One way around this would be to have a feature where time goes faster / skips forward to the next important section.

You decide to launch the Voyager probe.
You don’t need to do anything else gameplay-wise until it runs into trouble.
So, the gameplay fastforwards it shows you a picture of the probe going across the solar system.
But then when difficulties loom, it slows down and a scientist asks you what you are going to do about the asteroid field ahead of it.
-> At which point you can make some gameplay choices.

Likewise you could choose a meta-goal, infiltrate stealthily, or neutralise all threats. And the game would stop to ask you what you wanted to do at certain points.

Ketch

Also, I have a new top-level GTxA post answering Janet’s request, Toward Authentically Interactive Characters and Stories.

(Live from E3, where interactive narrative is only a kind of sushi)

Also, I have to admit I’m cynical about how quickly the game industry will move towards procedurality, e.g. algorithmically-generated models, textures, animations, behaviors, versus hand-made ones. There’s some lip service being paid to it

I think there was more than lip service being paid. Though folk like Chris Crawford have been talking about process intensity for years, it was being talked about at a whole new level of exposure at GDC this year. Yes, it’s the early stages, and yes, there will still be games produced for awhile by armies hand-crafting a zillion assets, but there’s the real possibility of an industry-wide phase transition towards process intensity. Though EA’s talking about it, perhaps the charge will be led by the indies – indie developers don’t have armies, and process intensity is a way to make games without armies. I agree with Andrew that Ragdoll Kung Fu was one of the coolest games at GDC; and lo-and-behold, it’s a low asset (an animation-asset-free fighting game) indie game.

Someone told me there was some amusing whispered heckling from non-narrative folks like Richard Bartle, which sounded pretty funny.

It was Ian – he was sitting in between Espen and Richard, who apparently dropped dry wisecracks through the whole thing. He said it was like sitting inside the head of the most cynical person on earth.

sorry for the delay… Big Hair got in my eyes. I’m writing this up. I’ll try to be succinct, but it’ll be long enough that I’ll turn it into a new post, soon.

And more on the need to break away in new directions — Costik writes “Old Farts and Young Turks“.

Dirk, I love the *talentless actors = a good thing* post. But I reckon that recursive behaviours should only be able to nest so deep, or you’ll be hitting a believability problem.

I’m still building up the argument, and trying to get to the point that you adress as fast as possible, but yeah, you’re right, it is tricky. There’s this area where you have to make the recursive movement to somehow “petter out”, and make its forces “dissolve” into the content, instead of going deeper. Since what you’re doing there is inexplainable by mathematics (at least that’s what I think now), formalization and looking at “models” won’t help, and it’s all down to seat-of-the-pants experimentation and learning from experience. Must be “where the art is”, then…

That said, substantive immersion will be just one ingredient we would need for achieving satisfying interactive stories; as Chris alludes to, and I’m always proselytizing, agency will be key. We could make an interactive piece that is about something personal and down-to-earth (versus about saving the world), that is very reflective and thoughtful in tone and leaves all kinds of room for players to be empathetic, but if there is little or no agency, then I’d argue it’s not going to be significantly different in its power than a film or play. Agency is primarily where I (and Michael) are focusing our attention — it’s where the technical issues are most challenging and necessary to solve to make progress, and is at the heart of the interactive medium.

Janet, I’ll agree that dramatic compression is missing from many games — often the pacing can be slow, and players end up spending way too much time doing rote or boring things. MMOGs for example seem plagued with this problem. However I know that some game designers, perhaps in other game genres, e.g. the Half Life series, explicitly give a lot of attention to the pace of a game, to really attempt a satisfying gaming experience. Such games purposefully give players a carefully-tuned amount of time they need to figure out how to get past an obstacle, to make sure the challenges come fast enough but not too fast, etc.

But in a general sense, it’s probably true that the structure of many of videogames, e.g. trial-and-error play pattern of trying, dying, and restarting, or the play pattern of try-this-try-that in the more pure simulation games, inherently thwarts dramatic compression. Player experimentation in general (players trying different things as they play) is probably at odds with dramatic compression. I’d bet this is one of the roots of discontent that ludologists have with narrative. To suggest that we need dramatic compression really is a request for new play patterns and new genres, I think. And/or games that offer substantial room for player experimentation but are also drama-managed.

