Thursday, April 17, 2008

I for one welcome our new story overlords

From the drowning of suspected witches in pre-Reformation Europe to Star Trek's Kobayashi Maru scenario, no-win situations have been seen as a way to test one's character. When faced with disastrous loss, how does one behave? As Star Trek's performance test makes obvious, it's all so much more useful when this is done in a simulator, and not in real life, when lives are on the line. That's the kind of setup that Swartout et al describe in their paper, "Toward the Holodeck: Integrating Graphics, Sound, Character and Story."

They have set up the Mission Rehearsal Exercise Project for Army testing, creating an in-country scenario for new officers to experience dilemmas and associated problem solving. Along the way, they've faced some of the most challenging problems in interactive narrative. In solving it, they come up with a story engine they call StoryNet, and develop a hybrid approach to modeling virtual humans. For the least involved characters, their actions are scripted, while more integral characters have AI reasoning components -- the most central of which use additional emotional simulation.

StoryNet is probably the most interesting part of their overall solutions, the rest being important but necessary technical compromises due to modern limitations. Regardless of how good our technological base is, we still face a fundamental question of how stories are generated in an interactive context. The paper admits that early attempts had little capacity for getting off-track and must have essentially been an exercise in getting the individual being trained to think through the proper steps. As valuable as that might be, the bigger question of having your StoryNet respond to ad-hoc player/trainee decisions is still very open.

The MRE StoryNet solution is a hybrid one. It allows free-play within certain nodes of activity, while certain "hook" actions lead down links to other nodes -- essentially a (well-?)disguised choose your own adventure. While Swartout et al explicitly reject that sort of obvious mechanism, I wonder how many attempts a single individual could make before the "seams" started showing. That's not to fully criticize what they've accomplished however -- I'm sure it meets the specific needs they've been funded for. However, it leaves open the question of how much work it would take to change to a different scenario. It would probably require a fundamental overall including all the assets and reauthoring of the story line and its component nodes.

This remains the open question we face. How do you accomplish meaningful narrative, while still allowing elegant changes to the scenario and sophisticated interaction? The MRE is one approach, and there are many more...

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Pervasiveness and the Magical Circle

In the world of computer games, a player usually knows exactly when they enter the game world. The click of a certain icon, the animated splash screen, the opening theme music. However, in the real world, this has not always been the case. When Roger Caillois first coined the terms and ludus and paidia to distinguish between formal game events and playful exchanges in 1958, he was getting at the sort of difference I'm thinking about. The liminal experience of crossing the threshold of non-game to game has been called the "magic circle" experience, and Nieuwdorp's paper "The Pervasive Interface: Tracing the Magic Circle" is all about how new digital experiences are crossing that threshold in new (and yet old) ways.

Nieuwdorp's emphasis in the interface experience, citing new and freeing innovations in technology that are taking games from the world of the stationary PC into the everyday world in the form of mobile gaming, augmented reality, and similar ludic experiences. He sees the innovation coming because the "geographical setting of a pervasive game is shared with an already existing environment with laws and conventions of its own." His example of "The Go Game" -- played in an urban environment by receiving text messages via cell phone -- demonstrates how everyday city streets can be turned into game elements by the introduction of a game setting and status. He turns to Johan Huizinga's definition of the magical circle as a "temporary world within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart." In this way, ordinary objects are transformed by a game interface (no matter how metaphorical the transformation in the case of The Go Game) into ludic elements.

He cites Goffman's categories to find three axes of definition for such objects:
1. rules of irrelevance (game pieces as playable items not intrinsic value)
2. transformation rules (patterns that denote how much influence an item has within the game)
3. realized resources (availability of material and moves)

While debates as to the theoretical presence of a game experience may seem a little too far removed from practice to matter, they serve the important goal of informing designers. In order to design new games and experiences, one must know the rules of said design, and Nieuwdorp's paper helps formalize the sort of experience that is becoming mainstream and in fact almost defining of a new type of game: at once casual and formal, present and abstract. In case that needs defining I refer to game-like experiences he cites, such as alternate reality games like "I Love Bees" -- we participate in the "game" but fumble to know the rules of participation while its true impact on us is partially formed by its very ordinary-ness and normalness as a regular-seeming website within our web browser.

