vimes

I was going to follow up with a post about Procedural Writing in general, but it turned huge, so I decided to give it its own article on my recently revived blog. Short version: procedural storytelling is important, but we suck at traditional writing, so we should improve that first while writers old & new are getting used to the idea of relinquishing controls on details in order to focus on shaping the space of narrative opportunities instead. Oompf.

Dialog-driven puzzle is one of the thing that Telltale explored successfully very early: I still remember the poem puzzle in The Great Cow Race and, if I remember correctly, The Last Resort1 featured a lot conversation puzzles which didn't really involve any props - the player simply went through the maze of dialog to try and bring the character to a certain 'state'. Those weren't procedurally generated, but they did have a fluidity and a breadth of option (or the illusion of) that made them the next best thing. Sadly though, these sort attempts can rarely be promoted to systems that could be used as the backbone of a whole game: Discworld 2 had a puzzle with a medium that spoke her answers to your future questions before you'd ask them, and the resulting puzzle was a Jeopardy puzzle... it was great, but except if you root that characteristic in the lead, it can't be used across the whole game. And if it did, it would probably be gimmicky. In terms of final result, I think the closest thing to procedural discussion are timed dialogs with the 'Silence' choice. In my opinion, they capture perfectly the fact that having a conversation with people you are competing with2 is rarely mundane: both the choice of answer and the timing shape and cement the interlocutor perception of you; and in competing situations, that impression can rarely be easily reversed. This paradigm is mainly used like so in branching but constrained experiences such as The Walking Dead and I expect the more open games would still leave some room for safe experimentation; but I could see an RPG or GTA-like shouldering such dialog system to drive the dynamic of the player's relationship with secondary characters instead of scripting them (say, Niko and his cousin) I think there are still ways to make dialog in Video games evolve. My take is that the next big thing is to make dialog concurrent to other mode of interaction, and use that to make dialog more rich: get closer, sit down, stand up, use an object ... and it changes your interlocutor's mindset; 'colour' the way you deliver the lines or even changes what you can say. Delivering 'What did you do?' while sitting down next to the person, or after breaking a vase, is a different statement. It's probably a nightmare in terms of asset but I think it might be worth it. 1my favorite pre-TWD Telltale game and GotY 2009 2 in the sense that their objectives are orthogonal to yours or they distrust your position. This can range from, 'I want to steal your money' to 'I want you to reveal what you think of X or Y'. See everything in Facade and TWD.

Those two things sound great independently and together, they could be awesome.

Err, wait, with Goon, you're not financing the making of the movie, you're financing the storyboarding and story-reel making process - this might not translate into an actual movie.

Great, great episode, gentlemen. Soul crushing at times, but great. I think I share a similar frustrations to JP's: it really irritates me that I have to quote a very violent, very bloody game to showcase the fact that purposely finely tuned gameplay mechanics and systems can create layered effects on players' emotions and mindset. It's not Hotline Miami's faults, it feels like it's confirming that the only thing's games are really good at is violence, and that we can't achieve similar level of aesthetics with non-violent mechanics. Or that it's not what people are looking for in games. I wish I could say, 'here's a non violent game that achieves the same goals and took the internet by a similar storm that Hotline Miami'. It's not the case and that drags me down :/ About the structure of studios, I think you're right in saying that experiencing different models is salutatory. At least it was/is for me: it allowed me to tell which hindrances, processes, practices and relationships template are - let's say - unavoidable (i.e. you'll find them pretty much everywhere) and which one are symptomatic of certain structure, scale, culture, leader personality. That's the only way to figure out how much you can really handle the game development 'life style'. Personally, I've never found better environment than being inside a 25-35 people team where you can just go to one guy to clear or figure something out. And it's a bummer when it goes beyond that for production reason and you know you won't be aware of everything that's going on in the game anymore.

