Player freedom has actually never been a goal of my design - player satisfaction, on the other hand, is my primary goal. Players don't enjoy wandering around randomly as much as they enjoy being caught up in a story sweeping forward. So I believe the design goal should be to channel the players through the story without making the players feel trapped, imposed-upon, or ignored.

I believe the key to this is physics. Everyone respects the laws of physics. Do you feel trapped because you can't walk through the walls of your house, or imposed upon because you have to sleep occasionally? No, because these are the rules of the game. So, the idea is that within each wedge there should be a logical, consistent set of rules, and logical reasons why there isn't anywhere outside the wedge to go (inside a spaceship, perhaps?), while inside each wedge all items are as interactive as possible.

If you have a chair, you should be able to do to it anything you could logically do to a chair, such as chop it up with an axe if you also have one of those. This degree of interaction is impossible to model in an environment with hundreds of objects, but is intriguingly possible in the small closed world of our wedge-level. As long as the player isn't blocked fron anything it seems logical that they might be able to do, the player will not feel trapped. This ties into my posts in the previous thread about primitive classes of objects and assigning objects properties via inheritance.

As for implementation, I'm not a programmer, I'm a writer, a designer, and a concept artist. So I unfortunately have no ability to implement anything like this, only theorize about it.

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Original post by Wombah Ok, seems we're more or less in agreement then? In that case, the next question is; How do you go about actually implementing this wedge/enforcement system? Have you started this already? Has sunandshadow? Anyone?

Oooh, that's a tough question! I haven't started implementing anything beyond a few simple text based demos (too simple to prove anything, I'm afraid). I did have some high-level plans for a chapter based story building system a few years back which I think is the wedge/enforcement system you are describing, but they were incomplete (and I've forgotten the details; they're in some notebook I've got stashed away somewhere). While I'm spending most of my development time at the moment building up my technical skills (programming, art etc.), I'm also trying to think of a way to limit the story domain down to a level which can be completed.

If you're interested in interactive storytelling, then you could check up Chris Crawford's work, or Mateas and Stern's InteractiveStory.net (and Facade). They've got the best info that I've found at the moment.

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Original post by sunandshadow Player freedom has actually never been a goal of my design - player satisfaction, on the other hand, is my primary goal. Players don't enjoy wandering around randomly as much as they enjoy being caught up in a story sweeping forward. So I believe the design goal should be to channel the players through the story without making the players feel trapped, imposed-upon, or ignored.

Too much freedom is the other side of weak interactive storytelling; where the designers give up on the story altogether in an effort to provide interactivity. I don't enjoy games that should be story based (such as RPGs) that don't provide a strong enough plot.

I semi-agree with your physics example, except I think there should be laws of interactivity or maybe narrative instead. The trick is to redefine the possible actions of the player down to a point where the system can deal with it. At the moment I'm toying with trying to find a limited enough domain for me to work with. I've considered spaceships, as well as submarines, fallout shelters, isolated villages and the like to limit the possible actions of the player down to a managable level. The other thing I'm considering is to take an existing game genre without much of a story, such as a fighting, sports or racing game, and use that as the expression of how to interact with the story. As you've written, I think that as long as the domain of possible actions the player can take is plausible, then it will work from both a story and an interactive perspective.

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Original post by sunandshadow Player freedom has actually never been a goal of my design - player satisfaction, on the other hand, is my primary goal. Players don't enjoy wandering around randomly as much as they enjoy being caught up in a story sweeping forward. So I believe the design goal should be to channel the players through the story without making the players feel trapped, imposed-upon, or ignored.

I think you can have both, but it will certainly take a lot more work. And I don't think that the problem is too much freedom as much as too little guidence. As long as the player knows what to do to move forward, the option not to move forward is not a burden. Of course, you still need a strong plot (or two) as Trapper pointed out.

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Original post by sunandshadow I believe the key to this is physics. Everyone respects the laws of physics. Do you feel trapped because you can't walk through the walls of your house, or imposed upon because you have to sleep occasionally? No, because these are the rules of the game. So, the idea is that within each wedge there should be a logical, consistent set of rules, and logical reasons why there isn't anywhere outside the wedge to go (inside a spaceship, perhaps?), while inside each wedge all items are as interactive as possible.