Autonomous Characters and Animation

Bill Tomlinson's paper concerns itself with one of the fundamental problems facing the portrayal of believable characters within a computer game: the automation of their interactive animation. If a character is to cause us to emphasize, then it should behave in humanistic ways. Essentially, this is the second of the two main problems encountered by the creation of agents such as the movie S1m0ne's synonymous AI movie star (the first problem is behavioural automation). Indeed, this paper makes the connections back to Hollywood animation, where linear procedures (whether traditional or digital) allow animators to breath life into their characters with a mimicry of human activity.

In a computer game, where dynamic behaviour is desirable -- that is, the automatic performance of activities by a character -- the next question becomes, how will that behaviour be portrayed? Tomlinson locates these differences along 5 axes: intelligence, emotional expressiveness, navigation collision avoidance, transitions, and multi-character interaction. In order, these require animators to specify suites of behaviour to deal with visible decision making, feelings, the intersection of two characters while moving, the smooth look of animations in between specific states, and those complicated sets of actions such as a fist-fight or a romantic scene.

In each of these cases, Tomlinson mentions recent attempts to solve these problems, but his greatest success seems to be a thorough revealing of the problematic areas of dynamic character animation.

Interdisciplinary Analysis

When we want to build computer models for any kind of human behaviour, whether automated or not, we must turn to realistic source material as a basis for our work. All too often, bastions within the ivory tower ensure that people with expert knowledge don't collaborate in ways that combine their respective disciplines. Seif El-Nasr, coordinator of the SIAT GameLab (now EMIEE), writes convincingly from a multi-disciplinary point of view, combining a formal computer science education with film and theatre training.

Her paper on "Interaction, Narrative, and Drama" starts by examining various forms of filmic flow. Flow, of course, is that amazingly concise term that encapsulates that state of being absorbed at peak capacity in a task. Coined by Csikszentmihalyi in 1990, it has been found in
film-land by Boorstin, who finds the "voyeuristic eye," the "vicarious eye," and the "visceral eye" describe the differing sense of engagement a viewer can have. Seif El-Nasr moves on to the debate by game developers over the sense of fun and engagement felt by the player of a video game. Developing this kind of theory is crucial to inform game designers in their efforts. Seif El-Nasr identifies a lack of theory and game design behind the "vicarious eye" type of pleasure, that "feeling of empathy through an understanding of characters’ emotions and choices." This could be because allowing the user to be surprised or learn along side a character, or cause them to respond emotionally to a character's actions (the voyeuristic and visceral eye, respectively) are more easily facilitated by computer games.

This is just one example of how Seif El-Nasr bridges filmic theory and game design theory. Other examples include Stanislavski's acting and directing theories. From this theoretic background, she proposes several dramatic techniques that can be used in video games to connect the player and the characters. These include: the ticking clock, character tactics, character goals. Useful definition of story engine methodology and agent models are presented.

While this is not a complete review of this paper, it covers its highlights, especially one of its most notable highlights, that of a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to the work. That combination provides a legitimate real world set of experiences that ground the theory.

[paper]

Thursday, February 7, 2008

Systemic level design for emergent play– Harvey Smith at GDC

Emergent play seems very powerful to me. Something about the verisimilitude of characters imbued with goals left alone to achieve them really speaks to me. I think it's a sense of "Hamlet on the Holodeck" -- emphasis on the holodeck. However, our best contenporary example of that is the Sims, which forms micronarratives but no coherent story. Even from a ludic stand-point, I doubt such a free range of actions makes sense for much gameplay. So clearly, constraints are key.

