove you from the equation. A great opportunity was lost in this game, and sadly the fear/trust dynamic hasn’t been explored since.

In contrast to these games, a FPS like Halo uses simpler and more standard AI, which includes preprogrammed combat routines of varying difficulty and not much else. It was a workable AI for the time, and didn’t impede the game at all, but that was for the fact that it was simple; bugs or errors in its code would be much easier to seek out and fix because there was less of it.  Run at enemy and/or shoot, taking cover from time to time or not, was the basic system, and since that was all most player expected, it didn’t matter much.

Aside from some small advances, first-person shooter AI still operates the same way. Scripted cover actions have been added and some keep distance when it works best for their weapon set, but most npcs still can’t beat any evenly matched human player. These deficiencies even are seen in some strategy games still; poor path-finding for units still troubles many relatively new strategy games like Company of Heroes, or Sins of a Solar Empire, and aside from new additions like (you guessed it) the ability to take cover in pre-placed areas there is little improvement.

There are reasons for such differences; why provide a common grunt in any FPS the kind of AI that you would equip a rival empire in a strategy game when like as not that grunt will be cannon fodder? It’s common practice to limit your enemies/foes/rivals in such ways, traditional even. If that npc is likely to only live to a few seconds before being chopped to gibblies by the main character, then you only have to program it to be believable/workable for that period of time.

But what would happen if you gave all AIs such complex operating ranges? The ability to learn, move, even strategize, all dynamically without scripting. I believe that such measures would be expensive and time-consuming, but also potentially rewarding in a number of ways. The ability to learn and adapt could be adopted with the use of a few basic scripts that an AI can build on.

Like the AI from Black and White, the new AI would try new things until finding a behavior that was deemed good, in this case through achieving a win. They would cycle between strategies they knew worked until they encountered something that particular set couldn’t handle. Then they’d then use either a different stored strategy, or a new one. Allowing an AI to recall, record, and reuse effective strategies from a previous battle without extensively scripting the entire thing would give a whole new face to many genres of games. Allowing each AI to operate within certain ranges could also enhance immersive factors; for example a hive-type race like the Zerg in a strategy game would be played with less regard to individual units but require whatever methods deemed necessary to protect the queen.

The same kind of formula could work for dialogue systems/trees. Rather than giving a preset number of responses, you could instead allow for a range of responses the computer formulates, restricted within a certain range so that you wouldn’t have nonsense sentences or non-sequiteurs. Then, each range could be tailored to be different depending on your actions and depending on the personality subtype assigned to the npc. In this way you could have AIs respond the way you’d expect them to if you ran into their real-life counterpart personality. This kind of dialogue complexity could better involve the player in the story; each playthough bringing a unique experience of interaction with the game’s npcs.

Weaving an interesting storyline with such dialogue options would improve the story dramatically, because while the overall story would remain the same for whatever path the player took, the AI would respond differently. They would occupy in the same road in the storyline, and would play their parts accordingly, but would add to that storyline path their sum of their experience with you to that point. This would mean that you could be headed toward the same ending in two different playthroughs, but have a npc behave differently because of something you did differently, or vice versa you could have a similar level of relationship while going down an entirely different path.

As illustrated in the book Everything Bad is Good For You, complex interactions with more characters with active and interesting parts add to the story, making them more immersive and interesting. “Star Wars contains roughly 10[active characters]. Lord of the Rings on the other hand forces you to track almost 3 times as many. I can testify personally that you can watch [Finding] Nemo dozens of times and still detect new information with each viewing, precisely because the narrative floats so many distinct story arcs at the same time.” (Pgs 126, 129, Johnson)

Making a game deliberately hard to follow is not the idea; it is that providing many story arcs the player can explore increases replayability, and therefore the enjoyment of the game. Every game except for certain puzzle types include a kind of story arc, and allowing a diverse selection of AI to improve upon it would add to it a lot, be the game a FPS or a RPG.

Having AI that could be relied on could also provide new directions for existing games. Rather than the 2-tier system in Battlefield games with infantrymen and 1 commander, you could have multiple tiers, from infantryman to commander to general on up the chain, so that the game would change from a war FPS to a total war game. The higher up you go the more strategy would be involved, to where higher officers would be playing a game more like a RTS than the FPS their grunts are playing. Because of the expanse of command, different theatres of war could be introduced, land, naval, and air, with larger maps for air units because of their higher speed and naval units because of their larger size and operating range.

The only problem of filling empty ranks could be filled by putting in a competent AI. Npcs could learn from their mistakes and employ better strategies from the officer levels on down to the grunts, and the space the AI freed up would leave players to choose the roles they wanted. The higher number of AI to player ratios would also mean that games would run more smoothly, with less lag problems to worry about. All that would be needed is for someone to make it.