I agree using restricted locations can help out here, but you have to be careful not to overdo it. There are many games that employ that type of physical restriction in a too obvious manner, thus loosing immersion. If there is a way to use the system without having to use physics to restrict the player, I would say that is a good thing(tm), and I don't think it is impossible.

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Original post by sunandshadow If you have a chair, you should be able to do to it anything you could logically do to a chair, such as chop it up with an axe if you also have one of those. This degree of interaction is impossible to model in an environment with hundreds of objects, but is intriguingly possible in the small closed world of our wedge-level. As long as the player isn't blocked fron anything it seems logical that they might be able to do, the player will not feel trapped. This ties into my posts in the previous thread about primitive classes of objects and assigning objects properties via inheritance.

The story system will only care if you break the chair if the chair is somehow important for the story progression, but I see the problem here. In some cases actions that are normally open for the player will not be. Killing an important NPC as opposed to killing 'unimportant' NPC's e.g. This has to be handled somehow. Partially this can be offset by not using that type of requirements for story progression, but that can't always be avoided. Tricky.

With the chair example, the problem is apparent when you have ten different chairs that are destructible, and then you find one that is crucial to the plot that you can't destroy. In that case, the player will certainly notice. One way to solve this is to make no chairs destroyable, another to not use a chair as the story-object and third way to do it is to allow the player some way to put the chair back together. None of those 'solutions' are perfect though...

[Edited by - Wombah on October 24, 2005 3:11:21 AM]

What is the dramatic purpose of interactive storytelling?

[oh]
I'm not sure I understand your question Beige. But I have this creeping feeling that if I can't come up with the correct answer it means the system is worth squat in reality...

My goal with this kind of interactive story system is to be able to recreate and surpass the multilinear games seen so far (at least in terms of interactivity) with several magnitudes less work. Not sure how that relates to the dramatic value though.

I think his point is basically: How does interactiveity improve storytelling in games? My response would be that the player can make decisions that actually affect the story.

I've been following this thread, since this is an interest of mine, but I haven't felt the need to add anything since my ideas are still in the random stage. I agree with sunandshadow though, that player satisfaction is the goal.

tj963

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Original post by tj963 I think his point is basically: How does interactiveity improve storytelling in games? My response would be that the player can make decisions that actually affect the story. I've been following this thread, since this is an interest of mine, but I haven't felt the need to add anything since my ideas are still in the random stage. I agree with sunandshadow though, that player satisfaction is the goal. tj963

Yes, the player can make decisions that affect the story. How does that make the storytelling better?

If it's obvious to the player that they can easily manipulate the system, then they're not experiencing a story, are they? They're just punching in the correct dialogue options that get your and the love interest to make out.

What makes players such great storytellers?

I would think the best way to go about this, would be to create a world that could stand on its own with out the player. It would be a real complex feat in it self to create, but I see it being the only way to allow the player to take any possible path they wanted. The groundwork would be already layed, why stuff was where it is and why its going to do what it does is explained by the history of the world you created for the player to be in.

I am scared to just fathem it really...

Don't know if any of you have played Escape Velocity (www.ambrosiasw.com), but it has a simple and effective narative structure. Basically, the story is told is a sequence of missions, you can't mess up the story by killing the characters because the characters only exist in your local space when you are expected to either kill or defend them. There are about six plotlines, but with the added twist that there are 'hooks' back into other plot lines: i.e. if you are halfway through plotline 'A' you have the option to transfer to a quarter of the way through plotline 'B', and potentially to transfer back later.

While the Escape Velocity mission system is pre-created, it is a simple enough system to make automatic generation a possibility, withought all the complications of a more imersive game.

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Original post by Beige Yes, the player can make decisions that affect the story. How does that make the storytelling better? ... What makes players such great storytellers?

I wouldn't say it necessarily makes the story "better", but it makes the story belong to the player. If the player's decisions actually direct the story, then the consequences becone much more personal.

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Original post by Beige If it's obvious to the player that they can easily manipulate the system, then they're not experiencing a story, are they? They're just punching in the correct dialogue options that get your and the love interest to make out.

I'd say that's pretty much the point. By making choices, for example dialog options, the player can attempt to lead the story how they want. No longer is it, "I have to go to the town because the designer said so," but instead, "It sounds like something interesting is happening in town, I'd better check it out."

tj963