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Prakash Prasad, [email protected] Orestis Tsafarakis, [email protected] Søren Emil Andersen, [email protected] 1. august 2011 Abstract - - - A Framework for Emergent Narrative

A Framework for Emergent Narrative

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Most videogames have a tendency to come packaged with a story on the box (Juul, 2001). Does this make them narrative? Game scholars like Aarseth argue against the perspective due to structural differences between the two (Aarseth, 2004). In this paper we analyze these key design conflicts between games and pre-scripted narratives. We will try to investigate if there is a possibility for creating narratives in games, which will result in a series of guidelines for Emergent Narrative. That will be explored through a game-prototype which lets narrative emerge through ‘meaningful’ events, NPC relationships, the environment and provide visual feedback to the players for the state of the environment. The visual feedback will be provided by the use of film theory and techniques. The game-prototype will be evaluated by playtests.

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Page 1: A Framework for Emergent Narrative

Prakash Prasad, [email protected]

Orestis Tsafarakis, [email protected]

Søren Emil Andersen, [email protected]

1. august 2011

Abstract

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A Framework for Emergent Narrative

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Contents 1 Introduction .............................................................................................................. 4

1.1 The Goal of the game-prototype ............................................................................ 6

2 Theoretical Discussion and Outline .......................................................................... 8

2.1 Orestis‟ Focus ....................................................................................................... 8

2.1.1 Videogames as Language ................................................................................... 8

2.1.2 Videogames and spaces ................................................................................... 13

2.1.3 Videogames and Narrative ............................................................................... 15

2.1.4 The Films Language ........................................................................................ 16

2.1.5 Components of the Film Language .................................................................. 19

2.1.6 Setting ............................................................................................................ 22

2.2 Prakash‟s Focus .................................................................................................. 24

2.2.1 Emergent Narrative ......................................................................................... 26

2.3 Søren‟s Focus ..................................................................................................... 34

2.3.1 Aarseth ........................................................................................................... 34

2.3.2 Barthes ........................................................................................................... 34

2.3.3 Mateas and Aristotle ........................................................................................ 35

2.3.4 Abbott and Campbell ....................................................................................... 36

3 The Game – Design Choices .................................................................................... 38

3.1 Implementing Drama (Søren‟s Focus) ................................................................. 38

3.1.1 Reading the game ............................................................................................ 39

3.1.2 Desirable action .............................................................................................. 40

3.1.3 Rules of the game ............................................................................................ 41

3.1.4 Simulating People ........................................................................................... 44

3.1.5 Brief note on the development process ............................................................. 45

3.1.6 Campbellian symbols in the game .................................................................... 47

3.1.7 Visual Grammar .............................................................................................. 49

3.2 On Visual Feedback (Orestis‟ Focus) ................................................................... 49

3.2.1 Overall Setting ................................................................................................ 50

3.2.2 Game world .................................................................................................... 50

3.2.3 Technical limitations ....................................................................................... 52

3.2.4 Actions ........................................................................................................... 52

3.2.5 Visual Feedback .............................................................................................. 53

3.2.6 Scripted Feedback ........................................................................................... 54

3.2.7 Use of Film language ...................................................................................... 55

3.2.8 Procedurally Generated Feedback .................................................................... 59

4 Method .................................................................................................................... 60

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4.1 Instruction and Survey ........................................................................................ 60

4.2 Test Sessions ...................................................................................................... 61

4.3 Recorded Data .................................................................................................... 62

5 Playtests and Evaluation ......................................................................................... 63

5.1 Response to Game Rules ..................................................................................... 63

5.1.1 Information overload ....................................................................................... 63

5.1.2 Poorly calibrated stats ..................................................................................... 64

5.1.3 Lack of feedback from animations ................................................................... 64

5.1.4 (+/-) dialogue .................................................................................................. 65

5.1.5 Constructing a narrative .................................................................................. 65

5.2 Environment and Visual Feedback ...................................................................... 65

5.2.1 Navigation ...................................................................................................... 66

5.2.2 Environment ................................................................................................... 66

5.2.3 Results on the visual feedback ......................................................................... 67

5.2.4 Improvements ................................................................................................. 69

5.3 Evaluation of Implementation ............................................................................. 69

5.3.1 Simulation ...................................................................................................... 70

5.3.2 Interesting Actors ............................................................................................ 72

5.3.3 Environment ................................................................................................... 74

5.3.4 Objectives ....................................................................................................... 75

6 Conclusions ............................................................................................................. 77

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For grading purposes, the responsibilities of the paper are divided as follows:

Orestis Tsafarakis is responsible for the chapters (incl. subchapters):

• „Orestis‟ Focus (p. 8-24)

• „On Visual Feedback (Orestis‟ Focus)‟ (p. 49-60)

• „Test Sessions‟ (p. 61), and

• „Environment and Visual Feedback' (p. 65-69)

Prakash Prasad is responsible for the chapters (incl. subchapters):

• „Prakash‟s Focus‟ (24-33)

• „Recorded Data‟ (62)

• „Evaluation of Implementation‟ (69-76)

Søren Emil Andersen is responsible for the chapters (incl. subchapters):

• „Søren‟s Focus‟ (34-37)

• „Implementing Drama (Søren‟s Focus)‟ (38-49)

• „Instruction and Survey‟ (60)

• „Response to Game Rules‟ (63-65)

The chapters „Introduction‟ and „Conclusions‟ are shared responsibility.

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1 Introduction

“A series of logically and chronologically related events that are caused or experienced by

actors which is represented in a particular way.”

– Definition of a story by Mieke Bal (2001)

“The degree and nature of the interactivity that the game includes, i.e., how the player is

able to interact with the game-world and how that game-world reacts to the choices the

player makes.”

– Definition of gameplay by Richard Rouse (2001)

Stories have been presented in videogames for a long time. Mario (Nintendo Creative

Department, 1985) was explained to be on a mission to save the princess; the player is trying

to save earth against an alien invasion in Space Invaders (Taito Corporation, 1978). The

transition to better graphics saw stories take an even deeper and central role in videogames.

Developers could make detailed adventure games with engaging stories such as The Secret of

Monkey Island (Lucasfilm Games, 1990) and Grim Fandango (LucasArts, 1998). Players had

to push and prod the objects in the gameworld until the game recognized a pre-determined

combination had been successfully achieved to reveal the next story plot.

Most computer games provide the player with a vast variety of options during gameplay.

They can walk around, interact with objects, shoot guns, and talk to other people in the level,

etc.1 However when it comes to the story, the experience is limited to the same outcome (or a

predefined finite number at best). Each play session of The Secret of Monkey Island will

always reveal the same three pirate objectives to the protagonist, which will always have the

same hurdles to overcome. This feature of narrative in games disregards the player‟s control

of the protagonist‟s actions; her ability to exert micro influence on the narrative events is not

possible.

A similar problem arises when most of the current day games use cutscenes to show the

narrative progression after a gameplay episode. The players have no control over decision

making in those moments. Such problems have raised doubts about the validity of calling

games a narrative medium altogether, to rather say that games sometimes include other

narrative media to give the perception of a story being there.

1 Incidentally all of those mechanics are present in some games like Mass Effect 2 (Bioware, 2010)

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We address this conflict by discussing key structural differences between games and

narrative. While games may not live up to the prophecy (Murray, 1997)2 during this

examination, how can designers keep these differences in mind while designing a game, and

still incorporate “narrative” potentials in it? We‟ll take a look at how games may be designed

so that they are personal to the player and do not encroach upon her agency with the game. In

the process, we formulate a general approach utilizing guidelines of emergent narrative to tell

stories in games. In order to test the level of success achieved, a short game about a favela in

Rio de Janeiro was designed using the framework we put forward. The game‟s setting is

inspired from the motion picture City of God (Meirelles & Lund, 2002).

It is essential for the needs of this thesis to shed some light on the theoretical background

the implementation of the game is based on. This paper supports the underlying theoretical

background of the game-prototype, clarifying the designers‟ goals and choices, as well as an

analysis of the prototype based on additional theory. This introduction will informally

describe our motivation and intention with the project and this paper. Following this, we will

give an extensive introduction to the theory employed in the design and analysis, followed by

a discussion of relevant features in the game prototype, and the reasoning behind the core

design decisions.

The goal is not only to implement another video game, but to highlight how innovative

theories concerning the game‟s design were implemented and what the outcome is.

Throughout this paper, we are mainly focusing on the communicative aspect of video

games. So, first of all, it is reasonable to review the notion of communication in general. In

the beginning, the transmission of electrical signals as a model of communication will be

presented and afterwards, its perspective from a semiotic point of view. This perspective will

be used to explain the way people communicate and interact with each other, which in turn

will be used to point out how people create a dialogue and communicate ideas through design

in general. We will then look at videogames, especially level design, from the perspective of

film, which is a medium with strong narrative-promoting components of design. It is also

interesting to highlight games‟ capabilities to create a dialogue and communicate ideas. This

is a particular kind of communication which creates a sort of language that the pl ayers are

learning while they are playing the specific video game each time. Games‟ potential as

learning tools is widely explored below, accompanied by a brief summary of several scholars‟

opinion regarding video games‟ capabilities as communication tools .

The game‟s communication aspect is achieved through its world. So, the world tends to be

among the crucial components of the game. The spaces provide visual feedback to the players

2 Murray famously stated that games can one day grow to become a powerful med ia for narrating epics such

as Shakespeare‟s Hamlet.

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according to their actions. For that reason, it is a necessity to invest igate the importance of

spaces in videogames. Below, it is thoroughly examined how the designers can use the spaces

to convey their ideas to games and how important the role of visuals in the games is.

Apart from worlds and spaces, narrative is another main field which is examined in the

frame of game-prototype, in terms of providing cues and options to the players. They choose

their actions and formulate a story from it. At the third paragraph, it is presented how

narrative affects the design of the game and the designer‟s goal to lead the players to create a

story while playing even though no story plot has been already written. Two examples of

videogames will be presented as representatives of the current state-of-the-art. These

examples are close to what the goal of the game is so a short review will set up the domain

and establish the project‟s position in the videogame industry.

Then the paper continues with film. Film, as an older medium of communication than

videogames are, has already constructed and established its own literacy with the audience.

People are familiar with film languages either because they are aware of directors‟ techniques

or because they subconsciously have gotten used to them.

At the fourth chapter, it will be presented the way people create stories in their minds

watching the images that are shown at the screen and how the filmmakers can manipulate this

ability at their will. As a films‟ follow up, film language techniques and patterns will be

presented, emphasizing how they get adopted in the game prototype. This is part of the

paper‟s attempt to enrich the video games‟ languages using the film language, since

videogames come under the same techniques the films use. Of course it could be misleading

to assume that all of the films‟ components could be transferred into videogames, especially,

if it is taken into consideration that films provide simple story-telling, while videogames

expand their functions with interaction as a main focus. Certainly, they are two different

media, with certain similarities and differences, but in that point, the scope of our paper is

limited to the visuals.

Following the presentation of theory, the design process will be revealed, and the design

choices will be explained according to the presented theory. The playtests that were performed

will be analyzed, and we will evaluate the project leading the whole process to construct some

design principles. Finally, conclusions concerning the followed processes and their outcome

and possible implications will be discussed.

1.1 The Goal of the game-prototype

The game-prototype and its goal have already been described above. A quick review of its

goal will be presented with a focus on the visual feedback. The game-prototype tries, to

promote narrative by using clues planted in the environment, the relationships of the NPCs

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and the choices that the players are offered. The players will decide the way they will act into

the game and formulate their own narration of the game in their minds. Each time they play

the game, they can choose different actions, and thus they will formulate a different story.

Another aim of the game-prototype is to create a channel of the dialogue between the

designers and the player, which will be discussed more below. The game will try to provide

visual feedback to the players for their actions and influence to the world , and in general the

state of the world, so they can decide what their stand should be.

To design these visuals so they are identifiable from the players we will apply theory,

techniques and patterns that are used in films. Films, as an older medium, have already built

and established a visual communication with the viewers – a language most viewers can

understand. The film language will be used to this attempt to enrich the videogame language.

That will be analyzed in details further below in this paper.

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2 Theoretical Discussion and Outline

We will now introduce some theoretical tools and, through a brief discussion, outline how

we will apply them to our game, as well as to analyze the data from the test sessions. This

chapter is divided into three main parts, reflecting the focus areas of each team member.

