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This is a response to a blog post by Steve Mallory, who makes some good
points about narrative design; read the original post here...
True authorial control... Now there is a scary phrase to use in front of your producer...
True
authorial control is like taking your player and asking them what they want
to do today, rather than telling them what they are allowed to do. Is
that wise?
I do love freedom and control as a player. I still remember setting
out across a random (and very dangerous) continent in Everquest just
because I could. There was no mechanical reason for it, but they let
you do it. It was not story-related, but it is one aspect of the quest
for freedom, the desire to forge one's own path.
As a designer, I kind of agree with the terrified producers that it
is scary and yet I love the idea of that challenge. Sandbox game-play
is great, it really gives the player some sense of agency, but I agree
that sandbox storyline is almost one of the Holy Grails of narrative
design. As a designer, as a narrative designer (well, kind of), I am
always haunted by one little game...
Dungeons and Dragons.
I am not talking about any of the SSI gold box games, nor Bioware's
amazing contributions, but the original game with the books and the
dice. As a player, sitting at a table with a DM and some friends,
drinking Mountain Dew that we imported from the USA just to capture the
true experience, I was playing in a game with sandbox storyline. We
could (and, Gygax help us, often did) completely derail the dungeon
master's stories simply with one little idea that he had not
considered, and he would come back the next week with the story
completely tailored to our new needs.
Later on, I was the dungeon master. I learned to adapt on the fly,
to make new stories, even if I did frantically re-use all of the
content I could. I was also briefly a Guide in Everquest, back when
they still had UK servers, and I saw first-hand how a computer game
could offer authorial control, but manpower is not cheap and we could
only work with small groups.
Despite this, we had a chance to tell
free-form stories and make non-linear experiences. In short, any time
I have seen it done, there was a human at the helm and usually one who
was struggling a little while thy made the game up on the fly.
I have
a background in theatre, including some improvisational theatre, so I
could just about do it, but could I teach it to a computer? Could I
actually give the computer enough data to be able to do that, even if
the coders could keep up? I honestly don't know, but I really want to
try now...
Left 4 Dead gave us the idea of The Director as an NPC almost; there are individual zombies, but there is also a simulated intelligence that
creates the tension and the drama. Could that be a hint that my dream
is possible? After Christmas, I should ask the technical manager...
He would probably know how to bring me down to earth...
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So, the illusion of choice is better. In your D&D example you said that you would re-use stuff when players went off the line. The choice that you gave them was a non-choice - no matter what they did, they were going to end up in that same set of dungeons or towns. The context is the only thing that was changed. Context, like words, are cheap and easy to come by.
But to offer a fully open world to a player I think is something that only a good DM/Storyteller/Game Master will ever be able to do well.
The re-use of dialogue in D&D though... that is entirely down to my own laziness and maybe a little to the fact that there will never be a second play-through. At least as a CRPG designer, I can expect the player to try once through as a paragon of good and once as an evil bringer of doom...
Hopefully, we can reach a nice balance; enough content that the player feels like they are truly altering the flow of the story and providing the illusion of a greater amount of authorial control than the player really has. If they believe they can control more than they really do, I think we'll be halfway there...
Replays do make things difficult. I admit that when I was a DM the content could be re-used because it's not like the players were going to encounter it again. Maybe, just maybe you could get away with giving the player true control if the scope was very limited. I'm talking maybe a few hours total. Then a Designer could implement outcomes for most possible choices.
Then developers will want more and make games where player are Gods (with capital G), where players can change the whole reality, i.e., make their own games within a second, with their own themes and everything customized, with Heaven and Angels.
Of course from this point no other game is gonna be made, ever. Or maybe the Gods make men they choose not having full control over...
I wonder why people buy books if everyone can write :/
PS.: Apologies if I sound sarcartic I don't want to. I'm just leaving room for authoring...
But when I was thinking about the holodeck I was wondering just HOW someone like Lt. Paris programmed those scenarios in his spare time. It's hard enough for full time developers to create games where they can more-or-less tightly control what the player can do. How do you create a scenario where the player could completely derail your intentions? The Federation computers must be able to extrapolate the designer's intentions in order to handle decisions that the designer could not have forseen.
I love sandbox games, I love choices, and I long for the day that the computer could be my DM. I just don't see it happening any time soon. Granted, I'd love to be proven wrong.
Once I was gamemastering a roleplaying game and, through pre-arranged agreement with a player, I introduced a plot event - a key player character disappeared (the player), and another player character was introduced (mine) - at which time I was able to become a player and said player became the gamemaster.
Ever see this happen in a computer game? Suddenly the player is the designer, and you are the player?
Something that comes to mind with relation to sandbox games is a game like the Sims. It's an interesting phenomenon because a lot of players will generate their own little mental continuity for a Sim's actions until, in their mind, that particular Sim has a personality that's much more detailed than the one actually defined in-game. People have a habit of believing there's more going on under the hood than there really is, because it makes the little computer AIs who follow algorithms so simple they're mentally less complex than a paramecium seem a lot more real than they are. I think that's an important thing to consider if one was to attempt to make a game that really spun a story on the fly for the player - it doesn't actually HAVE to be as good as a professionally written story, because so long as it's at least passable, the player will fill in the blanks for themselves.
In this case the events unfolded organically but provided a truly unique experience that's unlikely to be experienced by any other player.