Idle Thumbs 114: A Heavy (Baboon) Heart

[Adam Beckett]

I vividly remember the DUB STEP mode reveal on the Giant Bomb / Double Fine KINECT PARTY stream. It was glorious! Mind blowing!!

 

That mode alone was worthy of buying that game.

 

But in general, it was Double Fine which understood to embrace the jankiness of that Kinect 1.0 version. "It is not precise? Fine! Let's make a bunch of mini-games where it does not matter!" - Brilliant! The only other game dev was Harmonix and their Dance Central. Who likes to move? Kids do! YouTube videos of them playing those games prove it.

 

Your Ryan Davis surgical tribute was perfect, too.

 

I wrote my own eulogy as many people did on Ryan Davis. I myself needed it. It was cathartic. But unlike you, I never met him. 

 

A guy on Twitter wrote: "somewhere else just got a lot funnier."

 

GLHB, Ryan.

[Patrick R]

The problem with the Civ comparison is that nobody has personal experience of world history over millennial. Unless your academic field is history or anthropology, all you've got is a generalized understanding of how things worked, so the generalizations of Civ or Anno or what have you go somewhat unnoticed. But everybody has a personal experience of forming relationships, so the generalizations that would come with a systematized interpretation of how relationships grow would far more obvious and jarring.

 

I'm not saying it can't be done, just that it would be a lot harder than making a game that models something so removed from everyday human life as the entire body of world history.

 

The big hurdle is that everyone's personal experience with relationships is different and if a developer tried to make your AI partner so broad as to appeal to most players, they could come across as inhuman.

 

BUT one of the really interesting things about The Walking Dead is that it trains you to make decisions about the kind of person Lee is, and then role-play based on those decisions. While playing Walking Dead I felt like an actor as much as I did a gamer, I didn't always make choices that I would make in Lee's position, I made choices based on what I thought Lee, as I had interpreted him, would make in his position. It was the most honest portrayal of straight role-playing I had ever seen in a game.

 

So I think a game could be very specific in depicting a relationship between two individuals as long as it did a good job at teaching you who they were, why they were attracted to each other, and what problems would come up in their relationship. The partner wouldn't have to appeal to me personally as long as it was sold to me why they appeal to my character. The Bonnie chapter of 400 Days did a great job of that, actually. The importance of Leland being there for Bonnie, a former addict, during her time of need (though I can't remember if it was implied that she was in recovery before the outbreak or if the outbreak made her have to defacto quit doing drugs) came across so strongly in such a short time that I was instantly drawn to wanting these characters to be together, even if Leland isn't the kind of person I want to specifically date.

 

I think the hypothetical examples we've been listing have been assuming the first person, but given a strong character to role-play as, I think people could be motivated to act as them and care about their self-interest (maybe it's a story about a good relationship that slowly goes bad, and you have to choose when it's time for you to get out of it) without worrying about whether or not the other person appeals to them personally.

[Chris]

I suspect that there is more complexity in world events over the period of centuries than there is complexity in the personal relationships of four or five friends.

Of course, but the farther you zoom in on anything dealing with human interaction, the harder it is to represent systemically in an honest and believable way. Civilization is deliberately abstract and pulled-out. Almost everything in that game is only very roughly representative. If you zoom farther out from interpersonal friendships, they also become more abstract and able to be represented somewhat convincingly. That's why The Sims is more convincing than Facade (as well as other reasons, of course), and why games that do depict interpersonal relationships very well tend to lean more heavily on well-authored assets and writing than many other kinds of things depicted in games.

[Badfinger]

Clearly The Kill Everyone Project is the classic example of games using death to measure progress.

[clyde]

I'm glad we are discussing all these interesting subjects:

-Why aren't there more courtship and romance themed games that depend on well-authored assets?

-Why aren't there more courtship and romance themed games that depend heavily on systemic representation of personalities and personal interactions?

-Are games centered on romance, commercially viable?

-What are the different design challenges between making a game romance for a silent protagonist, and for a heavily authored player-character?

-What is the relationship between the scope of player-perspective and suspension of disbelief when dealing with interactive representations of personal relationships.

I'm obviously an idealist. Once Versu comes out on Android, I'm going to be able to play it and then I'm going to come back on to this forum and make an argument that encourages the skeptics among you to politely remove your hats and then proceed to eat them. Then Milo and I are going to elope and live happily ever after.

Emily Short has a bunch of stuff about how the AI in Versu is designed on her blog and I recommend reading it for an example of how someone is trying to represent interpersonal relationships in a believable way. I don't have an ipad so it could be wonky like every other attempt.