2.1 Orestis’ Focus

2.1.1 Videogames as Language

Videogames have spread widely over the last years and became popular, especially among

young people. Many of today‟s youth spend more time playing in digital worlds rather than

watching television, reading, or watching films (Funk, Hagan, & Schimming, 1999; Squire,

2006). Furthermore, the last few years' videogames managed to change the erroneous

impression the general public had adopted, considering them as not a worthwhile activity.

Nowadays, they are considered not only games or, in general, means of entertainment but as

software that can provide much more to the players. Video games are widely discussed in

academic domains. Conferences are organized to discuss them in terms of academic research.

Espen Aarseth has nicely pointed out this transition of public‟s impression about video games

by saying that “in the last few years, games have gone from media non grata to a recognized

field of great scholarly potential, a place for academic expansion and recognition” (Aarseth,

2004). One of the fields that the academics are investigating, and is related to our research

topic about games, is narrative. Many scholars propose that video games can be used as a

narrative medium or some even argue whether videogames could be considered as art or not.

These provide a small notion of video games‟ role beyond pure entertainment for the players.

2.1.1.1 Communication model

Video games are able to build a form of two-way communication with the designers and

the players; a communication which starts from the designers who have embedded their

intentions and ideas in video games. The players received them by playing the games and they

endorse or reject them. The game designers are able nowadays to receive player‟s reaction and

by different ways they can propose their new ideas and continue the dialogue. This model will

be explained in more detail below, but in order to completely understand it, it is important

firstly to review the term of communication in general and from different aspects. How people

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achieve to communicate with each other, and how people communicate through other

mediums and devices.

(Shannon & Weaver, 1998) presented their communication model for transmitting electrical

signals. An information source that produces a message, then a transmitter produces a signal

suitable for transmission over a channel which acts as a medium and transmits the signal to

the receiver, and the inverse operation reconstructs the message and provides it to the

destination, with noise interfering with the procedure.

2.1.1.2 Communication model from semiotic point of view

Umberto Eco uses this model on an example of how an automobile notifies that it runs out

of gas and says that “according to the principles of information theory, there is an

“informational process” that is in some way considered a communicational process too” (Eco,

1976). Following, Eco applies in detail the Shannon and Weaver model into a dam gate

notification system, on how the engineer notified in case of danger. Eco‟s work shows that the

depth of this structure is not constricted on the initial description but renders more meanings

in other domains too. For example Winfried Nöth doesn‟t constrain that model on the

technical aspects but he is going a step further on vocal communication, replacing the source

and the destination with two persons as speaker (Nöth, 1995). In essence, he talks about

dialogue between two persons that they communicate though exchanging verbal messages.

2.1.1.3 Communication through design

But dialogue can be considered a much broader notion, and can be accomplished by the use

of other means, such as films, games or industrial design, rather than exchanging verbal

messages. Redström talked about the dialogue and the message in persuasive design in

general:

“there is a certain dialogue going on: the designer proposes certain things through the

designed thing, and the user then accepts, refutes, or modifies these in relation to his/her own

position. In practice, results of such a dialogue can, for instance, be seen in the often

unpredictable discrepancies between intended and actual use.” (Redström, 2006)

Redström talks about dialogue where the designer sends the message though the object on

how it is designed to be used. But, then, it is upon the users to accept or deny that message

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and create their own way to use it and convey their message on it. That statement gives into

objects the ability to convey the messages of a dialogue.

2.1.1.4 Communication in Video Games

Finally to reach video games, in game studies Alessandro Canossa talks about the

communication model in video games. In his model the “game designers provide temporal

and spatial structures embedded into game to elicit certain actions”, the players receive that

by playing the game and communicate because they “are not just passive receivers of the act

of communication since they are required to make sense and interpret events in the game

world and meaning is not extracted or discovered, but constructed. The tangible outcome of

players‟ interpretation is their behavior in the game” (Canossa, 2009). This is the players‟

response and is up to the designers to receive it or not. But this is a prime desire of the

designers, to feel the audience response to their game. Nowadays, with the available

technology this is a feasible task. Canossa continues further on that and talks about the game

metrics as a channel for the designer to, among other things, monitoring players‟ behavior.

Clearly this is a way for the designers to receive players‟ response, but it is not the only one.

Online reviews and forum discussions are two more sources for the designers to hear the

player. These are the channels that now the players are sending their message to the designers

who then receive it. A channel for the designers to answer back could be a patch, a

downloadable content or a sequel. All this procedure can go on and keep the communication

alive.

A representative example of the aforementioned kind of communication is the game

Assassin‟s Creed (Ubisoft Montreal, 2007). The first game of the series was well received

from players and magazines, and made big success, although many critics point out two

problems of the game. Firstly, that the gameplay became repetitive after a while by have to

perform five small missions each time that the players was assigned with a new assassination

target. Secondly, in this game the story take place in two different time periods, in 1191 A.D.

and present day. The action takes place in the past time period while in present is mostly

cutscenes in order to progress the story. Many players and reviews complained that the

present time period and the cutscenes are taking a lot of time and delaying the players from

playing. In the sequel of the game it is widely accepted by the fans that these two problems do

not exist anymore. The gameplay is not repetitive thanks to the variety of the submissions and

the freedom that the players have to choose if they want to play it. Also thanks to the plot, the

players don‟t have to be for a long time in the present time period. The designer actually did

care for what the audience had rejected in the first game. In an interview considering

Assassin‟s Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal, 2009), Patrick Plourde, the lead game designer said

that:

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“I think we struggled finding the identity of Assassin's Creed in the first game. There, we

wanted to push all the boundaries possible. There was some success and some failure. So for

the second one, we took what was successful and the changes were clearly needs stated by

players. Our development was more focused. We didn't shoot in the dark; we had a little

flashlight that would pinpoint what we needed” (Plourde, 2009).

Unfortunately in this statement it is not been mention from which channel the designers

received that message, but is clear that they did receive it from the players.

2.1.1.5 In-game communication and decoding video games

The communication that described above is not the only act of communication that it can

take place through video games. An in-game communication is achieved by the feedback that

the designers are providing to the players after they perform specific actions. This is an

indirect form of communication. In particular, in Canossa‟s example, the game designers

provide a time frame (when), a space (where), and actions (what), in the game to the players

and they response with their in-game behavior. But in order to respond and keep the

communication alive, the players have to be able to understand what the designers are

providing them, but this is not an easy task. Players have to fully realize the space of the

world that is provided to them and most important the actions they can perform, when and

how. They can look what the controllers are on the menu screen, but that don‟t bear them with

the ability to foresee exactly when they have to press the specific buttons to perform the

corresponding action or to foresee the impact of their action. Players are receiving designers‟

messages but they have to be able to decode them, so they can understand their affordances of

the game and the world.

For example, in Assassin‟s Creed II there are six catacombs where the players can locate an

Assassin‟s Seal. Navigating inside the catacombs is a rather hard task. The players have to

perform difficult combinations of jumps, climbing and parkour. Of course it is easier for

players familiar with third person games, but is rather difficult for players which this game is

their first third-person video game. So the players have to be familiar themselves with video

games, or at least some types of video games, in order to be able to decode designers‟

messages.

2.1.1.6 The Video game Language

In order to achieve an in-game communication the players should be able to decode the

messages which the designers intend to send them. This decoding is succeeded by what Gee

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meant when he mentioned that “when people learn to play video games, they learn a new

literacy” (Gee, 2003). Learning a new literacy while playing games, means to learn to decode

the designers‟ messages and understand video game‟s “language”, to understand the

affordances of the game and the possible actions that they can perform. As soon as the players

learn the videogame‟s language, they immediately get familiar with the game and that has a

reflection on their way of playing. From then on, they are adapted to the new playground.

This notion about a video game language is similar to Nitsche‟s remarks about video

games. In particular, he writes that “video games can interconnect the choices and weave a net

of relations among them, thereby creating a context for each single interaction” (Nitshe,

2009). This point of view is quite similar to the video game “language” and literacy. The net

of relationships and the creation of a context for each interaction can be easily pa rallelized

with the components of a language. This is the form of literacy that players have to learn in

order to engage with videogames. This language is not only the interactions, but is also the

visuals of the game. The 3D spaces which are built with colors, shapes, textures, particle

effects and sounds are also part of the video games language, the visual part of it. These are

tools in the hand of the game designer to communicate with the players, not only by the story

but with the visuals of the videogames.

2.1.1.7 The term language

Finally, it is essential to clarify that the term language is not used in the scientific terms of

linguistics but in a rather wide sense that the word can afford. It is used more as a carrier of

meaning, a tool to communicate. It describes the familiarity of the player with videogames.

For example, if the player has to press an action button to open a door or he can just push it

while he is moving. Players who are not familiar to the language are thinking how they should

open a door in the game but the players which are familiar to the language figure out a simple

action like that immediately, and they are doing it by instinct. This language is evolving and

growing through the years. As it said before the designers, due to the communication channel,

are getting feedback from the players and they try to improve the way that players are

interacting with the game, more user friendly and game driven.

In the same way other mediums have built this connection with the audience. For example

comics are drawn frames in an order to convey a story. In the conventional comics, the

audience is trained to look into the frames in the correct order. But in more innovating comics

the non-familiar audience has to spend some time to put in the right order the frames

compared to the audience familiar to comics which put the frames into the right order as a

natural procedure.

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2.1.2 Videogames and spaces

2.1.2.1 Game worlds in today’s games

With the outburst of technology games have become bigger and bigger. As a result whole

worlds are designed and built for games, in order to maximize the game experience for the

players, immerse them into the game and make them more attached to it. In these games the

players can navigate the character that they are controlling and interact with the environment

in sandbox games like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas (Rockstar North, 2004), Red Dead

Redemption (Rockstar North, 2010), Assassin‟s Creed and much more. Apart from these

famous types of games another example could be games like SimCity (Maxis, 1993) and

Black & White 2 (Lionhead Studios, 2005). In these games the players are not controlling a

character but they have the ability to manipulate, design and built a city the way they desire

by using the available resources and bearing in mind the desires of the cities‟ population.

From the above examples is getting clear the abilities and the importance of the terms “space”

and “world” in videogames and how the videogame designers are using the 3D spaces to

achieve their goals.

2.1.2.2 Spaces as a component of the videogame language

It is not only the commercial games that indicated the importance of spaces. It is also in the

scholars discussions that the game spaces have been treated as a vital part of games. Jenkins

emphasizes on the importance of spaces by saying “game designers don‟t simply tell stories;

they design and sculpt spaces” (Jenkins, 2004). The designers may manipulate the spaces in

order to maximize the game experience for the players; it is a tool to their hands. The spaces

are definitely part of what was called above as video game language. It is a component of it.

This argument is reinforced by Julian Kucklich stating that “learning how to play a computer

game always involves learning how to negotiate game space” (Kücklich, 2007). This

statement about learning how to play computer games conveys they idea of videogame

language that was discussed above. Learning playing videogames it means to learn this

language. In the second part of the sentence Kucklich included game spaces as a part of that

learning procedure. The players have to learn, through playing, to perceive and understand the

spaces into the video games.

2.1.2.3 Perceiving the space

But how the players perceive and understand the videogames spaces and the videogames in

general. Nitsche is providing an explanation while he is analyzing videogames, “with a view

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toward the experience of space”, by using the model of Five Planes (Nitshe, 2009). The five

main conceptual planes for the analysis of game spaces are: the rule-based space, the

mediated space, the fictional space, the play space and the social space.

The rule-based space consists of the mathematical rules which it sets, like the physics, the

AI, and the game-level architecture. The mediate space is the cinematic presentation of the

game taking place in the screen. It is the game world that the designer builds and the players

view through the screen and navigate inside with the character that they control. The fictional

space is the world that the players imagine as a result of their comprehension of the available

images. The play space is the physical space where the player is with the videogame

hardware, and finally the social space is defined by the interaction with other player or just

audience which is watching. The mediated and the fictional spaces are the two that connected

to the scope of this paper. The mediated space is the game world that the designer builds and

the players see thought the screen and navigate inside with the character that they control, and

the fictional space is players‟ interpretation of the above. This phenomenon can be noticed in

films, and will be analyzed later in the paper. By the interpretation they decide their actions in

the game. The language or literacy of videogame is what the players use to translate the

mediated space into the fictional space. It is the medium, the tool for the players to progress

from the one space-plane into the other and immerse themselves into the game and construct

narration according to their actions. The more “educated” to the videogame literacy the player

is the easier would be for him to actually emerge narratives through the game.

