Many games are the equivalent of Commando-era Arnie movies. Concentrating on huge body counts and big weapons. But watch some other movies and you will see that most of the content is about communication and relationships, the characters *talk* to each other. For example Men In Black, doesn't concentrate on killing aliens but rather on Will Smith's character's relationships with the character played by Tommy Lee Jones, and on finding out about the world that he did not know existed (IE. that there are lots of aliens among us.) Heck look at all the other non-action films in your collection! Games however concentrate on doing physical things like pushing boulders, running races, driving, shooting. I know that interactive speech is hard to do, especially if you take another approach than using pre-scripted dialogue. What I'd like to think about is how to do a game where the main focus is on relationships between characters and you get a series of icons to indicate what you want to do through your speech (bond with, distance from, ask for info, give info, make promises, etc), rather than the actual WORDS of what you are saying. Ie. Talking without words, so you choose distance from - and you start insulting or undermining the other character you see this via animation rather than through the words that your character is saying. (Like the Sims where you see icons to indicate what characters are talking about/feeling?). But the 'focus' of the gameplay would also need to change if a game were primarily about communication, I don't think that the old stories about Aliens are invading, would work so well> unless you were tryig to convince people to come with you and fight back. Any ideas for settings? Maybe a highschool romance? And what parts of the game would actually be FUN, how would we give enjoyable feedback on the users actions?

"Ketcheval, you IDIOT!"

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Okay, what did I just do? I just insulted you. (I COMPLETLY take it back, btw-- it's ONLY to be illustrative![smile])

An insult is an attack against something. Somewhere, some internally modelled resource fell. Respect for me? Anger or level of patience? Something.

So what if actions and options, using either your symbols as you suggest or fragments of dialog, adjusted these things?

With all the important ways that people communicate, could it be possible to create a system involving actions that raise or deplete internally modeled resources?

The first challenge is actually working out how the interactions work. I don't think you just want it to be a puzzle, right? You want it to be fluid. This requires a system, I think, that is a bit like combat, with its attacks, healing and buffing.

(Then again, mebbe I'mma idiot, so what do I know? [lol])

i suggest looking up interactive storytelling by Chris Crawford. That and his book Chris Crawford on game design address to an extent the things you are asking about. Good luck