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Sorry to interrupt the debate on the donation of Lucas' money1, but... Lucas' interview contains something that strangely bugs me: he says he's transmitting the Starwars universe to a new generation of filmmakers, but I wonder if that isn't a poisonous gift. I can understand that there are stories that rely so heavily on the existing Starwars lore that it would be impractical or even nonsensical to set them in another context. (who hasn't one of these) But the thing is that Lucas has said several times that he built the Starwars universe because he had failed to license Flash Gordon's. He ended up with a vastly different and arguably superior flavor that blended American serial, medieval literature and a hint of chambara. As a result - and for whatever it's worth - episode IV to VI re-branded some storytelling forms as well as moved the space-opera and blockbuster genres in new directions. I worry that through his legacy, he's preventing such a cycle to occur again: filmmakers who grew up under Starwars' influence would probably jump at the opportunity of working within that canvas; but they'd also be restrained by it. Cannons, aesthetics and lore would weight on their ideas; when, if they couldn't use Starwars, they would have had to come up with creative ways to distinguishes themselves from it; hence allowing their ideas and the genre to blossom. If that didn't happen, the genre would conversely cannibalize itself. At the back of my head though, I'm also wondering if it really matters: maybe 2 (3?) generations of creators have already absorbed and assimilated everything that Starwars could give for now (who knows in 40 years?) in terms of storytelling or universe crafting and have since moved on. Maybe the only ones still clinging to that particular Universe have simply a narrower perspective; and couldn't offer development anyway... I'm not sure. 1 by the way, did you know that 4 billion is more or less Uganda's public debt?

Nice! Did you take a bullet to save a guy in a Pope costume?

I've played about 15-20 minutes and never managed to get beyond the first stage. Maybe refusing the power up to power down the second round of auto-aim is a bad idea. Anyway, this game is sysyphean to the max.

So, the Idle Book Club Podcast is officially pushed back to next week? That's good news for me: I haven't finished, started, got my hand on Telegraph Avenue yet.

By the way, I was wrong: you can rebind the keys, but only outside the game in the Launcher and there is no sub-control scheme for the ammo selection, so it's still subpar.

I'm going to drop out of the conversation because I think I'm just completely divorced from the issue of "better defining the vocabulary". This isn't anti-intellectual: I love structuralism and what academics are working on, but at this point in my life, I don't care about the taxonomy of videogaming in particular. I don't think it matters. Bringing focus on Dear Esther or Blendo Games and talking about "what word should be used to summarize the pillar of the experience" seems the wrong discussion to have. How about the quality of writing, the maturity (or not) of the subject matter, the way its delivered, the importance of the randomization of the text that players experience from one playthrough to another, the impacf of the movement model on the experience and wether or not - like Steve Gaynor talked about on GiantBomb a while ago - the fact that you can't pick up object frames or diminishes the experience? I find these more interesting and enlighting than semantics. Also, and this is going to come of as pedant, but I've been doing gameplay programming for 6 years now and Gameplay is a fine enough word to convey 70% of what GD want to express. MDA covers a further 25%. In any case, it's not like GD sign off something and let it go: there are iterations, and tuning and polish, that allow to zoom in on the most etheral elements. 5% of the time, whenever a GD wants to build something that exceeds or sidesteps those models, then having a full discussion about it is very important, because complex matters require complex discourse that sometimes cannot be generalized into a framework. PS, can an admin move the last page and a half. conversation somewhere else so that Plug your Shit remains Plug Your Shit?

Thanks for the explanation TychoCelchuuu - I was confused my your use of the phrase 'told through gameplay rather than aesthetics" - your post clarified it enough. I agree that story and story structure are what differentiate most HL² intro, Dear Esther and the Blendo Games from each other. I also agree that they belong to the same gameplay family. But I think that they show significant differences in, for instance, their movement model: they have different maximum speed and acceleration, they treat collision with terrain differently, some allow run/jump, some don't, and even in the one that do, you've got different in-air control, impulse, etc... Those characteristics (I was going to say choice, but I'm not sure Chung kept/change Q2's controls) of the implementation impact the feeling (aesthetics) of the game significantly; so I don't think they can be overlooked. Like Nachimir mentionned, LeBlanc's MDA is probably the best framework out there for that sort of discussion, but usually - at least from the gameplay programming side of things - we use Gameplay as a shortcut for Gameplay Dynamics which means Mechanics + Dynamics: if you allow the player to do something at one point, you have to define how the simulation will react to it and how that new tool will fit (or not) with existing systems.