2.1.2.4 The role of spaces in the game-prototype

In the prototype that is attached to this paper, spaces play an important role to the game

concept. More specifically, the influence that each space has to NPCs and the results of their

actions in the game are investigated. The consequences of the actions are presented to the

player in a non-direct way, but using the aesthetics to change the environment. The actions

that the NPCs and the players are committing in the game change the visual appearance of the

spaces and the world in the end. These changes are part of the overall concept of the project

about emerging narrative by visuals and the relationships of the player with the NPCs instead

of a predetermined written story. The narrative part will be closely examined below.

Similar types of visual change in the environment according to players‟ actions are

noticeable on the Black and White games. Changes on the colors, themes, style of the visual

and on the creature of the players are happening according to the decisions of the players.

They might choose to be a good, merciful god or an evil punisher god, for example. A similar

technique will be applied into the game prototype and the application will be presented below.

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2.1.3 Videogames and Narrative

Narrative is a controversial issue in videogames studies with the game theorists arguing

whether videogames can be considered a narrative medium or not. “One side argues that

computer games are media for telling stories, while the opposing side claims that stories and

games are different structures that are in effect doing different things” (Aarseth, 2004). Beside

that discussion, accepting the narrative aspects of videogames another controversial issue

arise, the emergent narrative which described above in detail.

2.1.3.1 The role of narrative in the game-prototype

The goal of the game-prototype on the narrative field is to let narrative emerge through the

game experience. Provide some story clues which the players will use to formulate their own

story. The idea is not to have a pre-written story by the designers, offering some moments and

clues which will work as narrative vessels for the players, engage them with the game and

lead them to creating their story. Every time the user plays the game a different story occurs

according to their actions and their impact on the world. The idea behind this game-prototype

is very close to what Jenkins wrote about environmental storytelling and immersive narrative:

“Environmental story telling creates the preconditions for an immersive narrative

experience in at least one of four ways: spatial stories can evoke pre-existing narrative

associations; they can provide a staging ground where narrative events are enacted. They may

even embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene; or they provide resources for

emergent narratives“(Jenkins, 2004).

The main goal of the game-prototype two create an environment where the preconditions

for an immersive narrative experience exist in all four ways and provide visual feedback to

the players for the state of the environment by the use of film techniques.

2.1.3.2 Games with similar narrative function

Games that are acting in similar way with the game prototype are the well -known game

Sims (Maxis, 2000) and Mount and Blade: Warband (TaleWorlds, 2010). Both games could be

characterized as simulations. In case of Sims, Jenkins explains “emergent narratives are not

pre-structured or preprogrammed, taking shape through the gameplay, yet they are not

unstructured, chaotic, and frustrating as life itself” (Jenkins, 2004). and continues with Will

Wright‟s description of his game “that it should be understood as a kind of authoring

environment within which players can define their own goals and write their own stories”

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(ibid), which is also the goal of the game-prototype. In Wright‟s description is obvious the

importance of the concept about environment, space and world.

Similar narrative is applying in Mount and Blade: Warband. In the beginning of the game

the players are making their character as they want to. Customizing his appearance, his skills

even his background and his goals. The narration is weaved in a similar way, players character

is wondering around in the medieval realm of Calradia, meets other characters making friends

and enemies, and is up to the players to choose the dramatic direction of their character by

being part of a kingdom and battling with other kingdoms or becoming an outlaw or stay

neutral and be merciful.

2.1.4 The Films Language

2.1.4.1 The Film medium and language

Films are a much older medium that videogames. Though the years, films have populated

many discussions, theories have been defined about the narration, the editing, the lighting and

for many other components of those. Films are taught in a higher level in universities and

people acknowledge them as a form of art. Films have their language (Bordwell & Thompson,

2008) but since are an older medium; the audience is much more used to it. To underline the

fact of how familiar the audience is with films nowadays, it will be demonstrated a small

analysis of film editing as an example. The reason for bringing films into the equation is

because of their broad audience and because of their similarities with videogames renders the

film language as the proper instrument to inspire the videogame language.

2.1.4.2 Editing

Editing is a useful tool in the hands of the filmmakers and part of film language. Nowadays

most of the time editing is obvious and straight forward to the audience. It seems a natural

part of film. This feeling of naturalness and the acceptance of editing as a key element of

filmmaking has to do with the fact that the audience is familiar with films after so many years

of watching them; their audience has been trained to understand how it works, the change of

images on the screen. The heritage of films that have been built through years is making

easier for the audience to understand the medium.

To explain that particularly for editing it will be presented the Kuleshov Effect. During the

20s when films were a new medium trying to find the way to express and communicate with

the audience, the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov made a short film, an experiment, later

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known as the Kuleshov Effect. The film reveals the power of editing. David Bordwell and

Kristin Thompson explained very well what the film shows and what it meant:

“Kuleshov conducted informal experiments by assembling shots of separate dramatic

elements. The most famous of these experiments involved cutting neutral shots of an actor‟s

face with other shots (variously reported as shots of soups, nature scenes, a dead woman, and

a baby). The reported result was that the audience immediately assumed that the actor‟s

expression changed and that the actor was reacting to things present in the same space as

himself. Similarly, Kuleshov cut together shots of actor “looking at each other” but in

Moscow streets miles apart, then meeting and strolling together-and looking at the White

House in Washington. Although filmmakers had used such cutting before Kuleshov‟s work,

film scholars call the Kuleshov effect any series of shots that in the absence of an establi shing

shot prompts the spectator to infer a spatial whole on the basis of seeing only portions of the

space” (ibid).

The experiment points out the massive effect of editing, on how people perceive and

understand films. At regular films, the audience is forced to connect even irrelevant images

according to the way the director pose them and he drives them to make assumptions that

serve his purposes for the film‟s plot. Using the editing feature he can direct audience‟s mind

and feelings to the direction he wants allowing him to progress the drama of the film as he

desires. Also it can affect the two fields which were discussed before about video games,

narration and spaces.

2.1.4.2.1 Narration in Films though editing

Editing has an important role in film‟s narrative. It can guide the audience to create the

wanted assumptions to connect chunks of the stories and weave them in such a way to create a

narration. Bordwell points out these narrative abilities of editing:

“Editing as the most palpable stage of montage construc tion, will often violate

verisimilitude for the sake of impact. Perhaps most productive is the assumption that the story

action is not in the film but in the spectators mind; it becomes a construction which the viewer

puts upon a configuration of stimuli” (Bordwell, 1985).

This explanation of Bordwell about how editing and narration comes close with the project.

The construction of narration in the audience mind, by the use of specific images and the way

they are showing to the audience, in the case of films and the construction of narration in

players mind by the use of cues in the world and the relationships in the game-prototype. It is

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obvious that films and games are sharing similarities on the fact of how their audience

perceives the images that are shown to it and construct a story into his mind.

2.1.4.2.2 Spaces in Films though editing

Furthermore, the director by the use of editing can create spaces. In the above example

Kuleshov creates a fictional space which is constructed by streets of Moscow which are miles

apart from each other in the real world, and in the middle of that fictional space is located the

White House, which in the real world is located in Washington, DC. Obviously such a space

doesn‟t exist but only in Kuleshov‟s films and in the audience‟s m inds. To make that clear

Bordwell quotes in his book one of the pioneers of the Soviet cinema, the director Dziga

Vertov:

“I am Kino-eye. I am builder. I have placed you ... in an extraordinary room which did not

exist until just now when I also created it. In this room there are twelve walls, shot by me in

various parts of the world. In bringing together shots of walls and details, I „ve managed to

arrange them in an order that is pleasing” (ibid).

From these two examples is clear the ability of films to construct spaces. This construction

succeeded by the use of editing, one of the components of the film literacy. As was mentioned

above, spaces have an important role in games, especially in 3D games and in this project. So

it is considered as the next reasonable step to try to use parts of this literacy about films and

applying them into games aiming to enrich the video games literacy.

Vertov‟s statement seems similar to Jenkins one that was mentioned above about the game

designer being sculptors of spaces. A connection underlines the similarities of the two

mediums.

2.1.4.3 Differences between Films and videogames.

Having mentioned above the similarities between films and video games, it would be

negligent not to point out their main differences. Film is a narrative medium in contrast to the

video games‟ main feature, namely interactivity. Many scholars argue concerning narrative

and interactivity are two opposite and conflict terms which cannot exist on the same time

(Juul, 2001). As described above editing is a key element of films but in video games it is

difficult to find the equivalent essence. Arguably, game designers use a kind of editing when

the action is moved from one space to another, when they decide what should be on the cut -

scene and what should be played by the players or when they remove from the players the

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ability to control their character or some actions of their characters such as enabling them to

use guns inside of a specific room for example. But even the above examples could rarely

create the feelings that editing can create and they don‟t have the capabilities that editing

have.

Films and video games are two different mediums. Even though they share a lot of

similarities they have to be considered as different and the techniques that are successful in

the one medium do not ensure the same success to the other one. This work‟s aim is to explore

exactly that field. It is investigated whether the application of film features for specific

purposes may have the same outcome to the video games as well.

2.1.4.4 Communication, Films and Video games

Until now, the term communication has been reviewed through different domains, ending

up finally at the domain of video games. It has been pointed out how video games could be

used as a channel for a two-way communication between the designers and the players. But in

order to achieve an in-game communication between the two sides, the players should be able

to decode the designers‟ messages; they should be able to decode videogames. This can be

achieved if the players are familiar with videogames, if they know the video game language.

Part of this language is the visuals and the game spaces. Films shared many similarities with

videogames, especially in the visual part and the spaces. The wide audience is more familiar

with the film language rather than with the video games‟ language, so it would be reasonable

to try applying parts of the film language about the visuals to video games in order to succeed

a corresponding result. By doing so, the player can understand what the designers meant

easily and as a result it turns the in-game communication between the designers and the

players easier.

2.1.5 Components of the Film Language

Specific components of the films are used on the game-prototype to provide feedback to

the players. A category of film components is the Mise-en-Scene. The term Mise-en-Scene is

used to describe the “aspects of film that overlap with the art of the theater: setting, lighting,

costume, and the behavior of the figures” (Bordwell & Thompson, 2008). All these can exist

in video games as well. To be more precise, in the game-prototype only costumes cannot be

considered as part of the Mise-en-Scene since all the NPCs have only two different types of

clothes according to their genre. This is a consequence of the game‟s technical limitations. In

case these limitations are overcome, costume feature derived from films could be tested as

well. In the game-prototype the behavior of the figures is defined by the actions that are

available to the NPCs and are implemented by the simulation. NPCs actions are shown to the

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players not by animations but by signs above every NPC which represent the action that the

NPC is committing at the time. Moving to the other elements of Mise-en-Scene, lighting and

setting, both of them exist and can play a vital role into a video game, so it can be concluded

that these two can be used in the game-prototype to provide feedback to the players for their

actions and the simulation. Along with them, colors can also be used for that reason. For the

three of them, it will be presented how are been used in films by the directors and how these

will be applied in the game-prototype.

2.1.5.1 Lighting

Lighting can be used in many and different ways in films, in order to highlight or cover

objects on the screen or to create specific feelings to the audience. According to Bordwell and

Thompson (ibid) lighting can guide audience‟s attention to certain objects or action. But even

though lighting changes in films during the drama, it is not always noticeable from the

audience neither understandable how it functions. The audience might not notice how a movie

is illuminated but it will receive the outcome of this illumination. Audience attentions will be

guided to certain objects and actions, and will create feelings according to the drama. A

complete list of lighting is a rather hard task. Bordwell and Thompson (ibid) analyzed and

broke into pieces how lighting is been used into films. In this analysis, they clarify the

concept of lighting isolating it into four main features, its quality, direction, source and color.

They define lighting quality as the relative intensity of the illumination and can be

distinguished into two categories, hard lighting which creates clearly defined shadows with

sharp edges and soft lighting which creates a diffused illumination.

The direction refers to the path of the light from the source to the object to light, and can

be distinguished in many different categories which can be applied independently or in

combination. These categories are: front light, sidelight, backlight, underlight and top light

and their detailed description follows. Frontal light eliminates the shadows and creates a flat

looking image. Sidelight (also called crosslight) which for example is used in Touch of Evil

(Welles, 1958) to sculpt the character‟s features. Backlighting can be combined with more

frontal sources to create an unobtrusively illuminated contour. Underlighting tends to distort

features and often create dramatic horror like in The Exorcist (Friedkin, 1973). Top lighting is

used to bring out the lit object.

