Excuse me if this was already stated as I am not one to read everything =), but there is one downside to this as is to almost anygame thing. Eventually, with enough information, people will fingure out your rules and then write a guide to it. After this your system breaks down...

Thanks! Just My $.02

Personally, I think such an intereface would work well _IFF_ you offer information elsewhere on what is being chosen. A 'non-gamer' comes in and clicks the pretty pictures and can begin their 'magic journey'. A gamer comes in and likes playing mages and wants cyberpunk-ish missions so he/she clicks the '?' in the corner to have labels appear on all the buttons and when he/she hovers over one it describes in a few sentences the effects of that choice. Perhaps an external readme/manual would have even more detail, giving examples of the kinds of thing some choices might represent to help give a feel for the world-choosing algorithm.

I have to disagree with some of the responses given, explaining the meaning of each choice defeats the whole idea of this system. The player should make the choices they feel best suit the character they have mind. Not have an explaination of what the effects of each choice is. As far as faqs go there is not point in bothering to consider them, people will post a faq on a game no matter what the designer does. If the player choose to use a faq for whaever eason thats their decision and they have to deal with the consequences.

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Original post by TechnoGoth [...]The player should make the choices they feel best suit the character they have mind.[...]

"Choose 10 numbers between 1 and 50, and remeber they need to reflect your character." How would you do that, since the numbers have no meaning or context to you and thus you can't pick one that suits anything at all.? If you don't know what choice you're making, you can't make that choice toward any goal (such as making an interesting character that you'd like to play).

I think it would be a tremendous amount of work even using monochrome graphics, let alone modern ones.


Personally, I think that this kind of thing would work best as a showboat / set-piece in an adventure game or RPG, ie. the game tracks how your (character) behaves and your taste in things. And then at one point in the game it does something like put you inside your own head / soul or shows a fever dream of yours while your character is sick with a fever.

That way it would reduce the need to create huge amounts of content instead providing a small(er) area in which to show off. Done well, this would be the kind of thing that gamers would remember for ages and could create some good word of mouth publicity! (like people talking about the Psycho-Mantis or / The Sorrow encounters in MGS or Metal Gear Solid 3).

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Original post by Wavinator Imagine a screen with intricate patterns of light making up a streaking tunnel of stars. In the center are nine circular icons slowly floating around the empty dark center. In the center of each is an image: A white shield emblazoned with a red cross, bordered by growing vines and sitting atop flowers An iron-gray shield with a black and white crest slashing its middle and a vertical longsword behind it A blindfolded woman in a robe holding up scales in her left hand, a sword dangling in her right A glaring, long-haired yelling man, his right hand holding an open book, his left a clenched, glowing fist A grinning skull pierced by a knife blade, the blade point tipped scarlet A handsome, smiling business man juggling an A-bomb, the world, and a gold-plated dollar sign, standing in front of a mushroom cloud A skull and crossbones sitting ontop of a pile of vials, guns and powder A leatherjacketed, chrome sunglasses wearing, smirking man who has his hands in his pockets and is standing on a rainy street A fractal pattern made of changing, glowing numbers You're not given any clue or hint as to what each means. They simply orbit the center of the screen until you click one. First of all, gut reaction: What might you imagine, without any prompting, selecting first?

You're going to click on one of two levels. One, an immediate reaction, impulse reaction basis, depending on what you are referencing in the subconscious at the time, consciously aware of it or not. Two, a deliberative manner, which is relative to the degree of self control and interpretive skill the unique individual player has.

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When you click an icon, a bubble films over it and it takes the center; the others vanish, and a new set of new, smaller icons appear. As you select more icons, they begin to coalesce around the central one. An example sequence might be: Select smiling business man -->A-bomb, world, dollar signs fly away to orbit around him; select A-bomb ----->Select dollar sign --------->Spinning dollar sign is orbited by a trenchcoat and silenced gun, man standing on the backs of groveling people in chains, a balance sheet, and bandolier of grenades... etc.. As you choose options, a mosaic image starts to fade in in the center of the stars. When you select the last icon, all icons disappear and you can see the image at the center of the streaking stars. It could be an image of a snow-dusted, ruined city prowled by tanks; an idyllic hamlet nestled in a field of trees; or a busy metropolis filled with flying cars. When you click, the screen goes white and then resolves to your game. I'm curious about the idea of using a player's natural curiosity as a means of intuitively customizing a game's settings. Mood lighting, symbols, shapes and colors would broadly track to demographics. Certain people would be drawn more toward organic, metallic, dark or light-hearted themes, which the orbiting series of icons would represent. One obvious problem is that symbols don't mean all things to all people. However, there are some fairly deep-rooted symbols (like a snarling wolf or cobra flashing fangs) which have pretty reliable, broad psychological associations; that is, snarling wolf propably doesn't mean "happy cuddly." Why Bother? Adventuredesign's latest article on the future of gaming inspired this brainstorm. I wondered what it would be like to get rid of text menus and try to tap into the subconscious a bit more in terms of UI Thoughts?

