This is basically a new version of Consumerism, named after a suggestion by Patrick. I’ll try to be brief for the sake of clarity. The details can be dealt with in seperate posts.
Drama Princess is by no means an attempt to recreate human life. Its only purpose is to model autonomous behaviour of characters in such a way that the user can imagine things about it. Rather than realistic or even believable, we want our characters to be suggestive and inspiring.
A character that interacts with something is called an actor. The (potential) target of such an interaction is called object. An object can be another character, an inanimate item or an environment.
Intimacy is the level of the relationship of an actor with each object in the world. The actor starts the game with intimacy values for categories of objects only. When it interacts with an individual, it creates an intimacy value for this object. Each interaction with an object changes this intimacy value.
Enthusiasm defines attention span and the eagerness with which an actor will try to improve its intimacy with an object. A very enthusiastic actor will switch more easily between different objects to interact with. Enthusiasm remains the same throughout the game (unless aging is part of it).
The author uses intimacy and enthusiasm to define the personality of each actor.
All objects in the game world have a list of interactions that actors can perform with them, called opportunities. Each actor continuously collects all opportunities in its vicinity and chooses one of them as its goal. It will attempt to achieve this goal by performing a sequence of actions.
All activity in the game is interactivity with objects.
Solitary activity is defined as interactivity with the environment.
Every opportunity fits with a certain level of intimacy. An actor will select an opportunity as its goal based on its level of intimacy with the object that broadcasted the opportunity. Enthusiastic actors will be more inclined to choose an opportunity that is more intimate than fits their relationship with the object. Less enthusiastic actors will choose one the fits more closely.
Every time a goal is achieved, the actor’s intimacy with the object that broadcasted the opportunity is altered. Most of the time, the intimacy will improve (the reasoning being that interaction with objects increases familiarity with them). But the bigger the difference between the level of intimacy of the opportunity and the level of intimacy of the relationship, the higher the chance of a negative effect (because the other character does not want to be rushed when you do something that is too enthusiastic or because it is disappointed when you do something that seems too distant).
When an actor is seperated from an object, its intimacy with this object goes down over time. Intimacy is a value that is shared by both participants in the relationship (for the sake of simplicity, they are always equally fond of each other).
When intimacy with an object has exceeded its maximum value, the chance of a break-up will grow. When this happens, the intimacy between the two will be reset to a lower level.
When intimacy drops below zero, actors will be more inclined to choose opportunities that are even lower (i.e. you want to reduce the intimacy with your enemies).
Since interactions alter the intimacy, the preference of an actor for opportunities will continuously change. To completely exclude the chance of an actor selecting the same opportunity twice in a row, fascination for the opportunity drops instantly after the goal has been achieved. Over time, fascination reaches a normal level again.
To ensure that actors don’t keep pursuing goals that they cannot achieve, fascination of the opportunity that has been chosen as the goal decreases over time. At some point other opportunities will seem more appealing and the actor will choose a new goal.
The concept of shock ensures that characters respond to sudden events. A shock will replace the global list of opportunities with a limited list of responses to the event, out of which the characters can choose.
Posted on June 14, 2006 at 9:08 am
Since the player’s avatar is also a Drama Princess, the subtle interaction of opportunities and intimacy already implies a certain form of gameplay. By interacting with characters, you increase the level of intimacy which allows you to choose new interactions. So you want to try and do that as a player, out of curiosity.
If you exaggerate, however, there’s a chance that your careful attempts to increase intimacy plummet. This should motivate you to be careful and to find a balance in the relationship.
Posted on June 14, 2006 at 9:32 am
I think merely re-naming Comfort as Intimacy suggests a subtle shift in frame of it, which seems to be integrated with the rest of the system.
Your comment on gameplay is right on as well, the basic loop being driven by the uncertainty of threshold, that is, the player is brought to the tense task of pushing but not too far. Now, you mention different attractions spawing different tones to the unfolding story, this is similar to the direction we’re going, but with characters instead of objects, so teaming up with a few people will lead to a plot, and so on for the different combinations of characters that can group together. Either way, theres an escalation, a sort of emergent narrative (which isn’t absolutely conceptually distinct from the mix-in behaviors of Facade’s generative story archetechture, only in implementation strategy) which tailors itself to the player’s preferences through play.
I think you’ve got something here.
Posted on June 14, 2006 at 9:48 am
Finding good names for things is often as hard as designing the systems they represent.
I like your description quite a bit. Of course I cringe when I hear the word “plot”. 😉 But you’re right that there is potential here for the player to lead or push the story in a certain direction.
Our model is more similar to The Sims or even Animal Crossing than to Facade, however, in the sense that these stories take place mostly in the player’s head. Even more so in our model because we don’t have such defined goals and rewards (the only goal is an optimal level of intimacy; but the meaning of this is undefined). We hope that the vagueness will allow for richness thanks to the player’s imagination.
But let’s not forget that you can play the game without trying to achieve a goal. It’s not required to have fun.
Posted on June 15, 2006 at 3:41 am
I’m all about letting players induce their own goals. We’re still not sure how much text will be able to float using our domain language, but I’d like to have some. I’m all about the player using their imagination, but I think a bit of text can help that.
Ambiguity is a sweet medicine, it made Shadow of the Collosus much more psychologically interesting. I always assume a sort of necrophilic subtext to that game, um, as a metaphor, yeah…
Posted on June 16, 2006 at 1:28 pm
[…] I made a first little text-based test with a very limited version of the Romanicism idea. […]
Posted on June 19, 2006 at 3:41 pm
[…] This is a stream of consciousness about the possibility to reduce the intimacy of relationships and how shocks are triggered in the Romanticism model. I will post some clearer conclusions in a future post. […]
Posted on July 22, 2006 at 11:07 pm
[…] Rather than continuously telling an actor what to do, we will include a task list in the definition of his personality. Not every character needs to have a task list, of course. Unlike other behaviours in the game, these tasks are not connected to objects. They are connected to the actor. They are its goals in life, so to speak. As such, in Romanticism terms, they can be defined a opportunities without an intimacy requirement and coming from an imaginary object with which the actor has a a good relationship. Since they don’t have an initimacy level, the actor can perform tasks whenever it “wants”. And since the relationship is good, it will prefer to perform this task over most. The exact level of this relationship can be used to define the importance of the task. […]
Posted on July 30, 2006 at 10:48 am
[…] In the first model of Drama Princess, Consumerism, our actors are very selfish. They choose to do the things that give them the most pleasure. In the second model, Romanticism, they prefer to do things with objects that they like and they would choose to do things with these objects that feel comfortable (i.e. that match the relationship that they have with them the best). […]