For the source of the lighting, they add that fiction films use extra sources and assume that

any subject requires two light sources. A key source which is the primary one and provides

dominant illumination and casts the stronger shadows, it is directional light, and the fill light

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which is less intense illumination that “fills in”, softening or eliminating shadows cast by the

key light.

All the above types of lights can be used on the same time and create light combinations

like the three-point light combination used by classical Hollywood which consist from a key

light, a fill light and a backlight. In this combination the back light is coming from behind and

above the figure, the key light comes diagonally from the front and a fill light from a position

near the camera. Of course different variations of the three-point lighting can be used such as

the high-key lighting and the low-key illumination.

High-key lighting refers to an overall lighting design that uses fill light and backlight to

create low contrast between brighter and darker areas, usually the light quality is soft, making

shadow areas fairly transparent This is a lighting which is used in classical Hollywood

cinema, like Jezebel (Wyler, 1938), in comedies, adventure films and mostly in drama.

Low-key lighting creates stronger contrasts and sharper, darker shadows. Often

the lighting is hard and fill light is lessened or eliminated altogether. The result is sharp

shadows that create extremely light and dark regions in the image. As Bordwell and

Thompson (Bordwell & Thompson, 2008) mention, the low-key lighting which has been

applied to somber or mysterious scenes, it was used in horror films in 1930s, film noirs of the

40s and 50s and revived in the 1980s by films such as Blade Runner (Scott, 1982) and

Rumble Fish (Coppola, 1983) and continued in the 1990s in films like Se7en (Fincher, 1995)

and The Usual Suspects (Singer, 1995).

About the color, the director can use white light and filter its hue and by that

color the onscreen illumination and create a specific atmosphere. Another way to interact him

color in terms of lighting is to use a color lighting like in Ivan the Terrible, Part 2 (Eisenstein

& Filimonova, 1958) where Eisenstein choose to cast a blue light on an actor, in order to

suggest the character‟s terror and uncertainty. Bordwell and Thompson notice that “such a

shift in stylistic function-using colored light to perform a function usually confined to acting-

is all the more effective because it is so unexpected” (Bordwell & Thompson, 2008).

All these lighting techniques have been used by the directors to achieve their

purposes. Their application at the game-prototype will be explored later on this paper.

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2.1.6 Setting

2.1.6.1 Objects

Setting is another tool that a film director manipulates at his will in order to set the

atmosphere of the film, the time period or to create wonderful images. The setting of a film

can be totally artificial like in early and historical films or it can be deducted into the

minimum, or even less than minimum like in Dogville (Trier, 2003). The overall design of a

setting can shape how the audience understands the story action (Bordwell & Thompson,

2008. This connection of the setting to the story action is rather interesting.

2.1.6.1.1 Props

Part of a film setting is the objects that are illustrated into the film. These objects can shape

the story action also. An object of the setting that “has a function within the ongoing action”

can be called prop (short for property), a term borrowed from the theatrical mise-en-scene.

Bordwell and Thompson (ibid) called props the snowstorm paperweight that shatters at the

beginning of Citizen Cane (Welles, 1941), the girl‟s balloon in M (Lang, 1931), the cactus

rose in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (Ford, 1962) and Sarah Connor‟s bed turned

exercise machine in Terminator 2: Judgment Day (Cameron, 1991). It turns clearer from the

examples that a prop is an object which its purpose is to assist the plot to move on at a

specific point of the movie.

2.1.6.1.2 McGuffin

The great film director Alfred Hitchcock used an object in his films; he called McGuffin,

which was used as a plot device, a vessel that will let the story to be unfolded. The purpose of

McGuffin is to make the plot moving, but the object itself doesn‟t serve any other purposes,

as Hitchcock said in an interview to another great director Francois Truffaut “a McGuffin is

nothing at all” (Gottlieb, 2002). For example in his film North by Northwest (Hitchcock,

1959) the plot keeps going around a microfilm, and in Quentin Tarantino‟s Pulp Fiction

(Tarantino, 1994) is the suitcase. The latter example proves Hitchcock‟ s opinion about the

McGuffin since the whole movie is deployed but the audience never sees what is inside since

it is not needed in order to progress the plot. In an extended and retrospective sense, looking

on Citizen Cane again, the meaning of the protagonist dying word “Rosebud” acts as a

McGuffin because it makes the story goes on, but it is not an object and serves one more

purpose, to reveal a part of the protagonist character at the very end of the film.

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Objects, as parts of the setting, besides their role, they serve to make the atmosphere more

vivid, they can have a role in the story or assist the plot to progress.

2.1.6.2 Color

Color can carry an important role in the movies, even though in most of the cases the

audience doesn‟t notice. In both previous cases that were mention before lighting and setting

color came up, but was not explained in details because color can be counted as a component

of films on its own and will be analyzed singularly. In most of the movies, different colors

render the same range of feelings and capabilities. But that does not mean that a director

cannot go against the color stereotypes and use colors in a completely different way than they

are conventionally used or even neglecting them. Patti Bellantoni in her book “If It‟s Purple,

Someone‟s Gonna Die”, she explores big studio films, limited-release indie films, Oscar

winners and films at the time were critically dismissed and have been revisited later and

describes how six basic colors (Red, Yellow, Blue, Orange, Green and Purple) are used in

these films. In each of the six colors, she finds six different characteristics that are clarified

into two categories. As she explains in the introduction “the six characteristics listed for each

color (e.g., Powerful, Lusty, and Defiant Reds) were selected because these emotional

associations repeated themselves over and over again” (Bellatoni, 2005) in her research. A

short review of her results will be presented in order to get an idea of how colors are used in

films.

Starting from Red color, she labels it as the Caffeinated Color, because it acts as a visual

caffeine, which activates the libido and makes the viewer aggressive, anxious or compulsive

and split the characteristics into two categories, the Powerful, Lusty, Defiant Reds and the

Anxious, Angry and Romantic Reds. More specifically in the Angry Reds one of the movie

examples is Romeo+Juliet (Luhrmann, 1996) where she refers to red as the violent color.

Yellow is labeled as the Contrary Color. Bellantoni‟s explanation for that label can be sum

up as follows: yellow has been render in people‟s consciousness as a cautionary while it is

also the color that people identify the sun, which it renders as powerful and energetic,

exuberance itself. The two main categories of the characteristics are the Innocent, Cautionary

and Idyllic Yellows compared to the Exuberant, Obsessive and Daring Yellows.

Blue color is labeled as the Detached Color, it is passive and cold color leading the views

not to act and that‟s why Melancholy, Cold and Passive Blues are the three characteristics

Bellantoni distinguishes. But on the other hand she refers to the complete opposite use of blue

as Powerful, Cerebral and Warm Blues in films like The Shawshank Redemption (Darabont,

1994), Blow-Up (Antonioni, 1966) and Chocolat (Hallström, 2000) respectively.

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Orange color in films often represents warmness and romance but also toxic like the orange

atmosphere in Blade Runner and napalm sense in Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1983). Orange

labeled as the Sweet and Sour Color, sweet because of the Warm, Naive and Romantic

Oranges and Sour from the Exotic, Toxic and Natural Oranges.

Green color is the Split Personality Color; it might signify health vitality or decay,

rottenness and danger. Therefore on the two categories are the Healthy, Ambivalent and Vital

Greens and on the other one the Poisonous, Ominous and Corrupt Greens.

Finally Purple color is labeled as the Beyond-the-Body Color, as a color that has been often

associated as mystical, magical, spiritual and nonphysical. It is also associated with royal,

death or transformation. Its characteristics are the Asexual, Illusory and Fantastic Purples and

on the other hand the Mystical, Ominous and Ethereal Purples.

As it was mention above all these colors‟ meanings in movies have been extracted by

notice how the directors have used colors and by grouping the most common uses. This

definitely does not mean that a director cannot break the above assumptions and try to render

a color with a different meaning that the audience is already used to it.

2.1.6.3 In Summary

It has been presented above how certain elements of films are used. These elements are part

of the film language that will be applied in the game-prototype in order to incorporate these

elements into the video game language, and make easier for the audience which is familiar

already with films to understand video games.

2.2 Prakash’s Focus

The current point of view regarding narratives in games reflects on the large market

success that games with so called “epic” stories enjoy. In most games, portions of the story

are conveyed in terms of very short movies, called “cutscenes” which are almost always non-

interactive. However there‟s a valid contention about how these cues lose the interactivity of

games. For such cases, Juul presents a fitting analogy of gameplay providing moments of

“lean forward” immersion as compared to “lean back” moments of narrative consumption in

non-interactive sections (Juul, 2001). Consider Uncharted 2 (Naughty Dog, 2009) for a

moment. The game employs cutscenes to direct the narrative flow (and mission objectives).

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These cutscenes can be viewed on the internet3 without going through any of the gameplay. It

does make a compelling story indeed, but no input is needed from the viewer. Similarly game

missions could very well be played without any of the cutscenes to enjoy the gameplay. The

absence of either one from the other does not render them unusable. Hence, such games are

independent from their narrative.4

Another reason why narrative is not influential in immersing the player has to do with the

disjoint that she feels with the protagonist. While reading a story (or watching a motion

picture) the receiver of the story does not have to relate to the protagonist(s). The experience

only involves the recipient to participate as a disembodied viewer. It is our opinion that this

disembodiment from the protagonist is not shared by the player of a video game. If the player

is unable to understand the protagonist, then that would affect the extent of her gameplay

choices. Being the player she is allowed to work within an action space, but not really allowed

to influence the outcome. In such a flow of events, games loose one of their key attribute, i.e.

gameplay (p.4), and loosely become glorified hypertext adventures.

Let us consider an example to illustrate this point - Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010),

one of the blockbuster hits of recent years which was largely marketed as a game. But was it

really a game? Bogost has explained how the so called “game” boils down to being an

“interactive film” (Bogost, 2010), where the player fills the role of a film editor selecting

where to cut the movie into the next plot twist. However, in this case as in the previous ones,

there‟s nothing wrong with a new genre in entrainment. But this brings an interesting topic to

the fore about how various medium available to computer (or computer machines) are so

spread out in genre context that a generalized conclusion that “all” computer media is or is

not narrative is largely problematic (Aarseth, 2004). This categorization, can however be

helped a little by narrowing down our focus area to not include interactive storytelling and

talk exclusively about computer games that are characterized by having gameplay.

A common explanation provided in favor of games conveying narrative has been the

representational view of narratives. The argument goes that since human beings represent

reality through making stories, it helps the player to put a narrative context to her actions.

Frasca however points out that games are inherently simulation based (Frasca, 2003). The

connection made by Frasca between “Simulation” and “behavior” of the entities in a system is

quite interesting for our purposes. This means that simulation model of a system, which are

designed specifically to generate events will be able to create a narrative simulation that can

be probed by the player.

3 Uncharted 2 - All Cutscenes HD. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6eLsYkPhicU

4 RPG games without cutscenes provide a different option in game narration that is discussed in p.26.

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Frasca even provides the example of such a simulation based narrative model experimented

by Boal (ibid.). Boalian drama (Boal, 2000) involves random audience members taking the

position of the protagonist in a dramatic position on the stage. In this technique, instead of

trying to weave “interactivity” and “narrative”, Boal approaches the problem sideways by

allowing the user to experience the simulation. This way each player can experience the

simulation with their own perspective to realize a narrative that is personal to them. This

model holds promise for games where the narrative doesn‟t have to make sense to a different

game player as long as it satisfies the player at that time and only on that play-through.

2.2.1 Emergent Narrative

Using the Boalian drama as inspiration (Boal, 2000), we recommend a narrative

methodology revolving around the simulation of events in game worlds. Such an approach is

nothing new in games. It has been recognized by game theorists such as Sweetser, who points

out that there are three kinds of narratives relating to (Sweetser, 2007):

• Player as receiver – These according to Sweetser (ibid.) is the narrative method where

the user only acts as the story receiver; she cannot influence the outcome of the story

by her actions. Classic point and click adventures and other medium like movies and

novels belong to this category. These stories have already been discussed as the status -

quo in the mainstream game industry (p.4).

• Player as discoverer – Games where players have more freedom in terms of the order

that narrative cues are discovered in the form of dialogue with particular actor,

cutscene, voice in the sky, etc. This category has games that have branching narratives

and player‟s actions have larger effect on the narration, but the overall story still sticks

to the same general arc. There have already been some successful game

implementations of this paradigm like Fallout 3 (Bethesda Game Studio, 2008), and

Heroes of Might and Magic V (Nival Interactive & Freeverse Software, 2006).