Smith's talk is about that kind of balance, especially necessary for our imprecise mastery of artificial life. He diagrams a method that can employ modern best practices in software engineering to great convenience and effect. Things that are the same should behave the same by default, then get any special modifiers (environment, mood, motiviation, etc) added on. This is especially handy for inanimate objects. This is essentially Crawford's ratio of interactive excellence from The Art of Interactive Design (85), where the number of accessible states over the number of conceivable states should approach 1 for best results. Avoiding depicting doors that can't open (Prince of Persia, I'm looking at you!), and otherwise usable items that are actually just part of the background is a great start at reducing those conceivable states. Especially when some ledges are graspable, others are walkable, and others just painted onto walls for effect (and instant death when you try to jump onto them). And why can the Prince pick up a fallen foe's saber, but not a bow?

The challenge and need for balance comes from narrative considerations. To avoid "toy-like" environments (Sims etc) the player needs to be led/driven/coerced through some series of events/levels/whatever... because we construct narratives linearly, and if the designer cares what narrative we put together, then she cares what order we see these events/levels/whatever in. Even if we withdraw to a purely ludic point of view, challenging gameplay often calls for a change in states, increases of difficulty, or introductions of novel items. The challenge is -- how much of a special case are these?

From Smith's POV (and I too remember Deus Ex fondly), besides the software engineering benefits which I can affirm, his principles give direct benefits to the player. A sense of immersion in a consistent world. This allows for plan-making, understanding, and achievements. On the other hand, you still have those "one-ofs" that are required (for some definition of required) and stand alone as de facto special cases anyways, getting none of those benefits. And emergence, while creating powerful "second order consequences," is too unreliable to count on for important narrative events.

I think we need to find some formal constraint language for controlling emergence.

Wednesday, February 6, 2008

Prince of Persia: Rival Swords

So I'm watching Pat play Super Mario Galaxy on the Wii. A couple of Mario's new moves really surprised me. I say surprised because they were actually fairly familiar. One move allows Mario to jump against a wall, hang on, then jump higher against the opposing wall, and so on, all the way up a "chimney" (close walls). When he's close to the edge of a narrow walkway, he hangs off the edge. I think Mario would feel right at home in the Prince of Persia universe, except for his awkward tendency of trying to jump on his enemies heads rather than slash at them with a saber. Oh yeah, there's the same awkward third-person camera angles you get to fiddle with.

I was struck by an obvious but still enjoyable sense of nostalgia playing Prince of Persia. It evoked distinct memories of being back in grade 6 at middle school playing the original (game, perhaps not version -- I don't know if it was a port) Prince. I remember how the Prince skidded to a halt when you stopped running, how he whipped out his saber when you had to fight, the 8-bit spikes at the bottom of pits and all the rest. In that sense this Prince hits home in just the right way. Lots of new toys, but enough of the original to pull in original players. I haven't played the others in this new series, so I can't really say anything to series fatigue, or how well the overall story line plays out.

The most applicable reading from last week would be Jenkins' 'Narrative Architecture.' I admire how he tries to carve that pragmatic middle ground where the narrative aspects of games are allowed to be relevant and designers are allowed to try improve their presence in games. Prince is a game that's had quite a lot of environment design done, in order to create a real-seeming backdrop. However, since this is a puzzler, much of this is static, as opposed to, say, Assassin's Creed's more life-like crowds of native speakers. Nonetheless, the sense of exploring these ruins in a land and time far away is a good one to nurture, as it directly strengthens the believability of the puzzles and traps that await you.

Your NPC foes seemed somehow lackluster. That's likely a result of playing on easy, and I kept wondering silly things like why the archers didn't have backup swords anyways. On the other hand, when I say lackluster I refer to more than their fighting prowess. Their presence in various places is definitely just as scene-based as the traps etc (ie you have to accept that as a trope of the game, it doesn't make sense except as a predefined problem needing a solution). They also seemed strangely deaf, and even if you messed up the stealth kill of one guy, his partner would still be oblivious. Strange, but since I like to notice AI behavior in games, it seemed noteworthy.

