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...
Thursday, April 17, 2008
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.
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.
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]
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]
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