The problem of complexity could be solved in a unique way that would allow developers to utilize a base advanced AI for their game. Rather than program the intelligence from the ground up every time, the path could be taken that led to the specialized physics card. Like the PhysX card produced by AGEIA, an AI card could allow developers to more easily write AI code, and have a foundation to start with so a more specialized AI could be created for the setting of the game.

While an idea could be considered outlandish, so could have been the physics card just 5 years ago, yet it is selling well enough to be supported by several large developing companies. Expense for the manufacturers and the consumers could be offset by not only selling the cards, but by licensing the card software to developers, allowing them to use it for their own needs. This would have the bonus effect of shortening development time on some games, allowing the developer more time to polish the game and iron out bugs, or even add new features.

In short, the field of AI in games is very underrepresented and undervalued at the moment. An investment in AI could be a boon for the industry, bringing new players in the market, and opening new doors in game design, while allowing bolder game types to be attempted because of lower possible development costs. Gaming on the decline would be the farthest idea from players (and stockholders) minds.

Sources:

- Everything Bad is Good For You by Steven Johnson

- Wikipedia for information on the AEGIA physics card

Final Project
Documentary on a view of gamers.

Enjoy

Here is the Virtual Spectacle Fortuna, a silent Machinima brought to you by the Old Tyme Data Bus.

Image links brought to you by Janell Baxter.

Image: Janell Baxter

Okay, so I lied… Gears of War 08 will not be back… I kind of gave up on it and moved on… It’s a fun game, but other games have got me more involved…

That is why for this last game journal entry I thought I would return to Lost Odyssey, the second game I’ve blogged about for this assignment, and the one I’ve had the most fun with. As mentioned in my previous post, Lost Odyssey is made by the same guy who made the Final Fantasy games. So is it just another Final Fantasy game? Well… It does have a guy named Sed, which is awfully familiar to the reoccurring character of Cid in the recent Final Fantasy games (6 and up I believe?). It has a hero,  a great story, a bad guy, and even a flying airship… but is it just another Final Fantasy?

Sure… not that it’s a bad thing. I enjoyed all of the Final Fantasy games I’ve played so far (up to X as well as the gameboy ones). Was I upset that this would be just like Final Fantasy? No. It actually felt different. The one thing that always got me hooked in the Final Fantasy games was the story. How does Lost Odyssey fare in this aspect? Awesome.

Looking back I’m reminded about an article someone posted about Bioshock having a linear story while also allowing you to discover more about the game world and what actually happened to Rapture and its people. Bioshock did this through the radio recordings. System Shock 2 did this through email logs. Lost Odyssey, in a similar fashion, tells you the story prior to the game’s start through dreams that your player experiences. The great thing about these dreams is that the player can choose to read through it or to skip it. While it isn’t like Bioshock or System Shock 2 in that you can listen to the logs while playing through the game, it still allows the player to nonetheless learn about the character he is playing as, as well as the people around him.

I think it is a great idea for more developers to pursue such a course. This would allow for the hardcore gamers to play through the game and not have to worry about the storyline while those of us that are explorers can take a minute to listen to these stories or read these dream narratives. It is a great idea and I feel bummed out that I didn’t choose something more along the lines of this for my final project proposal. Meh, what’s done is done.

i thought this was na interesting article. like many others i thought immediately of how parents as us how to do things with the computer and other such things that has become second nature to us. it really frustrates me alot. but then i got to thinking, back in the day they didnt need to know those things we no now a days. they needed to know to how to fix cars fix plumbing and other house hold things that we have no idea how to do. because i think each generation has their thing that they need to now technology wise or just common knowledge for every day life. for us its computers and gaming. for them it was how to fix a car or how to do house hold maintance. thinking about this made me think of when my dad was fixing the transmission on the family car awhile ago. i thought well i have know idea how to do that. how does my dad know this. so i asked him and he responded because when i was younger i needed to no how to do it. it saved money and is very useful knowledge. see so when i ask him how to fix this or that around the house i understand why he gets mad now. because when he was younger it was something just commonly known. as it is for us and computers. so i thought this article really put things into persepctive on how over time things become obsolete and how what we need to no changes with the times. i can only imagine what my kids will know like i know computers and such. kinda scary to think about huh?

It is difficult to navigate through Columbia’s wordpress/blog websites, especially when the log on button refuses to actually let you log on.  I apologize for a lack of posts.
Nearing the 3 month mark of working as an intern at High Voltage Software, I feel that I have received an abundance of experience and information: much more than I thought I would and in much less time.