• Player as creator – This is the only category of games that Sweetser recognizes as

truly emergent in their narrative form (ibid.). These are mostly sandbox games or

strategy games where the players have a very large action set that can combine in ways

to form a story as well as the fact that players have a more encapsulating view of their

creation - such as in SimCity 2000 (Maxis, 1993), Spore (Maxis, 2008) or even

StarCraft (Blizzard Entertainment, 1998).

Out of the three paradigms described above, the one that interests us for its wider

application in games is the one where players act as discoverers of the narrative. By placing

short narrative cues in the environment and actors, we can leave their discovery up to the

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player without affecting her agency with the game. In addition these narrative cues can also

be hidden within layers of rules so as to become discoverable only at a certain time in the

game or as a result of certain actions by the actors. Using this idea as the basis, we can put

forward a definition of emergent narrative as,

“A sequence of events (complex and unplanned) culminating from the

interaction of relatively simple game rules.”

A common critique of emergent narratives is their storytelling, or rather lack of it.

Emergent narratives are not trusted to turn out as “page-turners”. The narratives felt by the

player are no more detailed than a simple retelling of events. These are not epic stories, but

what makes them special is the player‟s attachment to them because they went through those

events.

This kind of “story personalization” is something central to games. Exclusive story

narration is common in other media too. Parents tell bedtime stories to their kids that are not

guaranteed to be in anyone else‟s mind, bards sung songs that only the particular king would

hear. But the retelling of events while playing an emergent game like Civilization IV (Firaxis

Games, 2005) is always unique.

In the following sections we discuss the various design considerations that can help

generate a structure that leads to an immersive emergent narrative. We will also discuss some

examples of this framework being used to design a game (Carioca) as a case study.

2.2.1.1 Simulation

A simulation related to the theme should be central to the game. The game mechanics

should directly allow players to influence outcome of the story. In the example game Carioca,

we simulate various characteristics associated with living in a favela such as drugs, character

types, work types etc. (p.38).

The Sims (Maxis, 2000) is probably one of the best examples of immersive narrative being

created5 from an emergent simulation. The player controls a human like avatar (a Sim) whose

needs and wants are simulated by the system in a seemingly realistic fashion. The

dependencies for these Sims vary from mundane needs like food, water, sanitation etc. to

5 An example story about a homeless father and his daughter trying to survive without money. The story is

chronicled on http://aliceandkev.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/alice-and-kev/ with many regular followers.

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more complex ones such as partners and career. As Doornsbar explains in his GDC lecture

(Doornsbar, 2001), actions for Sims are controlled via a behavior engine which simulates their

needs by changing statistical values. For example, an extrovert Sim would feel unhappy if she

hasn‟t talked to someone in a time period.

We use a similar approach for simulating the world in Carioca game. The game has

characters that are simulated through their needs and wants. For example, each character of

type gangster will intimidate his most hated enemy by beating him up or killing him

(Appendix, p.7). This helps us in generating violence in the world. This can have effects on

many levels, especially if the player is reckless in their relations with the gangsters. It can

become a fatal mistake for the protagonist.

As it might be expected, the more cogs there are in a simulation, the more care needs to be

put into fine-tuning them so the simulation as a whole is perceived optimally by the player.

This becomes a momentous task while analyzing the behavior and outcomes of the simulation.

In case of the Carioca game, final design of the system (p.41) required simulation of three

different bot behaviors:

• Civilians,

• Druggies, and

• Gangsters

Each character type has its own logic of prioritizing tasks. This priority order is roughly

based on Maslow‟s hierarchical need structure (Maslow, 1943). Even though the structure is

very old and contested, we choose the pyramid model so as to simplify the bot‟s behavior

testing as well as to make it easy for the player to understand the simulation (Appendix, p.36).

Due to the large number of variables influencing the believability of the bot actions, a method

to approximate values for these variables had to be found.

The solution however was quite simple - use spreadsheets to simulate bot parameters which

are influenced by variables such as state/space of actor and time of day. This process achieved

a roughly believable bot simulation model that is used in the final version of the test game as

depicted in Figure 1. The variable values derived from this process are posted in the appendix.

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Figure 1: Graph showing the intended behavior of a Civilian type character in Carioca game

2.2.1.2 Interesting Actors

The player can do different kinds of actions towards the actors to move narrative state of

the game world. For example, in the Carioca game actors carry out common actions

comprising of the world simulation such as working, taking drugs, selling drugs, eating, going

to nightclub etc. The characters increase their hunger value when they do most of these

actions. In turn, this hunger value is connected to their health. When the characters get too

hungry, they will try to eat food in one of the food areas in the game level .

This kind of autonomous AI behavior helps in keeping the simulation ticking over even if

the player is not playing an active role. But just watching the bots do actions to each other is

not enough. To immerse the player, some events need to be simulated that create personal

tension for the player. An example of such a behavior in the game relates to the AI‟s

“MoneyMaking” state. Each character type in the game has specific kind of actions in order to

make money. When the need arises, certain characters can try to steal money for other

characters. In such a scenario, if the player also has equal probability of being mugged as the

bots, then that improves the player‟s involvement. In that case the player has to pay even

more attention to the actors around him.

-10

0

10

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50

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1 2 3 4 5

Par

ame

ter

Val

ue

Time (Days)

Ideal Civilian Behaviour (5 Day)

Money

Hunger

Fatigue

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The emergent narrative approach has also been explored in Virtual Environment media

(Aylett, 1999). She explains the strategy of generating narrative from actions of the „Virtual

Teletubbies‟. A useful lesson from Aylett‟s experimentations has been the concept of “social

presence”. Aylett uses the environment actors to respond according to the player‟s actions.

This concept however needs to be balanced very carefully. Any kind of extreme judgment on

the actor‟s part might be misunderstood by the player as an unfavorable game state. This

hampers freedom of player actions. On the other hand, limited social presence can make the

player feel her actions don‟t really mean anything and she cannot affect the world.

This means the AI actors involved in an emergent narrative have more than one role in

game:

Agents of Simulation (p.26),

Providers of Social Presence

Bots help place the influence of player action in terms of social presence (ibid.). In the

Carioca game, each character simulates a relationship value with every other character in the

level, including the player. This relationship value denotes a friendly relationship when the

number is positive whereas a negative number denotes enmity. Making dialogue choices

between player and characters dependent on relationship status informs the player about the

nature of interaction they will have with the actor.

2.2.1.3 Environment

Environments can be used both as an actor in the narrative as well as tools for giving

narrative cues to the player. Jenkins mentions this strategy as a Narrative Architecture

(Jenkins, 2004) which can be used for special storytelling. Similar to characters, the

environment can also communicate player‟s social presence by giving hints about the effect of

her actions on the world - what is good, what is bad, and what is in between.

In the Carioca game, when actors need to take passive actions like eating, working etc. they

need to go to a certain space type which is designed for different action options. By providing

an overlap of different choices and different consequences, we leave the style of play to the

player. For instance, the action of making money can be executed by working at a legitimate

work space, scavenging for scrap at a garbage location or by dealing in drugs at a drug selling

street corner.

The importance of environment also becomes apparent if we look at Sims (Maxis, 2000).

The simulation in Sims is not only limited to the characters, but also the environment. The

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environment also gives perspective to the player. The god-like point of view allows players to

see all variables in the environment effecting the simulation as well as the larger potential

action space. All events related to the Sim happen in clear view of the player. This advantage

is lost when translating the model to a first-person view game. If a narratively important event

happens in the level, but it‟s not communicated to the player, then she can‟t use it to create a

narrative (p.8).

2.2.1.4 Objectives

In most videogames, moments of narration are used to setup a gameplay objective for the

player to aim for. These missions set the small scale target for the play, so that the game can

unveil the plot a little more, introducing a new objective. While the structure can ge t rather

monotonous and as we‟ve already discussed, forcefully feed the events to the player, what it

definitely provides is a sense of purpose for the player. The player always knows the plan

(even if he‟s not the planner).

Take Mount & Blade: Warband (TaleWorlds, 2010) for example. The game is a medieval,

emergent, role-playing game which is very much an example of emergence as a result of

“discovery”. The game provides several goals that players can decide to set themselves up for.

These goals are variable and provide different kind of gameplay choices. Through the game‟s

dialogue system, the player can obtain varied roles such as bodyguard, raider, general etc. She

doesn‟t have to do any of them, but she can shape the traits of her avatar via these decis ions.

Such options from the beginning of play session are helpful, otherwise the players may not

be motivated enough to explore the potential of narration and only exploit the gameplay for

immediate returns (clear the current level in Portal, without thinking to look for a way out of

being a lab rat). For instance, if Mount & Blade: Warband (ibid.) did not hint at the possibility

of eventually becoming the king, then players would aimlessly raid around the kingdom

(gameplay) and not progress the narrative.

These objectives also need to be designed with careful consideration so as not to have

biased meaning of moral choices or financial gain while providing means for the player to

achieve her own long term plan. In the game we‟re designing as a case study, the players have

very small objectives like eating food to not lose health, making money to buy food, etc.

However, after interacting with the game for a little time, she can find out about the Church

she can go to in the level and the option of buying the guy from friendly civilians. Now she is

equipped with a long term objective where she can combine the need for money to donating it

to the church or buying a gun, depending on what she fancies.

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2.2.1.5 Story Delta

As current games go, while they‟re structurally limited in being a narrative medium, they

do enjoy great success in some cases. We‟d like to learn more from a couple of examples. Let

us consider the very popular game Portal (Valve Corporation, 2007). The game hit market in

2007 and told the story of a human being stuck in the shoes of a lab rat that is being put

through a series of tests by a robot. The audience felt a connection to the protagonist and the

story came through very well. On analysis, much of this success has a lot to do with the

game‟s concept. Confined test chambers allow the player to accept loss of interactivity

experienced through the narrative. Moreover, the story did not have any cutscenes (albeit the

game ending). Players would hear the robot talking and conveying bits of info, never r eally a

detailed narrative. The player could use this partial information to makeup a story by filling

the missing parts – “Why is she here? What‟s her name? Did I voluntarily choose to be

tested?”

As the game‟s designer and writer talk about in their GDC lecture (Swift & Wolpaw, 2008),

the game‟s design was especially tailored to improve the narrative immersion by using

something called Delta Theory. The hypothesis is that player immersion in the narrative is

dependent on distance between story of the gameplay and story of the game. Using the

example of Portal, the story of the game is (as described above) - protagonist is stuck as a lab

rat, and being run around by a seemingly psychotic robot. The robot kept dangling the

proverbial “cake” to lure you into clearing the puzzles. The gameplay story is reflected as the

capacity of the player to solve the puzzles through tools provided, in a seemingly destitute

position, and use the same tools in the last part of the game to escape from the robot that‟s

trying to kill you. The two mesh together very nicely. Through repeated and concentrated

testing, this disjoint can be avoided from growing to dangerous levels.6

We also see the same phenomenon in emergent narrative of Sims. Sims succeeds to

associate a narrative in the player‟s mind because the events happening (made up emergent

story) have a very short delta from the gameplay (satisfying the Sim) and the player‟s

affordance (sustaining a human). Since, the player‟s story and her gameplay actions are very

close in an emergent narrative the delta is minimized, showing that emergent games almost

always conform with Delta Theory (ibid.).

In the game example being tested, we apply this same human sustaining model employed in

Sims, but modified for living in Rio favela. Player has to interact with actors for secondary

6 Dangerous levels here represent the case where players lose immersion in the narrative.

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motivations (wealth, gun, menacing character, good relations), but the primary motivation is

to sustain herself (low hunger, low fatigue, low money). Applying the same simulation of

parameters as the bots should also give the player a better understanding of the AI psyche. We

are aiming to provide hints to the player about the harsh living conditions in the favela. But

rather than tell her that, we choose the game mechanics that convey this. So the player he rself

wipes the sweat off her forehead and says, “Jesus! It‟s hard to earn money.”

2.2.1.6 Time

As Aylett points out, narratives are different from a simple retelling of events (like in

emergent narrative) because of flow of time (Aylett, 1999). Narratives do not list every small

thing that happens during the latent periods of the story time. Moreover, the topic of

flashbacks as well as other avant-garde narrative models would be almost impossible to

convey through an emergent narrative approach. Dramatic narratives would do some kind of

optimization to skip these moments from the player‟s experience. This however is not a

necessity. In fact, if we consider the definition of story as provided in the beginning of this

paper (p.4), nowhere it is mentioned that the events must be prioritized in the discourse7 in a

particular way.

