The interaction between autonomous characters in a realtime fiction can be defined very loosely. Since we don’t have a fixed story to tell and all meaning should come from the spectator’s own imagination, a great deal of the autonomus behaviour can be governed by randomness.
One of the characters in our virtual space, however, will be the avatar of the spectator. Contrary to the Non Playing Characters (NPCs), the behaviour of this character will be controlled by a human. This means that we cannot use the concept of “activity-things” (Richard Evans) for these interactions. It seems that we will not be able to cheat as much when the spectator knows what is going on in the mind of one of the participants.
For instance, when one NPC seems to have forgotten what he experienced with another NPC, the spectator will probably make up a story why this is.
For example, in one scene we see the Wolf behaving very aggressively towards the Deafmute Girl en she runs away. In the next scene we see both of them play together. The spectator can imagine that at some point these characters got to know each other and decided that they like each other. When the Wolf is aggressive towards the avatar (Red), however, the spectator (who controls the avatar) will find it highly suspicious if suddenly the Wolf wants to play with her.
Perhaps this is just a problem of consistency. A problem that is fairly easy to solve.
But I can imagine that there may be other occasions when the relationships that the NPCs have with the avatar will require a bit more detail than the relationships that they have with each other. So it’s probably a good idea to keep an eye open for this and make sure that there is sufficient room in our design to add such detail.
Posted on May 15, 2006 at 12:32 am
One workaround would be to make the avatar seem more autonomous herself. That way, the spectator could develop a relationship with the avatar of parenting and care. We tried seperating avatar and player quite on purpose in 8, but judging from how we hear Endless Forest players talk about “their” deer, this probably doesn’t need to be so explicit. We have always liked the ambiguity of the avatar as both a representation of the player and a character in the narrative.
So if the avatar is perceived to behave illogically, perhaps the spectator can interpret this as an expression of her autonomy and personality. This could be very powerful if combined with a way for the spectator to correct the avatar, to teach her something.