When most people think of SPORE, they think of the character builder.  This is something which instantly jumps to mind, putting the power of Maya in the hands of the multitudes.  When I think of SPORE (and I suspect anyone who works in the industry), I think of procedural interaction.  There is some concern that many of the best and brightest new talent are being pulled into the vortex of Will Wright’s project, and that they will remain forever guarded within the boundaries of EA, shackled to a project which will be ultimately anti-climatic from a sales perspective.  I must admit, considering the continual delays SPORE has being enduring, much of the excitement it once evoked has somewhat worn away.

What I would like to see is the tools that make the procedural interaction of player-generated content possible be made available to the public, although I know coming from EA this is probably a pipe-dream.  Perhaps if sales are not what they would like them to be, EA would at least consider licensing the technology out.  To me, SPORE is a tech-demo (an impressive one) of that technology, and I think they’ve done a disservice to themselves by announcing it so far before it was released (and giving away much of the structure of the gameplay as well).  I feel like I’ve seen the game played in demos so many times now that it’s not fresh and exciting.  What I do think is exciting is the possibilities for the technology if it ever gets out into the world.

I’ve been playing the wonderful GROW series of games by Japanese Game Designer ON.  In these Flash-based games, the player chooses from a list of items (shapes, objects, elements) and places them into a world.  The longer each item exists on the world (in terms of turns), the more that item will grow.  The trick is that elements also interact with each other, sometimes in a positive, and sometimes in a negative way.  The purpose of the game is to place the items in such an order that they all grow to their maximum potential.  What is interesting about it is that significantly different things may occur to a given item depending on the presence and state of other objects at any given time.  While GROW is, I’m relatively sure, scripted with case statements, I wonder about the possibilities for the procedural technology behind SPORE if mixed up with Mr. ON.

Which brings me to an idea I tentatively refer to as Tarot.  Tarot Cards have long enchanted me (from a symbolic, not divinitory standpoint).  I suspect the presence of such items as Tarot cards, tea leaf reading, the I Ching, etc. in nearly every culture since the dawn of time speaks to a certain presence of the desire for symbolic interpretation in humanity.  This suggests to me that the symbols present in these mediums represent what Daniel Dennett would refer to as a “Good Trick”, although I’m not sure I understand exactly what the trick is.  What I do understand, however, is that Good Tricks can be exploited if you know how to hook into them.  Games are a fundamental part of the human condition for this precise reason, as they exploit evolutionary responses which have become prevelant everywhere in our species.

Tarot Cards are a method by which some game designers create free-association in order to generate story.  What Tarot would do is combine near ubiquitous symbols such as those found in Tarot or Jungian Psychology, and allow the player to apply them in a more direct way.  At the beginning of the game, the player would choose cards from a Tarot-like deck, either at random or by choice, and a game experience would then be proceedurally generated from those choices.  Content would have to be built in such a way that it was aware of possible interactions with other content, depending on the role it was to play.  Gameplay would still be built in a structured way,  so that the game would always be, say, an RPG, but the particulars would change with every game.  The challenge would be in building it in such a way that the particulars were always compelling, or even better, that one game would build on another.  It would be imporant that the game was not always the same, with the roles substituted, but the presence of one card versus another would radically shift an element of the game world.  The most correct selection of type of world would seem to be an open format, such as Oblivion, only more tightly constrained.  Elements of the game world would persist from story to story, but be gilded or tainted by the choice of cards in the initial sequence.

An additional difficulty would by in marketing this work.  Even if one could create proceedurally generated and compelling gameplay, it would be difficult to know what marketing approach would be best, other than perhaps the standard Peter Molyneux technique of “This is the best RPG ever made”.  Diverging too strongly from an established medium is generally not a good sales technique, but then if a medium is truely to be an artform, sometimes you need to put that on the back burner.

I finished the fight last night (after losing 2 hours of progress by not saving).  My friend Reed made a comment about the way I was speaking whilst playing Halo 3.  You see, all of the commentary I was making about the game was in the first person.  I was saving humanity, not Master Chief.  In a sense, I was master chief.  This is a technique video games can employ to create a strong narrative in ways that film and literature never can. 