An example of a mundane activity that can be skipped over from the experience is

sleeping. In the case study, the player‟s “Menace” is inversely proportional to his “Fatigue”.

So if the “Fatigue” gets too high, the player cannot do any aggressive actions like rob

somebody. In such a case, the player can only sleep before doing any aggressive actions

successfully. Now this act of sleeping might seem like the perfect time where the game can

leave out the boring latent period and jump forward till after sleeping is finished. But, if we

take the interactivity of the player during this sleeping time, by our own argument, it will

break the agency with the game. Hence, in the game we do not skip any of the actions and the

game is played in continuous time.

7 Discourse is the way that the story is told.

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2.3 Søren’s Focus

What differentiates any ordinary simulation from an easily-reinterpreted one? It must have

something to do with the ease of interpreting the events in the simulation, or rather, the

evidence of events and their causes.

I propose that it could be done by combining a hypertextual adventure game format with

simulation rules governing the game state, which would make for a variable yet narrative

experience, where the ongoing change in context would reflexively respond to and influence

the player‟s actions.

2.3.1 Aarseth

Aarseth argues that “story-games” are not very interesting from a theoretical standpoint,

because they are effectively linear narratives interspersed with obstacles (Aarseth, 2001). He

contrasts this form with “replayable games” which are variable and remain interesting, even

in the face of an insurmountable obstacle (since next attempt will be different, and perhaps

more lucky). He also stresses that simulation is the cornerstone of the game experience, not

narrative. Could it be possible to create a simulation environment that lent itself easily to a

narrative interpretation after the fact? An experience-engine that would allow the player to

live through interesting times.

2.3.2 Barthes

Barthes is relevant to this problem, as his perspective on the death of the author clarifies

the need to encourage the player to interpret the symbols he encounters, rather than trying to

decode the authorial intention. According to Barthes‟ famous essay, The Death of the Author,

the “meaning” of a text is lost at the point of writing, and the reader creates his/her own

meaning upon reading it8,9

. This is not to say that the author does not try to imbue his text

with meaning (as, or just haphazardly arranges words, symbols or phrases in a jumble and

publishes it. Instead, it means that there is an unavoidable loss of voice in the transfer from

author‟s mind to textual symbols to reader‟s mind. In Barthes‟ perspective, symbols do not

8 Barthes (1967)

9 This is not a claim of objective truth, and it clearly contradicts the claims of the Shannon -Weaver model of

signal transfer mentioned elsewhere in this paper; it is merely a change of perspective which can highlight other

important aspects of the acts of reception or interpretation.

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contain meaning, but rather are very good at provoking the brain to create it. In most cases,

there is so much overlap in the author‟s understanding of the symbols he chooses to use, and

the reader‟s interpretation/creation of meaning from them, that it can be treated as a transfer

of meaning from one to the other. The barrier that actually exists is important to keep in mind,

though, since it allows for some play with meaning. Firstly, a reader‟s interpretation of an

ambiguous text will be subjective, and likely relate better to his/her personal experience,

getting more meaning out than was put in, so to speak. The author can emphasize this by

making his text or parts thereof open, that is, open to multiple, ambiguous readings. Secondly,

the new (perceived) contract between author and reader, of interpreting the work freely, rather

than trying to discover the author‟s voice, will make the reader take ownership of the text, and

thus of the resulting interpretation, again reinforcing the subjective experience.

We will relate Barthes‟ concept of the open text to emergence in games as best we can, and

arrive at a reasonable theoretical foundation for making claims about the prerequisites for

meaningful experience and narrative poiesis in the player‟s mind.

We will also discuss theories of Jesper Juul, Espen Aarseth and others, regarding the nature

of games and their relationship to fiction.

2.3.3 Mateas and Aristotle

Mateas (2000) proposes an integration of Aristotelian drama in interactive media, which

takes a similarly phenomenological approach to the nature of the player‟s role as interpreter.

He first clarifies the Aristotelian concept of “material cause” in connection to drama, to be

the (phenomenological) reception of the language and action on stage by the audience which,

in turn, creates the “inferred formal cause” by understanding the meaning of the actions

performed by the player, thus creating the narrative itself. To elaborate: the Aristotelian model

has a number of constitutive elements: Plot, character, „thought‟, language, „patterns‟ and

enactment or „spectacle. It is understood as a progression from plot (authorial intent, theme),

through character (not the players, but their essential character), thought (being the

interpretations of events determined by the characters‟ character), language (the outward

expression of thought), patterns being the actions and speech of the characters, and spectacle

being the scenery, props and expression of the play. The effect on the audience goes in the

opposite direction, from viewing the spectacle, to inferring each succeeding step from

dramatic necessity, ending with a realization of the plot or theme.

Adding interactivity to the mix, Mateas uses Janet Murray‟s concept of Agency (Murray,

1998), understood as the ability of the player to influence the virtual environment according

to his will, and differentiated from Immersion (the projection of presence into the virtual

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world), and Transformation (the effect of pretense on the player himself, experienced in a

variety of ways).

Agency being the most important factor in interaction, Mateas applies this element to the

Aristotelian model of drama, specifically by injecting the player as a character among others,

but one who can choose his own actions (equivalent to substituting his character with free

will, rather than dramatic determinacy). Taken by itself, an actor with free will would break

the ability of the audience to infer what determined an action (if it was inferable, it would not

be free) – but since the audience is also the player, the effect is now that another causal chain

is introduced, parallel to the inference of other actors, the player is aware of his own reasons

for acting a certain way. This is constrained, however, by authorial intent, action, from above,

and the material resources available to the player.

Mateas then states that agency springs from a coherence of dramatic probability and

material resources, i.e. an ability to infer the author‟s intention from exactly the choices you

have available to you. We disagree that this is the only source of a feeling of agency –

valorization of outcome is a term used by Jesper Juul to explain different ways that the player

can be motivated for certain choices, which will be explained in more detail later in this

chapter.

The introduction of player choice means that the causal chain of the drama becomes a

branching system, where the dramatic elements must be „resilient‟ or interpretable in many

situations, from many aspects, „alive‟ or conceivable from many sides. The spectacle must

take on more of the characteristics of a full-fledged world that can be visited again and again,

and explored from many angles, rather than the trompe l‟oeil of a traditional theater play,

which is only convincing from a fixed viewpoint and a linear storyline. To allow the player to

infer action from the events around him, the symbols he perceives must readily fit into many

different possible stories.

2.3.4 Abbott and Campbell

For a useful repository of strong symbols which have been used in many permutations and

sequences, I have turned to Campbell‟s comprehensive treatment of mythology and folk tales,

The Hero‟s Journey, and supplemented it with the theoretical principles in H. Porter Abbott‟s

Introduction to Narrative. Our approach to this has been to strike a balance between what is

appropriate for the chosen setting or context, and recognizable „tropes‟, inspired by H Porter

Abbot‟s claims of the universality of narrative, which is well expressed in the following

quote:

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“But even if we don‟t know the specific story depicted (…), we can still be tempted to look

for a story. We have many narrative templates in our minds and, knowing this, an artist can

activate one or another” (Abbott, 2002, p. 8)

He claims that humans have an instinctual, very powerful „propensity to narrativize‟ what

we see, to make up a story explaining the causal chain that came before, which resulted in the

present state of the observed object. This is not absolute, however, and can be refused by

„narrative jamming‟, where the juxtaposition of symbols prove impossible to infer a story

from. This can happen by purposeful arrangement into something comprehensible, or by an

accidental representation that simply makes no sense. In our design, we attempt to avoid this

jamming by always arranging symbols in the interactive world according to rules, which are

perceivable by the player, and should aid in constructing a story – something we attempted to

verify through testing.

The claims about narrative universality made by both Joseph Campbell in his book The

Hero‟s Journey, and by H. Porter Abbott in The Cambridge Introduction to Narrative,

respectively, were used as a guideline in our design of the game world and the tensions we

built into the system. We will argue for our choices, and elaborate on the subtler traces of

Campbell‟s symbols that are present in the final game.

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3 The Game – Design Choices

Here, we will outline the design choices we made, and afterwards analyze the user

experiences we recorded in the testing sessions. As stated, our goal was to create a “sandbox”

which would sprout narratives through player interaction. It was our belief that this would

occur via the player interpreting sequences of events in the simulation, and learning the

language of this particular video game, and use it to create a story, by formulating and

enacting a goal or plan.

3.1 Implementing Drama (Søren’s Focus)

We take the view, based on Mateas‟ model of interactive drama, that the player has a model

of the game system in his mind, which gets updated as he or she learns the underlying

mechanisms, and this incorporates their idea of the narrative that is going on. We can

influence the player‟s mental model through the use of symbols and the overall state of the

neighborhood (indicated by the interactions with NPCs), and he can update his model when

his actions in the game reveal a previously unknown causal relationship or dramatic necessity.

This is at odds with the approach some other games take, where they attempt to implement a

theory of drama into the code itself, so that, for instance, music is cued at moments that are

judged by the conditions set in the code to be „quantifiably exciting‟. We do not use this

approach, because we believe that the implementation of complex social rules into software is

very inexact, necessarily unquantifiable, reductionist, and a problem on the same order of

difficulty as passing the Turing Test.

A weakness in our application of Mateas‟ „Neo-Aristotelian‟ dramatic theory is that our

model does guarantee the presence of a dramatic curve, climax, closure, or overall pacing in

general. This problem can perhaps be helped with a careful weighting of the game, such that

accumulation of player agency will correspond to faster pace, more danger, climactic effects,

a decisive moment, and a winding down into stability and closure. But since we are dealing

with a relatively complex simulation, the emergent effects are hard to control, and our time

constraints did not allow for extensive trial and error calibration that would guarantee a

desired (and only hypothetically possible) story arc. A related issue is that there is no

guarantee that the most exciting dramatic progression would be causally plausible at all –

especially not for the genre of tragedy, where the central crisis is often due to a tiny, tragic

misunderstanding or coincidence.

A second problem that is immediately obvious with our model is that the authorial intent is

less dominant in the causal chain – we have not attempted to tell one story with the game, nor

explore any specific theme. We have applied stereotypes, clichés and pregnant symbolism,

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rather than faithfully representing a favela as it is in real life, we have implemented

tendencies and design which is biased for certain events to happen, as well as sign ifiers of

past actions which are value-laden (such as colored lighting on blood spattered bricks in the

case of violence). This is only to emphasize player actions, however, to prompt him or her to

be conscious that actions have consequences: To promote agency.

3.1.1 Reading the game

The restraint of thematic intent means that the absence of an “aha” moment of recreating

the coherent theme of the story is more unlikely to happen, since there is no „story director‟ to

control that the spectacle is arranged in a way that will lend itself easily to interpretation. It is

a gamble to think that usage of archetypes & clichés will result in coherent narratives, and it

will have to happen without the trust that whatever the player finds has been put there

consciously by an author: The player must take on the role of a Barthesian reader, interpreting

an open text, with no implied promise from the author that there is any buried treasure.

Instead of imposing an explicit authorial theme, we are trying to let the choices aris e from

the conditions of the simulation, and have the player respond in a pragmatic manner. We

realize this is mixing the rules of reality and fiction, since fiction is often not led by realistic

causality, but dramatic necessity – however, we find that it is impossible to prescribe a goal

for the player to achieve in the virtual world, since the subtleties of human experience is

simply too difficult to simulate in code – it is a much easier solution to provide an open text,

saturated with potent, contextually appropriate symbols, and expect the player‟s mind to do

the job of interpretation.

We chose to focus on creating a fairly complex set of simulation rules for our game,

because it was our belief that the player would be distracted and corralled into a specific

narrative, if we had followed the popular method of telling a story through cutscenes and a

macro-game consisting of quests that had to be completed. We had to strike a balance

between, on one hand, easily delineable concepts, which would have to be discernible by the

player and combinable into a meaningful sequence, and on the other hand refrain from leading

the player along the rails of a story we had planned out for them.

The obvious way to do this was to have many choices, which would alter the game state in

many different (and discernible) ways. The classic way games with multiple choices have

been made is the adventure game in the SCUMM style, such as The Curse of Monkey Island

(LucasArts, 1997), with an inventory of objects and phrases that can be chosen by the player,

to solve puzzles in the form of dialogue or obstacles. These are usually deterministic,

however, and while they sometimes provide the player with different paths to follow, these

paths are not co-created with the player, but merely narrated by the game to the player, once a

“correct” action has been performed. This does indeed satisfy the demand of letting the player

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actions decide the story, but it is not open to interpretation or variation, being deterministic.

