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Original post by Wavinator You'd have to make sure the NPC didn't become the same as a dog, obviously.

Actually, I think the dog NPC would be great. Think of it as a Zelda:OOC Navi without the annoying "Wissen." The dog would fetch items, and be a good sidekick without the annoyingness of having lines. If you wanted to have it bark for attention, that would be fine. You could have the dog point to trouble areas, and it would of course always be faithful. Another advantage is that you would not need to show facial expressions, just the occasional tail wag.

Just don't turn it into something awful like clippy. ("It looks like you are trying to write a letter. Do you want me to format your harddrive? Yes/Maybe Later")

I think I would be attached to the dog just for its usefullness, and would be irritated if I lost him somehow. Unless of course he sired a pup that would replace him. That doesn't quite work the same way with a wife. (EWwww)

Wissen!

Hah i forgot about Navi. I hear the latest annoyance is Tingle though.
There should be a STFU button for them. =)

Sorry, but your all on the wrong track. The adaptation of fiction to a game media disolves the user of needing to use his imagination. That is the critical link to emotional bonding to fictional characters.

Every human has a unqiue ability to put themselves into other peoples shoes/situations. Given the presentation aspect of modern gaming, that function is'nt needed.

All of you remember when games used to feel a certain way. Emotional enough to lust after, worlds large enough to want to add to them via early mods etc. This was because worlds were rarely defined to the percentage they are now.

All you need to do is present the player with less visual explinations of certain events. My studio is including a small 50 page book to set the atmosphere of our first title. This will be given out to the presell customers, as an imagination teaser. Something to get them discussing ideas to other people, and thinking of how thier own world is defined. If they disagree with our presentation of certain designs, they will be given the tools to change them, and share them with others.

Just stop forcing a player to view something in a cut scene. HL2 tried to do this, but they went a little too far, and left things too open. But the player, not the designer, made the experience his own.

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Playing Fallout:BOS, I had one traps specialist. With 5 identical traps to disarm the first 2 are no problem and then the third explodes in her face. It's death by dice roll. I feel cheated. This is the sort of thing I mean. Playing Romance of the Three Kingdoms, I take a risk leaving a province with only a few soldiers so I can attack another. My minimal defenses get clobbered by who I thought was an ally and one of my best diplomats is killed. This doesn't feel as random to me. Maybe I'd get past the Fallout situation a bit better if instead of "Looks tricky" for a warning I got, "Hmm... I think I should read three more books on this subject before I attempt this." Looks Tricky is warning that I should heed, but we are heroes here and we're already doing extrordinary things.

Good points. You should *never* randomly kill off a player. If the dice roll trap merely harms a player, that's a little more acceptable, but random harmful events should be avoided in general. A game should always provide the player with an avenue of escape, and a death should always feel like it's their fault. There are few, solid, unchangeable rules in game design, but no random deaths should be one of them.

Resident Evil 4's action cutscenes (hitting certain buttons at certain key moments, or you die) are a good example. They surprise the player. They keep the player involved even during cutscenes, and they never require the player's death. A good way to improve the Fallout:BOS system would be to implement something similar. The player fails the random dice roll, so now he has to hit a button or perform some other action in order to escape the trap. Make the trap still do some damage, that way the player is still forced to keep their trap disarming skill up.

This still connects to the tragedy discussion. If the tragedy feels random or forced, the player will hate it. Give the player a way to escape the tragedy and they'll know it was their fault.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster Sorry, but your all on the wrong track. The adaptation of fiction to a game media disolves the user of needing to use his imagination. That is the critical link to emotional bonding to fictional characters. Every human has a unqiue ability to put themselves into other peoples shoes/situations. Given the presentation aspect of modern gaming, that function is'nt needed. All of you remember when games used to feel a certain way. Emotional enough to lust after, worlds large enough to want to add to them via early mods etc. This was because worlds were rarely defined to the percentage they are now. All you need to do is present the player with less visual explinations of certain events. My studio is including a small 50 page book to set the atmosphere of our first title. This will be given out to the presell customers, as an imagination teaser. Something to get them discussing ideas to other people, and thinking of how thier own world is defined. If they disagree with our presentation of certain designs, they will be given the tools to change them, and share them with others. Just stop forcing a player to view something in a cut scene. HL2 tried to do this, but they went a little too far, and left things too open. But the player, not the designer, made the experience his own.

I want to respond to this, but I want to better understand your argument. What is it about modern games that keeps the player from using their imaginations? Is it the graphics? The complex worlds? The storylines? Some combination of a variety of elements?

I have no problem using my imagination while watching a movie or reading a book, and I fail to see how playing a game suddenly cuts me off from my imagination.

Getting away from cutscenes is usually a good thing, but they aren't inherently evil either.

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Original post by Wavinator Quote: Original post by PSWind You can't effectively force a player to feel so therefore in order for a lot of these concepts to work it would most-likely require to be focused on a character that the player may identify with but is not representative of the player. So you're saying that since it's tough to get the player to empathize because you don't know their emotional state, it might be better to get them to identify with another character? Sort of by proxy?

Excatly. It seems much easier to feel for what someone is going through than to force the player into feeling for a situation he has no personal knowledge of. Personally, lack of interest is given a chance to enter into the equation once I have no idea how to relate to a situation I'm supposed to care about. Instead, I care for the character because he cares about the situation.

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Original post by Evil Bachus You should *never* randomly kill off a player. If the dice roll trap merely harms a player, that's a little more acceptable, but random harmful events should be avoided in general.

How is set, exact damage any different from random harm?

I think what you say implies that damage must always scale with the player. That is, if I step on one landmine, it does x damage, but if I step on another exactly like it it now does y (always below my HP). That damages immersion.

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The player fails the random dice roll, so now he has to hit a button or perform some other action in order to escape the trap. Make the trap still do some damage, that way the player is still forced to keep their trap disarming skill up.

I like the idea of a second chance but now your relying on reflex skill.

And if the trap might do some damage, what if the player / NPC ally was already damaged and this is the third trap they're messing around with?

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This still connects to the tragedy discussion. If the tragedy feels random or forced, the player will hate it. Give the player a way to escape the tragedy and they'll know it was their fault.

This is such a challenge of weighing choice with nerfing the system. If I go dancing through a minefield, I think the game should kill me. IOW, the game sets firm rules and you have to figure out how to work within them, rather than the rules adapting to you.

I think it's a bad idea to adapt in all but a simple game only because there are so many possible cases (like 1HP & messing around with traps that do 100 damage).

By the way: Thanks to the awesome insight in this thread, I recant my initial position. [grin] You guys have made me really sit down and think about this one.

To summarize:
1) I think you can include tragedy as gameplay only so long as you provide an interface to make the abstract (like emotion) somehow concrete.

2) The player MUST be given time to form attachments, and those attachments must provide a story context and a gameplay context. Lacking the former can create objectified thinking. Lacking the latter can create a "so what" effect since it doesn't impact what you care about, which is the game's definition of success

3) The game can't have binary win/loss conditions. Loss must provide a value.

4) It's risky to try to model emotion in the player's avatar. Probably better, as many have suggested here, to externalize emotion in the form of how the denizens of the game world react. You can't say, "Your character grieves" but I think you CAN (with the right interface & game goals) say, "The game world has changed this way because of this death. Player, respond how you will."

5) The player MUST be given a wide variety of means to express their emotional feelings, even if those feelings are rebellion, contempt or apathy at a loss. Being able to say it and have NPCs react I think makes it more immersive.

Nice. I think it says it all =)