It also seems worth noting that Prince is a game that doesn't want emergent behaviour from its NPCs. While some games with systematic level design can afford to have its NPCs act on their motivations and move around levels, Prince absolutely requires this almost-cinematic level of precision to a well-accomplished scene. Having all the guards decide to meet in one room to defend the castle would bypass that entirely, as well as probably trigger most of the traps. :)
Oh narrative ambitions. What will happen to you when we give computer characters goals and amibitions?

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Assassin's Creed

This continues in the tradition of 'stealth' games popularized by the Thief series, and then later by Splinter Cell, and perhaps Deus Ex if you squint your eyes a little enough. This type of game seems to focus on providing a detailed world simulation, often including localized emergent interactions. It would be interesting to do a more detailed comparison to see if these are a sort of response to "unrealistic" first-person-shooters, since they focus on providing dramatic consequences for straying outside normal behaviours. This does stand in opposition to games where out-and-out gunplay is what the non-player-characters expect and respond in kind, whether intentionally (or with an agenda) or not.

Assassin's Creed, in my short experience with the game, stands out as having great graphics, a very immersive sense of spatiality, but lacking a little in the overall story-line. That may well not matter to most gamers, especially those for whom "the play's the thing." To them, only the repetition in certain quests (eg gathering redundant flags) may damper their enthusiasm. Running and climbing and jumping and kill and hiding like a medieval assassin covers a multitude of sins, as they (don't really, I guess) say.

So from a game-play perspective, I don't have too much to criticize. I especially like the "social stealth" aspects with the blatant mapping of low profile to socially acceptable actions and high profile to socially unacceptable actions. While the initial introduction of these features seemed a little cheesy, these game-play mechanisms served to emphasize the important elements of the game -- staying "hidden." I think making it explicit what people will tolerate made for an interesting design territory. If anything, I think they failed to fully mine this fertile ground. The protagonist's actions and methods could have been questioned and problematic. Instead, efficacy remains your by-word, and instead this seeming spiritual man seems to have no qualms about his actions, something either a ordinary Christian or Muslim of his time might have (and apparently the protagonist descends from a mother who is one and a father who is the other). While I'm truly delving into "you should source this properly land", it appears medieval assassins belonged to an offshoot Muslim sect persecuted as infidels by other Muslims, and whose main quarrels were with them. Nonetheless the Crusaders played a big part in defining them, so I suppose they can be the "big bads" of this game.

Oh well, enough of that. From this game, I derive the idea that explicitly linking your character's maneuvers to narrative goals seems like open design territory. Also, making up a ridiculous and pointless metanarrative that's approximately one micrometer removed from "it's all a dream" is dumb, even if upper management ordered it late in the design process and it wasn't really your fault and hey we've all been there amirite?

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Bartle's MUD player types

As an avid player of the online textual role-playing games known by a dizzying array of acronyms (I always liked MU* and don't attach the pejorative sense Bartle seems to give it) during the 90's, this was an enjoyable read for me. While his use of the Hearts/Clubs/Diamonds/Spades metaphor, which he claims will "make the player types easier to remember," seemed contrived (albeit quite punny) and worse yet never mentioned outside the title and the first page, this paper nailed down some good player archetypes while evoking some wonderful nostalgia.

The great part is, that we can look around and still see these player types on MMORPGs, the spiritual (if not in fact, actual) successors to MU*. This makes his archetypes lasting and potentially useful for designers today. It would also be interesting to know whether his useful seeming advice for altering the player type balances would work.

Bartle starts by asking what a MUD is like: Games? Pasttimes? Sports? Entertainment? He concludes by saying that it is like all four, depending on what you're in it for. This is certainly the "big-tent" review of gaming, and is probably a useful way to ask "which is it more like?" Looking at an axis (Bartle presents a lovely ascii one in this paper) is likely a useful way of characterization that helps preclude is-and-only-is debates.

I think the largest take-away here is to know for whom you are designing: achievers, and their quest for accomplishments? socializers and their interest in gossip and relationships? explorers and their search for the new? killers and their constant power struggle? Each type you want to support will require in-game support elements, and Bartle helps provide a heads-up on what kinds of interactions the groups will have, and what kind of equilibrium might result.