[Cleinhun]

I have a vague memory of a flash game that was puzzly in nature, where you had to climb up stairs to the next floor (it was time limit based). It was impossible to finish the game on a single life, but when you continued your previous lives would all be doing their thing and solve puzzles, or parts of puzzles, as you progressed. I can't remember where it is on the net nor its name.

I think the game you're thinking of is Cursor*10. I remember thinking it was a neat idea, but I never found the game especially compelling.

[seasleepy]

To some extent, the "progression through failure" mechanic is present in Dwarf Fortress as an option -- when you lose a fortress, the world state is not reset.  So in subsequent games, when choosing a location for your fort, you can choose to reclaim your old fortress.  The items you had in your previous fortress will still be there, which can provide a significant boost to a new fortress.  But you also may have to fight off whatever murdered you previously, so if there is a goblin army waiting for you, it might be better to go play a different fortress for a while and then hopefully they will be dead or gone later.

[malkav11]

Emily Short has a bunch of stuff about how the AI in Versu is designed on her blog and I recommend reading it for an example of how someone is trying to represent interpersonal relationships in a believable way. I don't have an ipad so it could be wonky like every other attempt.

 

It is, unfortunately.

[clyde]

It is, unfortunately.

Feel free to elaborate, I'm interested. In the few reviews I could find, I couldn't tell if the personal interactions with characters were unnatural or if the reviewers just didn't like being disliked by the characters.

[malkav11]

Feel free to elaborate, I'm interested. In the few reviews I could find, I couldn't tell if the personal interactions with characters were unnatural or if the reviewers just didn't like being disliked by the characters.

 

In my experience there were a lot of repetitive state loops if the particular situation wasn't pushing unique reactions, and you fairly consistently have access to actions that you the player -can- choose and the NPCs will sometimes choose that are generic (albeit possibly specific to the character) and not necessarily appropriate to the context. It's an interesting experiment that does provide a more varied approach to character interaction than your typical IF (or game in general, really), at a steep cost in verisimilitude and narrative coherency.

[dibs]

I have a vague memory of a flash game that was puzzly in nature, where you had to climb up stairs to the next floor (it was time limit based). It was impossible to finish the game on a single life, but when you continued your previous lives would all be doing their thing and solve puzzles, or parts of puzzles, as you progressed. I can't remember where it is on the net nor its name.

The one where you played as a mouse pointer arrow? That game was awesome.

[Berzee]

The one where you played as a mouse pointer arrow? That game was awesome.

Cursor*10 !

 

(though I think I remember a similar later game where you were a person instead of a cursor, not certain though)

[clyde]

In my experience there were a lot of repetitive state loops if the particular situation wasn't pushing unique reactions, and you fairly consistently have access to actions that you the player -can- choose and the NPCs will sometimes choose that are generic (albeit possibly specific to the character) and not necessarily appropriate to the context. It's an interesting experiment that does provide a more varied approach to character interaction than your typical IF (or game in general, really), at a steep cost in verisimilitude and narrative coherency.

I finally had a chance to try Versu out on a friend's ipad. Your depiction nailed my experience playing the Versu story "The House on the Cliff". I mean, you really nailed it. I still find myself excited about Versu for its potential (your eye-rolls are understandable). There were moments when the game was able to express fickle, momentary favoritism. I also got a very particular perspective on how groups of people make decisions together that will stick with me for a while. I don't think that the system depicts small group-politics accurately, but it makes me think about them in a cynical and reductive way (which I value). But it sure was rough. It was a struggle to play through for the reasons you enumerated.

I also played "The Unwelcome Proposal". I played as Mr. Collins and it wasn't an enjoyable experience for me because I couldn't bring myself to make decisions that he wouldn't make in Pride and Prejudice; and if I could, there didn't seem to be any selectable choices with which I would be able to do so.

I'm looking forward to playing with it more when I have a copy, but my baseless hopes for a believable relationship-sim are dashed. Now, I'm just excited about having a sim in which I can experiment with making friends and influencing people. I haven't played anything like it. The game is so different than anything I've played, that I had a hard time figuring out what I could influence and what I could not. But Versu needs some work for the reasons you mentioned.

[clyde]

I love it when meta-narrative turns inward; I'm a straight sucker for it.

Here is a segment where Versu A.I. debate the possibilities of A.I. and the framing is pleasantly a penny-arcade.

It this takes off, Pygmalion could become the new Space-Marine since the template circumstances tell the story inherently. We might end up with story after story of humans falling in love with A.I.

I would not complain. Can't wait for Versu's Bladerunner.