In my next comment, hopefully tomorrow, I’ll give my own agency-oriented responses to my original panel questions, and Janet’s reverse question.

Substantive immersion seems like a nice way of talking about it that seperates out all the stuff that publishers need to talk about to shell out. Yet you’re still basically talking about the interface and the game world. Drama as a game concept is still very much based in references from movies, so it has to be about the characters and the internal relationships in the world. However, I would argue that in games (and ‘interactive entertainment’ I suppose) the drama that exists between the player and the game is the most unique and interesting thing a game developer has to work with.

Dirk, I love the *talentless actors = a good thing* post. But I reckon that recursive behaviours should only be able to nest so deep, or you’ll be hitting a believability problem.

There are two forms of immersion, “adjective” and “substantive”. Most games created today rely on adjective immersion. Adjective immersion occurs when a player is glued to the screen as a result of the triggering of innate survival-centric impulses. Game elements including quick movement, bright colors, great variability in audio serve to immerse the Player. They are not however ‘essential’ elements. While they carry attributive value, that value is not essential to identify the Additionally, the reliance on adjective immersion comes at the expense of attributing semiotic value to the images on-screen. NOTE that the game ICO relies less on ADJECTIVE IMMERSION than on SUBSTANTIVE IMMERSION as an example of present direction.

Substantive immersion results when one is attending to those attributes that are the essential attributes of the things with which the Player is interacting. What is an essential attribute of a thing? Depends upon the thing. The essential attributes are those invariant distinctions that enable the identification of the PARTICULAR thing. NOTE that one ought not confuse an individual for a group. You might think that black and white stripes are essential attributes of a zebra, but those are essential for all zebras (except the albino zebra) and are not in themselves enough to distinguish individuals. The specific patterning of the stripes, however, has been compared to the human fingerprint.

And so, if the Player’s attention is directed in relation to in game attributes that are considered the essential attributes for the things so signified, then the player is SUBSTANTIVELY IMMERSED. While their attention may still be indirectly directed, it is being accomplished with an artistry not practiced with the sledgehammer techniques leveraging adjective immersion.

Drama entails substantive immersion as one retains an awareness of their sense of self while so immersed. Therefore, the Player can empathize and the tension becomes the Player’s tension. Beyond this lies the Player’s ability in self-reflection and that is fundamental to establishing dramatic tension.

Janet, it seems the answer to your question lies in developing games that center on “essential attributes.” Substantive immersion is a necessary condition to achieving genuine drama in video games.

Also in a future comment I’ll comment on Ernest Adams’ History of Interactive Narrative lecture he gave, which like everything else I saw this year, didn’t make a big impression on me.

Janet, sure, I should have enough free time tomorrow to writeup the answers I would have given to those questions, as well as answer your reverse question. I’m looking forward to hearing others’ answers too.

Dirk, cool to see you have a new blog; I’ve added to the blogroll, and responded to your post there.

Erik, yeah, I’m certainly fried right now, although I’m better than I was just after GDC, so it’s probably good I waited till now to write up this post. Yes my state is probably coloring my perception of things a little, but so be it… :-)

I want to know what Andrew’s answers to his own questions are: What is the pleasure in storytelling that is currently missing from games and why?

I would also like to hear Andrew’s and other people’s answer to the reverse question: What moments in people’s own gameplay have created intense story pleasure or have aroused story expectations and succeeded or failed in satisfying them in a memorable way?

Finally, I want to ride one of my own hobby horses one more time: when games fail to satisfy our story expectations it is often because they lack dramatic compression: the game actions are too diffuse, too much like real time actions and too little like the chained compressed, literarily abstracted actions of fiction or drama. This lack of dramatic compression applies to the events of the game and especially to the actions of the player/interactor. I wonder if this tension is intrinsic to games and differentiates them from stories or whether it is just that we haven’t figured out how to use interactive conventions for maximum dramatic agency. Filmed action looked intrinsically less immediate and riveting than theatrical action until filmmakers learned how to compress and compose action for the screen: do we need to invent similar conventions for games or are game actions intrinsically less dramatic?