Err, "what we have here is failure to communicate"? I don't understand what you mean by 'told in the same style if you're speaking about gameplay rather than aesthetics'.

The HD version has been available on Steam for a few months I think, but that last update really made the difference for me. Also, don't expect too much from the HD version: they did a good job at upgrading most of the models, but the animations, skinning and a big part of the texture sets remained the same or close.

"Gameplay" isn't a 'silly word' that only exist because the vocabulary of the field is poor. Gameplay is very useful term for games whose experience is defined by the actions available to the player and how the simulated world react to them. However, I agree that it is sometimes useless in describing new experiences like Dear Esther or 30 Flight of Loving (still applicable to Gravity Bone I feel) which, even though they uses Video game technology and "grammar' (mainly controls), aren't really games anymore: there are no 'rules', no failure or winning conditions, no opposing force.... they are just 'something else'. I'm not that good at taxonomy, so I couldn't pinpoint what this something else is but I feel that trying to use existing game classification won't help that much. Anyway, I agree with Thunderpeel: the chief characteristic of Brandon Chung's short Video game stories is their structure (or storytelling as Thunderpeel says) rather than the story content. Both appear inseparable, but I would argue that one could restructure HL² and Dear Esther and make them feel like Blendo Games (albeit derivative, uninspired ones). but telling the story of Gravity Bone using Dear Esther style and you'll loose most of what makes the experience what it is..

For those still interested in Stranger's Wrath on PC , the patch from last week looks like it cleared a bunch of issues. On my side at least, the performance and stability have improved significantly. The controls remain not remappable, you don't auto switch back to FPS after using ropes and the 3rd Person camera still has this antiquated behaviour of colliding with the environment, but it doesn't look like they're going to adress those issues... and so the game is probably in the best shape it will ever be. You should try it, get through the first two tutorial missions and enjoy it's unique take on FPS.

Everybody should listen to the Oktobercast for the amazing testimony around the 'completely ignorable ARG' of the Kickstarter and for the discussion about finishing writing The Walking Dead.

Genius!

I finally managed to play Episode 4. Jesus, that ending... every time I think Telltale's writers got most out of the dialog tree interaction, they find something again. The Walking Dead is probably the first game in which I'm not using utility or morality to take decisions: quite often, the alternative is shaped so that the few foreseeable consequences cannot be categorized as right or wrong and the decision 'moment' never shoulder game concepts to discriminate between each possibility. I've been suspecting that offering such choices was the only way to inhibit player's instinct to min/max systems (be them moral or gameplay centric) and to have them take earnest decision, but The Walking Dead is the first time I've seen this implemented. It does this magnificently and even if not all the choices are shapes like that - which may be for the best - there's a significant amount of them and that's AMAZING. I just wish I could help Ben by punching him in the face when he needs to shut up for his own good. Edited for clarity... I hope.

This is a great post

Breakdancing swatiska robots. This is very impressive! I've backed it up and I'll spread the word. 2 questions though: * will it be possible to record template or blueprints of constructions? I can see it's going to be fun to build complex machine from scratch once, but I wouldn't want to start from zero everytime. It'd be great to be able to create a library of blueprints (and possibly share them). Once a blueprint is in the library, you could pick it and it would generate a 'shopping list' of the type of cube that you need to complete it. After gathering all the elements, you'd just drop the final result anywhere. * will you allow player to code their own cube logic through an SDK? Anyway, it looks great and it seems to play great too.

Those last two videos are amazing oO.

Like I said, I'm not exactly sure how to fix that problems. Having the game remember the alternate timeline may be a solution but I doubt it. The bigger picture is that I wish that the game was enticing me to have a trial and error loop at the level of each path, rather than on the process of choosing which path fits my profile best. Does that make sense? Cue bullship analogy : It's like attempting a recipe for an entrée, and instead of retrying the same recipe if you fail, you just pick another recipe altogether... it's a valid approach, but it's not the same experience as trying to better the execution of your first pick. Yes to the last two question,rarely repeated twice the same approach. I wasn't commited because the game gave me the feeling very early on that, if I couldn't achieve something easily, it was not because the design of that path demanded better execution, but because I hadn't found the way that fitted my playstyle best. And it turned that when I did find it, it required very little skill in the execution.