Because of the exponential demand for content, which a multithreaded hypertext demands, it

would also be impossible to create more than a handful of variant plotlines on a normal game

budget.

Alternatively, a more freely variable play experience can be created with a set of

simulation rules, such that the player is acting within a framework which will respond

dynamically to input according to mechanisms. If these are known to the player, he or she can

formulate a sequence of actions which will lead to a desirable result.

3.1.2 Desirable action

This introduces the third element: What is desirable? According to Juul (Half -Real, 2005),

there are several methods to create what he calls valorization of outcome:

pitting teams of players with opposing interests against each other (e.g. Counter-

Strike),

the framing narrative,

the instructions,

scoring higher points for certain outcomes

implicit threat (e.g. attacking enemies)

Since we did not choose to make a multiplayer game, the first method is not pertinent. The

rest are included in the game in the following way:

The framing narrative is arguably present in the name and setting of the game, “Carioca”,

taking place in a favela neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. Certain scenarios already lend

themselves well to this setting, while other scenarios are likely excluded, as they would be too

discordant with people‟s expectations and capacity for sense-making (and therefore not have a

valorizing effect). As the title and setting are among the first impressions of the game to a

new player, it is likely that their private narratives would be heavily influenced by and

integrated with the setting and its archetypes.

The instructions given to the player before starting the game were read and/or told to them

by Søren during the test sessions, and followed a consistent form10

. They mostly explained the

rules of the simulation and the meaning of the symbols, rather than specifying a concrete

10 We asked each subject if they would prefer to read or hear the instructions . They are included in the

appendix as „User manual‟

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quest or mission, since this was against our wish for free player interaction with their

surroundings.

Even so, the rules themselves were tweaked to ensure certain conflicts, which we will

describe in further detail below. The balance between allowing the player to roam free and

constraining him or her by requiring certain actions to be taken was circumvented by not

rewarding or punishing action in any other way than the causal consequences it had according

to the simulation. As such, there was no super-game of completing author-assigned quests

within the game world, but there were conflicts built in, which lent themselves to certain

courses of action, interpretable as storylines.

The scoring of points was included in the game in the form of the values or „stats‟

governing the simulation. These were visible to the player in the HUD, and enabled or

prevented certain actions and dialog choices. Their complex interaction will be elaborated

below this chapter.

The „Implicit threat‟ method is arguably achieved through implementation of rules to

ensure the gangsters will act aggressively on other characters, although their a ttacking the

player was not implemented due to time constraints. Since they rely on the interaction of the

game rules, we must necessarily return to this argument after we have given a thorough

description of the simulation rules, (and after the chapter on the development below). Then we

will briefly restate the concept, and argue how the rules influence the perception of threat.

3.1.3 Rules of the game

We will now describe the rules which govern the game world. These can be roughly

divided in three groups: the rules for character behavior, rules for environmental change, and

rules for dialog.

The rules for character behavior are dependent on the class of character, as shown in the

matrix below:

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Actions ’Gangsters’ ’Druggies’ ’Civilians’

Eat YES YES YES

Sleep YES YES YES

Drink YES YES YES

Make Money SELL DRUGS

MUG

SCAVENGING

MUG

WORK IN

LEGAL PLACES

Intimidate BEAT/

KILL

NO NO

Buy Drugs NO FROM

GANGSTERS AND

PLAYER

FROM PLAYER

These actions are performed by entering corresponding spaces in the area. There are six space

types related to actions:

food

homes

bars

legal workplaces

garbage heaps

„drug corners‟

The food-spaces can be used by all types of NPCs and the player. They affect the stats by

lowering hunger and money. Each character is connected to a specific house where he/she can

go and sleep to lower his/her fatigue. The player can do this in every house (not realistic, but

a workaround due to time constraints). They can drink at the bars which are accessible for all

the characters, but which cost money and tires them. The legal workplaces are the main source

of income for the civilians, and only usable by them and the player. It causes fatigue and

hunger to rise at a higher than normal level, as well as paying a modest amount of money. The

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garbage heaps work the same way, but for druggies, who can scavenge here to make money

for drugs. The drug corners were meant to function like “workplaces” for the gangsters, so

they would go here to make money, but in implementation we ended up just having the

druggies approach the gangsters when they want to buy drugs anywhere in the world.

Apart from these areas, there is also a church, with which only the player can interact, and

which will be examined separately.

Next, regarding the rules for character behavior, there are the relationship values. Each

NPC has an array of values denoting its opinion of other NPCs or the player. These are one -

way, such that a character can be indifferent to another, while being hated in return (allowing

us to portray a gangster who, after mugging a civilian, feels nothing special, but has made his

victim hate him furiously). The player has no outgoing relationship data, since our principle

of not prescribing value to the player experience would not allow that.

Some of the behavior-controlling values also have an effect on each other. There are unique

behaviors for each NPC class, controlled by their internal values, which decay over time, and

must be replenished. These are drug addiction (for druggies), which decreases health and

increases fatigue, if the NPC doesn‟t buy drugs before the time runs out. The same mechanism

works for hunger on all characters, such that they lose health if they do not eat twice daily

(only an estimate, due to delays arising from navigating the map after “deciding” to perform

an action. We will go into more detail with the balancing of the values in order to promote

certain behaviors later in the paper). The two final values, Fatigue and Menace, are also

related, such that the player and NPCs‟ menace value is inversely proportional to their fatigue

value, offset by a base menace constant. Fatigue also increases with time, and can be reduced

by staying in “home” spaces and resting. The purpose of Menace is to control who can

intimidate whom, during a physical confrontation, and the intention of this relation is to

prevent an exhausted character from successfully intimidating another. Our reasoning behind

this is that the amount of free time a character has to rest is an indicator of how smoothly their

daily habits work, and if their ability to take care of their needs is disrupted, they will not be

able to intimidate anyone, and will instead become targets for those who can. Making the

strength dependent on stability means that the player, being less bound to deterministic stat-

maintenance, should be able to use his disruptive capabilities to strengthen and weaken those

NPCs he sees fit.

The last group of rules governing the simulated game world is dialogue rules. The player‟s

main form of interaction with the NPCs is through the dialogue system – a standard dialogue

tree navigated by selecting between 2-4 options and seeing the NPC‟s response. NPCs‟

relation to the player is the deciding factor in the dialogue choices that are available to the

player when interacting with them. A low relationship value will mean that the NPC will stop

conversation with a hostile phrase, while a mediocre score will mean that most options are

available, reserving the last options for a high relationship score, signifying that the NPC

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trusts the player to, for instance, consider selling him or her a gun, or buy drugs from the

player. Certain interaction choices also have an effect on relationship score, for instance

promising help, which will increase the relationship, or choosing to intimidate the NPC,

which will immediately lower the relationship score with the player, regardless if the attempt

to rob them is successful or not. After successfully mugging the NPC, the player also has the

option to “beat up [the NPC] anyway”, to emphasize our intention for the player to consider

his choices as much as possible, and not feel that the game is pointing him at a specific goal.

We set the starting conditions of the simulation in such a way that the player would be sure

to be threatened by the gangsters. A few of the gangster NPCs were given very negative

relationships with the player, as well as a propensity for assaulting random people in the city,

making sure to target the ones they liked least. Within a relatively short time, the player

would therefore be sure to be attacked by a gangster, and feel the need to protect himself.

The relationship changes caused by actions were also made to spread along the strongest

outward connections, such that a Civilian who was beat up by a gangster would not only have

his own relationship to that gangster reduced by a large amount, but also the scores of his

closest friends toward the same gangster (signifying that he told them about the event, so a

person‟s action will result in a sort of reputation building). This would have the effect of a

spreading hatred in the favela of a player who behaved with wanton aggression (although not

one who confined his violence to an isolated group), indirectly punishing reckless, negative

behavior.

3.1.4 Simulating People

While we claim that implementing social rules in code is reductionist, of course we have

made some reductionist design decisions ourselves. Not only lack of time and resources

prevents us from making a perfect simulation, but incomplete knowledge of human

psychology as well.

We have therefore relied on ambiguity.

As Jesper Juul (Juul 2005, p. 170) and Scott McCloud (McCloud 1999) point out,

simplification or stylization of a work can increase its perceived expressiveness. It is

important to stress that a simulation used in a game context is generally not seeking to

perfectly simulate its object, but only simulate it to the extent that it gives the player pleasure

or entertainment (or, presumably, any other intended, but limited, effect). Boring, everyday

actions are therefore generally omitted, except where they signify something, or aid the feel

of the game, such as the myriad little actions one must perform in the game Heavy Rain, to

reinforce the connection between player and avatar.

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McCloud says, “The cartoon [medium] places itself in the world of concepts” (McCloud,

1993, 45). We have used a similar demarcation, between what can be abstracted and explicitly

portrayed, and what is inexpressible, either because of complexity or unknowability, and

should be left up to the player‟s interpretation: Those things for which we have well -known

concepts can be implemented as part of the (quantitative, rigid) structure of the simulation –

mostly externally observable phenomena such as trade, eating, sleeping etc.

The phenomena for which we do not have a clear understanding are harder to express in a

simulation (Juul, 2005, 189), but fortunately many of these relate to human, social matters,

and our mind is well equipped to interpret and infer things about them. We have blackboxed

(Harman, 2009, 33-34) the player‟s mind, and relied on visual, environmental cues, as well as

value-laden dialogue, to give the player cues as to the social consequences of his actions, and

are expecting his or her consciousness to do the dirty work, similarly to how the game The

Sims handles language in the game: just a series of meaningless but English-sounding sounds,

which the player can imagine as significant speech. This means that subtle social phenomena

will not be expressed in the simulation, though, except where a visual cue prompts the player

to act in a way that is not strictly optimal, given the state of the simulation, but satisfies some

„irrational‟ impulse – such as donating money to the church, because the player feels guilty

about mugging too many drug addicts. Apart from these lucky instances, the world without

integration of subtle, imperfectly modelable mechanisms becomes a very pragmatic place,

where the only reason people love or hate you is the amount of physical harm or help you can

provide them, and not your charming or abrasive character. But the same argument can be

made about a painting – it is just paint on canvas; the brain (of author and reader) does most

of the work.

Our handling of the softer side of social interaction relies more on the absence of

distraction than the modeling of mechanisms, which is in accordance with McClouds principle

of functional stylization, rather than explicitly showing every detail.

3.1.5 Brief note on the development process

Before we elaborate on the rules of the game, we will go through some design choices that

resulted in features getting cut from the game.

3.1.5.1 Story director idea

We originally intended, just like many other game developers, to have a selection of goals

or end states in our game, and branching paths that could be followed. This was supposed to

interface with the simulation through a „story director‟ program, which would monitor the

game state and look for key situations or constellations of actors that matched a predefined

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story „bit‟, which would be presented to the player as either an opportunity (quest) or a

prompt, telling him some background description of a new situation in the favela (e.g.

„because of your deeds, the drug supply has run dry, so the gangsters will start mugging

people more, as it is their only source of income‟), and an accompanying change in the game

state.

Furthermore, since the story director already required a parser for events‟ importance, we

wanted to have it generate a summary of the play-through, as a sort of list of newspaper

headlines. Seeing the insurmountable task before us, we decided that we would not try to

implement a parser for „importance‟ into code, for the reasons discussed earlier in this paper

(time, psychological subtleties, the apparent impossibility of quantifying human interaction).

We would instead model the changing relationships of the favela-dwellers according to

pragmatic (but simplistic) values, to have an approximation of a “living” town. This poses a

question: Since fictional worlds have no guarantee of working as a stable society if modeled

along their own stated (and always incomplete) parameters, will they maintain their

usefulness as open texts, relatable and inspiring to a reader, when modeled along rules taken

from real life? How different does the world of the fiction work from the real world? How is

the plausibility of events skewed? These questions may be naïve, but they are pertinent when

you are trying to make a rule-bound game world that responds dramatically.11

3.1.5.2 NPC body clock

In order to govern the behavior of the NPCs in the simulation, we considered giving them a

„body clock‟, which would control their daily rhythms. To avoid monotonous, zombielike

NPCs, we would offset the rhythms by having different needs set to different frequencies,

which were not multiples of each other, so they would not align in a repeating pattern. It

quickly became obvious that if all the NPCs were self-contained and did not relate to each

other, they would only change their behavior through encounters with the player, and this

would hardly look like a living neighborhood, just a group of solipsist automatons.