The Matrix Online

What fan of the Matrix movie series wouldn't want to live in that world -- Presumably while enjoying the beautiful irony of being a virtual character who portrays a person who had a virtual life in an virtual world, but has opted out and now lives in the real (but still virtual) world, while only visiting the doubly-virtual Matrix world to complete missions?

According to what I've read about the game -- having never actually played this, or any other, MMORPG -- it succeeds at being a relatively fun virtual world to inhabit. At least when Monolith was running live events (before SOE took over), the daily and weekly events and story arcs were impressive and enjoyable (and canonical!) extensions of the Matrix storyline. This level of narrative involvement in that universe surely stands out and the feeling you get when the "actual/unique" Morpheus dies (or whatever) differs greatly from killing some epic mob in an instance that you know will simply respawn for the next guy.

Surely, this use of rich background material stands out. If the joy of playing an MMORPG centers around its immersive qualities (and I suppose this is an arguable stance), then the richer and more involved it is, the better. Of course, having paid (thus quality-controlled, and accountable) players is surely expensive, and I take it SOE has dumbed down the number of live events etc somewhat now.

The game also seems to suffer from strange combat controls (and indeed, imagining just how multi-player bullet time might work made this a concern from minute one) and lackluster PvE (ie the missions are repetitive). I also assume that it's hard to compete for players in the WoW eat dog world of MMORPGS.

Majestic (the proto-ARG)

While not seen as the first actual example of an alternate-reality game ("The Beast" takes that credit, according to the literature), Majestic stands out for its early implementation of many ARG-like features. It almost equally stands out for having essentially failed.

First, let's look at what it did well, or did interestingly. Obviously, the first characteristic is its use of multiple media. Receiving a phone call or fax (perhaps while at work) "from (within) a game" was essentially unprecedented at this point and served to blend the boundaries between life and game quite well. The use of "actual" websites to explore for clues is also a prime precursor for ARGS. Maintaining the ruse that the game is actually suspended and the game actually consists of figuring out why is quite clever and fits the whole Majestic-12 conspiracy theme quite well. Seeing this kind of information posted on "official" websites adds credence for players who aren't used to seeing such obvious falsities online and presented as truth (clearly they haven't perused some of the same web fora as I have).

So where did the game fall down? To start with, it violated the primary rule of ARGs in classic EA fashion: This is not a game. Apparently the game was hyped as a revolutionary game that "plays you." Corporate hype also detracts from the secrecy and specialness of the game, leaving it firmly in the realm of the ordinary. As well, phone calls and the like were preceded in-game with announcements that they were going to occur. This clearly was a game. Finally, the pay model clearly had an affect.

""Majestic" drew such an anemic audience that Electronic Arts abandoned the story half-way through. Of the 800,000 people who started to register for the free, first installment of the game, only 71,200 completed the process. That number fell to 10,000 to 15,000 subscribers when it came time to pay. It was a grand experiment, but one that ultimately cost EA between $5 million and $7 million. – Chris Morris, CNN, “Innovation at Risk?”, December 2001"

Apparently real life interfered even more with the 9/11 incident, causing EA to suspend the game temporarily or at least suffer some negative publicity.

Majestic can be seen as breaking new ground for a video game, however, it doesn't make enough of a leap, remaining firmly in the realm of a "game with innovative mechanics." These mechanics may also have been merely novelties, failing to hold the attention and causing annoyance once one got tired of receiving phone calls and faxes.

Oasis Review

Perfectly anticipating and representing the increasing number of casual games, Oasis is a well-composed strategy/puzzle game released for Windows in 2005. Described as "one-part Civilization" and "one-part Minesweeper", the game allows you to explore different scenarios (eg the Egyptian king's son vows to retake his dead father's kingdom) by exploring random maps in search of powerful glyphs. The 10x10 maps start fully covered by the fog of war, and your goal is not only to find the glyphs, but also to uncover and develop enough cities so that you can defend against the barbarians who want to destroy/capture this glyph. This provides a nice tension between exploration (you only have 85 turns) and development (each act of road-building or mining costs a turn as well).

