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.
One thing still bothers me with the Romanticism model as it is now. And this thing rises to the surface as soon as I start thinking of a Drama Princess actor as an avatar for the player. It’s the fact that actors are “programmed to be nice“.
Currently, when an actor interacts with an object, its intimacy with this object increases. Higher intimacy allows for new interactions to happen as the relationship between the two grows. As it grows, however, it also becomes more fragile: the chance of a break-up increases. A break-up resets the intimacy between an actor and an object to an arbitrary lower number.
I think this algorithm can work quite well for virtual actors. But when the player is put in charge of the decision-making process for one of the actors (the avatar), it seriously limits his or her freedom. The player should be able to worsen the relationship between his avatar and a virtual actor. In the current model this is not possible because a relationship only goes down as a result of going up (break-up). You can only do it on purpose by seperating the avatar form the object. But seperation only reduces intimacy very slowy.
A player should be able to choose a hostile action. In other words, an action of an intimacy level that is lower than that of the relationship. In the current model, choosing such an action would still improve the intimacy of the relationship. It shouldn’t. Not for the player’s avatar. But probably not for the virtual actors either. The problem with the latter, however, is that they will need to be defined as “optimistic” or “pessimistic”, perhaps even per object. And to make these inclinations dynamic, may require more “mind-building” than we really want to get into.
For a player, it’s alright to behave optimistically one time and pessimistically the other. This will not break the game. Even though if the virtual actors would be equipped to judge, they would not find the player’s avatar very believable. 😉
One solution that wouldn’t require making changes to the model, might be to give the player some control over shocks. So next to the usual nice things that you can choose for your avatar to do, there is a “SHOCK” option that lowers the relationship. For this to be believable and clear, though, we would need to have the actor act out a negative interaction, as illustration of doing something nasty.
This feels like stretching the system a bit too far, though. And it doesn’t give the virtual actors any opportunity to be nasty.
We need to fight our inclination of thinking about reasons why the actor would behave in a hostile way. That is not relevant. Instead, we need to model hostile behavior so that it looks believable. This means that it would be virtually impossible that a very nasty thing would be done to someone with whom the actor has a good relationship (in the rare moments that it might happen, it could be interpreted as deception). If the relationship is neutral, there’s not much chance of something extremely nasty happening either. In fact there’s even less chance because the actor is more or less indifferent. Only when the relationship is already bad, should a character be able to choose very nasty things. This is in fact, simply the reverse of being able to do very nice things only when the relationship is good.
Perhaps we can introduce a relationship direction. This value influences the decision making: if it is negative, the actor will be more inclined to choose an interaction under its current intimacy level, and vice versa. The bigger the number, the more extreme the difference could be. That way we would have relationships that grow slowly and relationship that grow fast. In both directions.
This seems related to the enthusiasm value of an actor.
Enthusiasm defines attention span and the eagerness with which an actor will try to improve its intimacy with an object.
What if enthusiasm can be a negative value?
Then it would define the inclination of a character to reduce its intimacy with objects. Enthusiasm was a property owned by the actor, though. So this would mean that an actor with a negative enthusiasm would try to make its relationships with everything and everyone worse. Seems a bit too extreme. 😳
Perhaps we need to an enthusiasm modifier, like attitude which is subjectively linked to individual objects (in other words, it is linked to the relationship an actor has with an object, next to the intimacy level of the relationship). This modifier is either positive or negative (though I guess, once we have a modifier, it could cover the whole range between -1 and 1). A very enthusiastic character will be eager to improve its relationships with its friends as well as worsen its relationship with its enemies. This makes sense. It defines a passionate nature.
Can a break-up occur when a relationship gets very bad? So that a relationship improves arbitrarily when it gets bad?
Sure. Especially when this pushes the relationship closer to neutral, or indifference. Perhaps the shock of a break-up can have an impact on attitude, possibly causing the character to “change its mind” about an object, and to switch from negative to positive, or vice versa.
How does attitude help the player avatar?
The player controls the attitude modifier of enthusiasm. You can simply decide to do bad things or good things. And the relationship will get worse or better as a result.
But doesn’t this make the relationships of the avatar with virtual actors too predictable?
Not so much if Shock/break-up is still controlled by the game. The closer the relationship is to indifference, the easier it will be to predict the result on the relationship of an interaction (this makes sense because those actions are also pretty neutral). As the relationship gets better, or worse, the change of shock and therefore, arbitrary change, increases.
Defined this way, shock doesn’t make sense! The risk for break-up should not become greater as the relationship deepens. It should become greater as you push the relationship too hard! If you choose interactions that are not appropriate for the current level of intimacy. This does depend a bit on personality, though. Two enthusiastic characters will be happy with a relationship that grows quickly. When the difference between the enthusiasm of both actors is great, a chance of a break-up is greater because one will be pushing too hard.
This sound realistic.
If an enthusiastic character tries to have a relationship with a less enthusiastic one, there’s a big chance that the first will choose to do something that is too ambitious for the latter, resulting in shock. Likewise, if a calm actor chooses to do something modest, the enthusiastic one will think that it isn’t love anymore, also resulting in shock.
If the attitude about the relationship is negative, then an enthusiastic actor will try to make the relationship worse by a lot while the calm actor doesn’t think it is that bad. In reality, as a result, the calm actor would agree with the enthusiastic one and allow the relationship to drop. If a calm actor chooses a modestly negative action, the enthusiastic one will not accept this and drive the relationship down.
Ergo, differences in enthusiasm are irrelevant in negative relationships. And an increasing chance of shock as the relationships sink, to lift it back up, seems unrealistic. Only seperation should slowly bring the relationship back to neutral.
Attitude, given the current model of Romanticism, is shared by both participants in a relationship. They agree on making the relationship better or worse. They just don’t agree on how fast it should evolve.
It would be interesting if, rather than a fixed predefined value, attitude would be the result of chance when the relationship is neutral. Then it can go either way. Once the relationship has been established, the actors will try to make it move in the same direction. If their enthusiasm is very different, this is very risky. But even if it is similar, there is still a chance of shock. Maybe, rather than an arbitrary value, Break-up brings relationships back to neutral. In this sense, break-up would be a high speed version of seperation.
Sounds even right in words. 😉
Posted on June 19, 2006 at 10:43 pm
[…] This is a summary of my earlier musings about hostility and intimacy. […]