NPCs are People not goals to achieve! ------------------------------------- The current state of the majority of the electronic entertainment industry is that there is a huge amount of concentration on the best use of RESOURCES to MEET GOALS. This comes about because of the concept of GAMEPLAY, ie. making decisions about what to do, where each choice has different advantages and disadvantages. I am not saying that gameplay is unimportant in fact, in most games it is very important. But if you think about it, Gameplay and in particular the GOAL ORIENTATION is one of the reasons why we are less able to do CHARACTER BASED SOFTWARE. Because thinking solely in terms of goals, the goal oriented person tries to do the things which are likely to obtain the GOAL that they want. Ie. they try to MANIPULATE the character to be their friend, lover, enemy etc. This was shown even by Will Wright when talking about the effect that playing The Sims had had on his way of thinking, when he got home he wondered whether it would be more productive to kiss his wife, or to hug her. Character oriented games might need to break away from this so that unless the player were roleplaying, the player would be being INTIMATE with the artificial people. In this case, INTIMACY being defined as being truly yourself, in the presence of other people. (Although strangely enough you can include such things as pets etc in this definition). So that the NPP Non Player Person would develop some sort of genuine relation with the player. Two interesting related links. Blowing my Siboot-Horn http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/JCGD_Volume_1/Siboot.html Thoughts on the holodeck http://www.erasmatazz.com/library/JCGD_Volume_1/Thoughts_on_Holodeck.html Being yourself with a computer program, and the little computer people within what a concept.

(Amendment)

Intimacy is being yourself in the presence of people who are being theirselves too.

Well there''s a catch here becuase when you''re playing a role you''re not being yourself. So you''d have to work out how to be yourself "in-character" before you can play intimatly.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

"Character oriented games might need to break away from this so that unless the player were roleplaying, the player would be being INTIMATE with the artificial people. "

Excuse my english, I was explaining that whilst you cannot stop people roleplaying if they want to. If they Aren''t roleplaying, then they Are being Themselves.

So what do you think, there seem to be quite a few important design issues raised by this concept.

Like Immediacy of Interface, ie. Do onscreen characters stop you playing as yourself? If so how can you reduce this to increase the immersion and ("sense of being yourself") is it best to just have a "hand" interface like Black&White (a game which sounds the closest to this concept, but still has a lot of game elements to get in the way of being yourself (if they do do this). Ie. Having to defeat enemies ?

So you are talking about promoting the immersion by having players play themselves instead of a role? So what would be the tools to accomplish this, is that what you''re asking?

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

"So you are talking about promoting the immersion by having players play themselves instead of a role? So what would be the tools to accomplish this, is that what you''re asking? "

That is the main thing that I am asking yep .

(The other being to say that I''m not sure that decent character oriented software will work unless we can get away from having the player manipulate the "computer people" to get a goal.

Ie. If the computer character will Only help me if I keep him happy.)

So what tools do we have, folks?

I think this subject needs to be broken down into smaller structures to be worked out as there is probably many ways to accomplish this but not in it''s current state.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!