Each round, a new random map is loaded, full of camp followers, mountains of ore, and the oasis where the glyph is to be found. This provides that useful "reset" feature, where performance the round before affects your score, but does not affect your present situation either positively or negatively. You can then enjoy the puzzle that the current level presents. How many directions will the barbarians come from? How should I spend my turns? No matter what course you take, however, the game provides positive feedback through the discovery of something useful -- battle technology or an improved civilization or extra points. Some squares are blank, but the terrain features do provide a reasonable means of heading towards useful territory. That is, the largest desert has the most followers, cities are surrounded by farms, oases are always on the edge etc. Learning these few rules helps to improve your success at your desired strategy.

Are there flaws in the game? Well, of course, you have to like this hybrid distillation of theme and genre. If you don't like civilization building in any way, even this mild incarnation may bother you. Likewise the puzzler element of finding the richest sections of the map. Since I've only played the demo, I also don't know how well it holds together between scenarios (since the game apparently switches milieus and eras once you finish a narrative arc). Being the casual game that it is, Oasis likely holds up fairly well to the minimal expectations it creates here. The narrative arcs presented seem to provide forward impetus and continuity in reasonable ways, without creating too much expectation for excellent drama.

I'm also a little concerned about the game's difficulty. Even on the easiest setting, it appeared that the number of barbarians eventually overwhelmed anything you could reasonably oppose them with. Further exploration of the game and better strategies is likely the solution here.

In the end, Oasis holds up as an excellent example of a single-player casual game. It's easy to get into, pleasantly addictive, and provides enough complexity and narrative involvement to hold the attention.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Lego Star Wars (Wii)

I finally got a chance to load up this Christmas gift. It's quite fun, and offers a huge amount of content. It has some draw-backs too, flaws that are inherent in the game concept.

To start with, the central concept: you play through the Star Wars movies as the main characters, alone or with a second player. While doing so, you collect Lego bits (in various denominations) by destroying things and opponents, and rearranging the furniture (literal and otherwise). Action starts in the Cantina, where unlocked characters and various bystanders walk around until a brawl breaks out between opposing sides. From there, you choose walk through a portal corresponding to the movie you want to explore. The first time through, you need to follow the story line, but afterwards a "Free play" mode is unlocked, allowing you to use different characters and/or return to find new treasures.

The actual action is the game is directed with both controller and nunchuck, although few commands are used: primary attack (eg light sabre, laser gun), secondary action (eg use the force, use a grappling hook) and switch characters. This is a very important element to the game; since characters abilities don't change (eg as in some roleplaying games where characters develop new abilities, gear etc), switching to a different character with different abilities is key to bypassing certain obstacles or defeating certain enemies. As a result, you'll end up playing as pretty much everyone at some point, even using droids like R2-D2 to open doors or fly across chasms. On the other hand, while not being used, other characters just follow you around with minimal defensive ability. It gets quite frustrating to have a walking armada of armed troopers but being the only one who's actually attacking!

The other detraction here is the bit collection aspect. While destroying built-up legos is at the heart of the fun of this game, needing to try destroy everything and collect the bits that fly everywhere become tiresome for me. I guess I'm not a big enough fan of the "unlock millions of extra characters and secrets" type of game to start with. I do admit, it makes for a huge universe of possibilities -- I'll soon be able to play through the first movie using Darth Maul for example.

Overall, they've created quite a fun game here. You get to drive pretty much every vehicle, and although their effectiveness varies, it's quite a lot of fun. You even get to do Anakin's pod race, for example. Using the force is also instrumental, and things (including enemies) glow to let you know you can push them around at will. The sense of reconstructing the world and bypassing obstacles this way is quite neat and makes the jedi characters feel very special.