When you watch a movie or read a book (other than a choose-your-own adventure, which I’m not counting), you’re being told a story about someone else.  This doesn’t mean it can’t be a great story, but it’s still a story about someone else.  Even so, if you look at many of your favorite books and films, you will find that you probably identify rather strongly with at least some of the major characters.  You may not realize you do, but on some level, those characters you like you probably unconciously see as a kind of alter-ego of yourself, based on character traits of that persona.  The more strongly you identify with a character, the stronger your emotional connection will be to the work. 

Unlike in film and literature, protagonists in games can be very vaguely defined.  Creating a vague definition of a protagonist is a tricky thing.  If done well, the player will project their own thoughts and feelings into the void of your protagonists character.  If done poorly, the player will fail to identify with your hero at all, and as a result feel no emotional attachment to the situation the character is in, and therefore the narrative of your game. 

There are two major ways in which video games can create vague character definitions.  The first is to not show the player what the character looks like.  Master Chief has a helmet on, at no point do you ever see his face.  Jack from Bioshock is not obscured in any way, but because the game is always shot from the perspective of jack, and all the mirrors in Rapture are conveniently broken, you never see what he looks like.  This goes a long way to helping the player identify with the protagonist (because if you could see his face, he would look like you!).

The second method is to limit or completely curtail the protagonist’s dialog.  There is a long history of silent protagonists in video games with rich plots for this reason.  Examples include Link from The Legend of Zelda, Gordon Freeman in Half-Life, Jack in Bioshock, Chrono in Chronotrigger, Ness from Earthbound, and Cloud Strife from Final Fantasy VII.  The technique is not as simple as abstaining from dialogue, as identification requires traits to create an emotional connection.  The trick to this technique is to use the other supporting characters to suggest a variety of traits the hero may possess (without spamming the entire continuum of character traits).  If done well, the player will latch on to those which suit his fancy and ignore the rest.

Creating a vague character is not the only way to get players to identify with your protagonist, but it is a way that works for a broad spectrum of people.  Idenification with the protagonist does not ensure the game will be loved either, but it does help to bring about a strong emotional reaction.  If the character you identify with suddenly starts acting in a way inconsistent with your views, or if the work as a whole doesn’t meet your standards, you will probably hate it - but at least you have strong opinions one way or another.  On the other hand, it’s difficult to love the narritive in a game if you don’t identify with the main character.

I would just like to mention that I’ve been playing Halo 3 for the last 5 hours.  I can’t see straight, and I have work to do tomorrow, but damn is that one fine game.  Believe… the hype.  What I can’t believe is how good the visuals look.  I’m playing it on an SD TV, and it still looks amazing HDR Rendering is your very best friend.  I know that Halo 3 is not the first game to make use of HDR, but it’s probably the most popular.  I would go as far as saying that it will no longer be possible to make any money with a FPS which doesn’t support HDR rendering.  For now, I’m going to have to sleep and finish the fight tomorrow.

Randy is a Professor of Computer Science, Human-Computer Interaction, and Design at Carnegie Mellon, and co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center. He also serves as the Director of Carnegie Mellon’s Stage 3 research group, where he oversees the development of Alice.

He was a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator and a Lilly Foundation Teaching Fellow. In 1995, he spent a Sabbatical with the Walt Disney Imagineering Virtual Reality Studio, and currently consults with Imagineering on interactive theme park attractions, particularly for the “DisneyQuest” virtual-reality based theme park. Randy is the author or co-author of five books and over 60 reviewed journal and conference proceedings articles, and his primary interests are human-computer interaction, entertainment technology, and undergraduate education.

Randy has been for some time diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer.  He gave his last lecture, entitled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams” is an inspirational and touching presentation, and a must watch.  It’s available here for streaming.  Watching it will really give you a perspective for what you’re doing with your life, and how to focus on the things that matter.  A worthy watch (It’s two hours though, so keep that in mind).

I apparently missed this article on SPOnG stating that the gaming industry will grow by 42% in two years.  To me this means two things:  Mucho dollars flowing into the land of milk and honey for those who have been creating the magic for years (I want to get in the fridge too), and as a corollary more amazing content in the years to come.  If the golden age of arcade games was from 1982 to 1986, we’re living in the Renaissance in console form.