I think that symbols (as a general rule) are going to be meaningful to a significant enough degree to influence the choices in UI I/O, and like a god game type of thematic influence, the type of symbol you choose can have an motif influence factor built into it. The reason symbols don't seem influential is because they penetrate the consciousness and go right at subconscious programming, like the way advertizers brand. Ever done one of those tests where the lettering for the product was removed from it's logo brand and you could in most cases still guess what product is was? Granted, that test is for consumer response, but symbolic response has a wide array of response types, such as emotional, fantasy, etc., and can have just as potent, yet consciously indiscernable effect.

Adventuredesign

The symbols seem pretty standard stuff, so I'm not entirely sure context is the biggest issue. My main problem with the design is that I'm already playing that game. I play it as I browse video games, books, movies, etc. I choose a game/book/movie/etc. in part because the cover art tells me what I should expect. If I'm looking for some old time music, which do you think is the better bet, the CD with a trio from a chain gang running through a field with a "faded paper" background, or the CD with a goth chick on the cover? (O'Brother Where Art Thou soundtrack and Evanescence - Fallen, if you're wondering)

Thanks for the responses. I definitely see a need to rework this more.

In terms of wider appeal, it probably is easier to lose casual gamers or certain female gamers by having them encounter blood and guts than it is to lose hardcore gamers by having them encounter bunnies and flowers (stereotypes, yes, but I'm speaking broadly). Same goes for a page of stats and options versus making simple choices immediately.

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Original post by fractoid Are you imagining the world, NPCs etc. be (at least somewhat) automatically generated using these parameters? Or would you have a large world in which the player's starting location is defined by their preferences, along with their starting 'package'.

Your choices would generate the world's content, the character arcs, and censor certain events. For example: If you're not into violence and mayhem, you'll almost never see the game world go to overt war, but rather see a game that's more about building or stealth; if you're heavily into violence and mayhem, then there'll be a lot of war torn areas, maybe making stealth and building harder.

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Original post by sunandshadow I would pick the guy in the leather jacket, because only the last two choices don't have any obvious connotations of violence or black and white morality, and the very last one doesn't have any people. (This is a pretty dubious and unbalanced set of choices.)

It's funny that your first response about morality and violence were exactly what I was intending to capture. I'm curious if you felt any visceral negative responses to the other choices?

Consider that the choices represent:

• Humanitarianism / Defense of life
  
• Do-gooder / standard hero
  
• Law above all else
  
• Conversion (even by conquest)
  
• Savagery
  
• Amoral opportunism
  
• Lawlessness
  
• Rebel / anti-hero against the system
  
• Dispassionate logic
  

These would be personality options, which in turn would impact the game world and possible story vignettes.

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Original post by Sandman Also - why do we want to psych profile the player? Surely we want to psych profile the character the player wants to play, rather than the player himself? Or do we assume that the player will always play himself, thus defeating the concept of roleplaying?

Assuming that the symbols can be mapped appropriately, is there really a distinction here? Take a casual gamer versus a roleplayer.

The casual gamer is going to play an idealized version of themselves. Given choices, they're going to look for what minimizes the worst in them and exemplifies things that they aspire to.

I think roleplayers are variable. To be a roleplayer, you're not the same rigid personality each time. This is what allows you to switch in and out of different character types. You feel more like one archetype than another at times, and this shift in attitude guides your choices and behaviors.

I think that even if you could develop a close profile of different cross-sections of players and represent it so that everybody funneled themselves into the type of game world they might best like, roleplayers would still stand outside the equation because they'd be "different people" (so to speak) as the mood struck them.