It's a game with a lot of story at the heart of it. This is done through by literally letting you play through these well-known Star Wars narrative arcs. Lego cutscenes intersperse the action in logical places to further the story or provide high-level perspective (eg fleet action or something). As well, by starting you at the Cantina, it makes it seem like your characters have a persistent life in this world. Vehicles you unlock live in the parking lot, just as characters live inside the Cantina, creating a very populated feel.

In short this is one of the better transfers of a movie francise into a video game. The play is quite fun, albeit a little simplistic (I guess it IS a lego game, and aimed for not-quite-so-hardcore gamers, including kids -- you can't even die permanently, you just come back with a bits penalty) and somewhat repetitive.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Reflection on Settlers of Cataan

Ah Settlers. I'm not sure it was actually the first "German-style strategy board game" to make it big, but it was certainly among the first. Either way, it's still fairly indicitive of the genre: a fine balancing act between adversarial competition and implementing your own strategies, mostly sans chance. As has been noted, some elements of chance give rise of "variety of outcome" which is obviously quite important for a game. However, there are still games which trend even more towards removing elements of chance, such as "Puerto Rico" -- another colonization game, however one where chance plays the most minial of roles (crop tiles are revealed randomly from a pool).

These games are also interesting in that they become a type of puzzle, whose solution allows you to play optimally. This is opposed to the earlier style of board game popular in North America, the wargame. While obviously a variety of other games were prevelent (Monopoly is an easy counterexample), wargames were probably the genre that "hardcore" board gamers would be playing. I've heard it said, and look forward to seeing what others think, that female gamers are more interested in play experiences that aren't explicitly about mechanisms of shooting and killing. In any event, I'm sure most everyone welcomes the variety.

One thing that came up when we tried to run a distributed session of Settlers was the important of trading. If you haven't played the game before, merely knowing that trading is possible, but seeing the main mechanic of getting resources from the hexes you've colonized, you may not think trading is important. In fact, it is vital. From the first turn until the last, the trades you allow or oppose essentially make the game. That being said, it's hard to know how one should trade. Some people take the easy route, and do basically anything that's not immediately bad for them. Others try use trading to balance their hand size against the incursion of the robber. At other times, trading is obviously used to stymie the front-runner - perhaps others will trade to their own disadvantage if you can take away the longest road from the current top scorer, or else deny trades to that individual.

Still, I have witnessed the interesting dynamics of social behaviour at play. Players seem to feel bad about denying trades. People seem desperate for a certain resource so they can "actually do something this turn" and the turn bogs down while they cast about looking for a move. In the end, I'm not certain whether this reliance on the trade mechanic is good or not. On the other hand, the trade is what actually keeps playing interacting. I'd obviously be remiss in not mentioning that this trading seems like a type of prisoner's dilemma / game theory, the second instance of it within this game, alongside placing the robber (on 7's and the soldier card). I'd be interested to see if one could actually motivate certain kinds of responses through intelligent use of these two mechanics, ie promoting behaviour that helps you win by helping or provoking players with this mechanics.

I guess the other thing that came up during our play sessions was the importance of your starting positions. Missing out on a wood/brick settlement seems truly crippling, as there was rarely enough that other players were willing to trade it. The value of ports also varies, probably depending on how much other players are willing to trade with you. I don't think anyone actually used a port during our last game, except I think I did use my 2:1 brick port once during the game now that I think about it. This is widely different from past games I've played. I think it must be a tradeoff in how much players are willing to trade versus how much one must depend on themselves. I suspect experienced players go for the ports and trade somewhat less.

I look forward to using trade as an impetus for motivating behaviour. I want to see how well it works. :)

Purpose of the Blog

This blog was mostly setup because I'm taking IAT842 - a grad-level game design and theory course at SIAT. However, since game design is one of my interests, I might post on other related topics and keep things going past the course. Mostly what you'll see here for the next three months are posts related to the games we play and reflect on during play sessions for the course. Feel free to browse the blogs from the other students in the course (see the list on the sidebar) for alternate points of view.