I was notified by HVS that two projects had been dropped.  Now in the industry this is not all that uncommon, especially for a 3rd party development studio.  One of the reasons was that the publisher had simply given up at responding to any attempt at communication with them.  The logical and financial thing to do was to drop the project, if the paying publisher would like to continue their game, they will contact us.  In the mean time, those who were working on the game were reassigned to different projects and awaiting new ones.

Thankfully my project is in full swing and building some hype.  The developers are excited by the work we send to them daily and my team lead and director are even more pleased.  Things are running very smoothly.  It is at this point in development where I realized there is more to being an “artist” than I thought.  Originally, my thought was that I will be designing all day long, creating new environments and just churning out new concept after new concept; however this is only partially true.  I had not taken into account what happens  once all concepts are approved and completed.

One thing that teachers do not tell you is that you will be doing “grunt” work.  However, with the right type of attitude it isn’t gruntish whatsoever, its actually as fun and exciting as the design stages are!  At this point in development you will be doing massive file management.  Having 5 people access the same handful of folders while updating and adding to them is bound to create problems.  As I’ve said, you must all be crystal clear on your naming conventions and methods for exporting or saving your files.  Also, as an environment artist, you will be creating collision files (I’ve written about this in a previous post).  These two tasks can be completely mind numbing, unless you take into consideration what you are actually doing.

You are creating the world which the player will experience.  Your painstakingly created collision files are what will enable the player to “physically” experience your virtual world.  All of your file management that seems as thought it should be the duty of someone else, is what actually enables the game engine to read all that you have created.

Every action and duty or task you perform is a step in the creation of the game.

-Jonathan

  So what is game culture? Game Culture is a series of archetypes, narratives, and gameplay elements that have become familliar to gamers over the course of gaming history.

  Archetypes include things like the Reluctant Hereo, or the Irrivocably evil villain that are stock charachters throughout literary and gaming history. People like to play both sides as sometimes you play the bad guy who is really the good guy. In Gee’s essay “Are you the blue sonic or the Black Sonic?” He observed a child playing Sonic Adventure for the playstation. The child played as Shadow, one of the Villains who in the end turns out to be a good guy. This fits the Archetype of the Anti-Hero, someone who does things unnaceptable for most heroes but who also has undeniably good qualities about him. Archetypes not only belong in video games but pervade literature all the way back to the Epic of Gilgamesh from ancient Sumeria. They have undeniably been creations of the human Psyche since history began.

     Also prevelent in Game Culture are re-occurring narratives that can be as simple as Save the Princess from King Koopa, although the princess will undeniably be in another castle, but they can also be as complex as a novel, as is seen in most RPG’s where various sub-plots arise around the main plot and plot twists are aplenty. Some people say that gameplay is what makes or breaks a game, but you must also have an engaging narrative to keep the player’s attention. Grand Theft Auto is a prime example of a game with almost no narrative but gameplay features that, although unappealing to me, are novel ideas to some more sadistically inclined people. These gameplay features include shooting random people on the street until you get six stars and the army comes after you and running over hookers for fun. Personally I despise Grand Theft Auto and games like it because they have no narritive, or if they do I have never seen people play through it.

    Gameplay features are also a part of game culture. Things that reoccur constantly in certain types of games have become fodder for geeks like me to use in private conversation. For example every fighting game has a character who specializes in low kicks or punches that are usually unexpected and unblockable by most other characters. This has given rise to the cultural phenomenon of “cheap moves” which occurs as far as I know, only in gaming. You never see a footbal player get an interception and be blamed for being cheap, nor do you ever see a poker player win a hand with a “cheap hand”

      Other gameplay elements found only in video games that have become fodder for conversation include things like bosses. Bosses are monsters or characters in a video game that are faster, stronger, or gennerally just tougher than average enemies. This has become such a part of game culture that it has an entire month dedicated to it on internet forums. June is final boss month.

           Video Games are even starting to influence cinema. There is a line from aliens where one of the marines says “That’s it, Game Over Man, Game Over!” Before Video Games, I don’t think the term game over had ever been used to describe losing, not even in board games or sports. Also there are movies like Beowulf which uses motion capture and cg animation to show the characters on screen, I’m not sure about cg, but motion capture was first developed for Video Games, not movies.

      So what am I trying to say here? Well I have outlined Game Culture as a series of reoccurring Archetypes, Narratives and Gameplay elements that have become commonly known amongst gamers. But also I have stated ways that video games are starting to influence other forms of art like cinema. It may be the new media now, but at the rate it’s going, game culture might not just be for gamers anymore, especially not with all the casual gaming games out for the DS and Wii.