11Perhaps these answers can be answered by a comparative analysis of existing fiction and analogous

historical events, or even a simulation of a well-defined fictional world (the politics of A Song of Ice and

Fire?), to see how events differed from „canon‟, and what variables were crucial to ensure a canonical path of

events. But that is a topic for another paper.

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3.1.5.3 Relationship nodes

From this conclusion, we went perhaps too far in the opposite direction, and wanted to map

out a complete relationship network of the society, with manually assigned starting values for

each relationship connection (1 outgoing node per relationship, most of them reciprocal),

which would in sum be a nicely crafted system of nuclear families, fragile junkie

acquaintances, kids intimidated by gangsters, and feudal loyalty from the gangsters to the

kingpin. This was not only a time-consuming task to do manually, it also became clear that the

starting conditions would not ensure a functioning simulation unless the rules worked – the

interactions of poorly designed actors would quickly nullify the stable relationships that had

been assigned by hand. Because of this, we decided to auto-generate all the relationships with

a script, creating appropriate proportions of civilians, druggies and gangsters, and

relationships between them.

3.1.6 Campbellian symbols in the game

When we created an environment which would hopefully be conducive to creating

narratives, our choices were informed by Joseph Campbell‟s symbology, specifically the

symbols used in his description of the World Navel (Campbell, 1949), This is the setting of

stories where an order is upset, the world‟s harmony is disturbed by an enemy, and the hero

must rise to defeat the enemy and restore order and plenty to the land. They do not represent a

story the player must follow, but a collection of symbols which he can „latch onto‟, following

familiar patterns. They are also very useful because they contain universal conflicts and

lessons, which are applicable to most game world settings.

3.1.6.1 The dragon

The dragon is the guardian of the fountainhead in Campbell‟s mythology, and was

supposed to be personified in our game by the criminal kingpin, senhor Tarasca,12

who lives in

the mansion atop the hill (the mansion is the only trace of him in the final game,

unfortunately), beyond the highest parts of the favela, which are either desolate or overrun by

gangsters and druggies.

12 Named after the Tarasque, a monster from the story of Saint Martha, after whom the Dona Marta favela is

named. The monster/dragon is tamed/charmed by Saint Martha, led into the city among the people, where it is

killed by them without putting up a fight. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarasque

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3.1.6.2 The tree

The world tree is the center of the world, but also the axis of the worldly hierarchy, with

the gods at the top and demons at the bottom. In the game we merely placed a tree at the

threshold between the “nice” lower area, dominated by civilians, and the bad upper area. The

height of the areas is reversed (high is normally associated with good and right, and low with

evil and wrong), because of the setting we chose: the favelas of Rio de Janeiro are situated on

hillsides, because all the real estate on the level ground is already taken up by the richer

classes. This reversal could work well in a game, though, since a progression up the hill could

be accompanied by a narrative progression towards the final battle with the dragon, situated in

his mansion, guarding the wellspring of life and order.

3.1.6.3 Magical help

The gun is the hero‟s magical help – that artifact or clue which is given to the hero by a

magical, benevolent stranger, sometimes after assisting them in some minor task, or correctly

answering a riddle. In the game, the gun must be bought from a very friendly civilian, so the

player must first prove themselves worthy (in ability to get money without making everyone

hostile to him). After the player has acquired it, he gets a huge bonus to Menace, and has a

much easier time intimidating people, and resilient enough to face the task of stabilizing the

city (or any number of other tasks the player might want).

3.1.6.4 The ‘underworld’

The underworld symbolizes death and potential rebirth and new knowledge. It is where

shamans go to discover secrets and be reborn with the ability to fix the problems that are

ailing the world. In the game, it is represented by the top left corner of the city, which is

darker, grittier and more violent than the rest. If we had had time, we would have liked to give

the player the ability to become addicted to drugs, and go through a withdrawal phase while in

this area, which would symbolize the death and rebirth (as this motif has been used in several

movies –Trainspotting comes to mind), and perhaps a new ability for the player to walk

unnoticed in a previously well-guarded area, because he had been stigmatized as a harmless

junkie.

3.1.6.5 The wasteland

The wasteland symbolizes the wasting away of the life and joy of the world if the hero‟s

call goes unheeded (Campbell, 1949, 54). Everyday life becomes anti -adventure – boredom

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and slow disintegration. This is the starting condition of the favela in the game: A world

without a hero. We also encircled the mansion with empty and sparse buildings to symbolize

the slow death seeping out from the dragon‟s lair

3.1.6.6 The ‘village’

The village is the home of the hero, which he is called away from, and where he returns

once he has done his deed. It is the people of the village he has to protect, who are suffering

under the burden of the world crisis, manifested by the dragon and the demons. In the game

this is the nice area of town, the lower and middle parts, which stop at the threshold of the

center tree, which is also the starting position at the beginning of the game.

3.1.7 Visual Grammar

As a workaround because we did not have time to make animations, we made placeholder

pictures, to be displayed when an action occurs.

We made the game in UDK, a AAA-level development tool, but our skill level and time are

much humbler, so we settled for a somewhat abstracted style, keeping Scott McCloud‟s

analysis of the Belgian Ligne Claire style (McCloud, 1994) in mind – abstractness of

characters can be a positive, as it lessens the feeling of uniqueness experienced by the

reader/player, and the object comes to represent the general type, rather than the specific

individual

3.2 On Visual Feedback (Orestis’ Focus)

This section will emphasize on the design decision considering the visual feedback to the

players, since this is the goal of the project. But overall design will not be neglected and will

be mentioned as well.

Taking into consideration the fact that the group consisted only of three persons who

worked in this project for less than six months, it can be easily supposable that full

implementation with all the features implemented was not feasible and could not be expected.

Besides, that is not the uppermost goal of this work. Our intension was to explore how

techniques applied in films could be also used in video games. As a consequence, certain

features were not implemented and evaluated, although, they are mentioned in this report due

to their relevance with the initial goal.

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3.2.1 Overall Setting

3.2.1.1 Inspiration

The inspiration for building the game world derives from favelas in Brazil. Thorough

research about favelas in Brazil has been contacted on the web. How favelas are constructed

and how they look like were the main research objects. The main inspiration was the real -life

favela of Dona Marta in Rio de Janeiro, which is located in a steep slope, between trees, with

the statue of Christo Redentor on the left and the rest of the ci ty on the downhill. In the last

few years, walls have been built in some of the Rio de Janeiro slums in order to separate the

favelas from the rest of the city; act which received negative criticism from many people. In

Dona Marta a wall has been constructed on the left side. It is also common feature in favelas

located on hills, the houses on the top to be nicer and as a consequence, they are inhabited by

local gang lords. Another element that was examined was the materials that the buildings are

constructed from. Many buildings were in a poor state constructed by bricks. There were other

types of buildings constructed from concrete and painted bright and colorful.

These results of the research became the inspiration to construct the game world. Many

design decisions have been decided according to how the real-life favelas look like, as long as

they serve the purposes of the game-prototype.

3.2.2 Game world

3.2.2.1 The background

The favela in the game world is located in a steep slope like the real-life favela of Dana

Marta. On the downhill and on the east side is lying down the rest of the city. The edge of the

game world on the south is buildings of the favela and on the east side is a wall that it has

been built as a barrier to separate the favela from the “outside” world, like in real life. On the

west side of the game world the navigation is blocked from the favela buildings again and on

the background, mountains are visible. Mountains block the north part of the map, in the top

of the hill. Part of the background on the left is located the statue of Christ Redentor which

acts as a landmark to the game world. On the right side the edge of the favela is a wire fence

and behind it on the top of the hill stands alone a nice looking building different from all the

others.

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3.2.2.2 Setting Inside the favela

In this section it will be presented the setting inside the favela and only mentions about

specific spaces while their role will be explained later in the paper.

3.2.2.3 South part

Inside the favela where the players can navigate themselves the south part which is closest

to the city is the nice, legal part of the favela. The textures of the buildings are concentrated

and painted in bright color or white, the legal working places are located in that area and the

houses are inhabited mostly by civilians. There are few drug “corners” and garbage dumps

where the NPCs can earn money by looking into the trashes, and the paths are properly

illuminated during the night. On the left is located one of the three districts (the legal district)

that are used into the game to provide visual feedback to the players. It will be explained later

how these districts function. In the middle of the map there is a square, which is the second

district, and separates the south good part of the favela from the notorious north part. The

square as the main node of the favela is illustrated similarly to the south-legal part, with

colorful concrete textures on the walls. Close to the square is located the church, which was

constructed and placed in order to act as a landmark. The ground is illustrated by a soil

texture which is the background for the whole game world. In this part of the favela three

more textures have been used, a tile texture that exist in the Unreal Development Kit (UDK)

and is used mostly in the legal district and the square, an asphalt texture which has been used

in the wide paths and a grass texture which has been used to decorate the area.

3.2.2.4 North part

The north and notorious part is mostly illustrated with brick textures, according to the

results of the conducted research. On the ground the soil texture is used again and in some

sporadic places, the asphalt and the grass textures. In most of the paths a broken tiled texture

is used to signify the difference of the area compared to the legal one. On the left the third

district is located, which is the illegal district and on the right are located abandoned houses, a

warehouse and on the top a mansion like in real life favelas.

3.2.2.5 Unique Buildings

The mansion, the warehouse and the church were supposed to serve dual purposes. They

were supposed to act as landmarks for the players, mostly the church and the mansion. The

second role of the mansion and the warehouse which was not implemented was intended to

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become part of the narration. It was supposed to be used inside the dialogues as the mansion

who runs the favela so the players if they would get enough menace they could go and kill

him after he killed some of his best gangster, and become the new kingpin or clean the streets

from the drugs. The warehouse was supposed to be the place where the drugs were provided

to the gangsters, so the players go there steal drugs after they have killed the guards. This

action would make them enemies with the kingpin. These two features were not implemented

in the game, only the church was. The role of the church will be explained shortly in the

paper.

3.2.3 Technical limitations

It should be mentioned that there was a technical limitation considering the ground

textures. UDK could not handle many textures in the same terrain and since it was used only

one terrain for the game world the additional number of ground textures should be cut down,

although the initial thoughts were to use much more ground textures. For example in the

whole game world were used only two tile texture even though at least three different tile

textures was intended to be used only for the legal district.

3.2.4 Actions

The players and the NPCs are able to perform certain set of actions. There are three types

of NPCs, the gangsters, the druggies and the civilians. Not all the types can perform all the

actions. Furthermore there are actions which can be performed between two characters or

between a character and a space. In the following table are illustrated possible combinations.

Actions Gangsters Druggies Civilians

Eat ✔ ✔ ✔

Sleep ✔ ✔ ✔

Drink ✔ ✔ ✔

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Actions Gangsters Druggies Civilians

Make Money SELL DRUGS

MUG

SCAVENGING

MUG

WORK IN

LEGAL SPACES

Intimidate BEAT

KILL

✖ ✖

Buy Drugs ✖ FROM

GANGSTERS AND

PLAYER

FROM PLAYER

All the characters eat, sleep and drink. Eating takes place in the food spaces (il lustrated in

the game by orange flags) and drinking on the bars (yellow flags). Each NPC is assigned to a

home (green flags) where he/she goes to sleep, but the player can use all the homes. The

civilians work on the legal spaces (blue flags) and the druggies scavenge in the garbage

dumps (light blue flags). All these actions are performed only in corresponding spaces, so

they are connected with them. Also each gangster had been assigned to a drug space (purple

flags) where he/she would go to sell drugs but that type of space was not implemented and

the gangster sell their drugs anywhere in the map. The rest of the actions are not connected to

the spaces and they can take place anywhere in the game world between two characters.

3.2.5 Visual Feedback

The feedback from the actions was planned to be provided to the players by two different

ways, scripted, which provided only in the districts and procedurally, which was planned to

provide all over the map. Due to technical limitations only the scripted feedback was

implemented but on the paper both will be presented.

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3.2.6 Scripted Feedback

3.2.6.1 Districts

The scripted feedback is provided only in the three districts (Appendix, p.51-58) that have

been mentioned already. These districts are the legal one in the south west part of the map

where the tables and the kitchen look nice, the doors are metal and the windows in good

condition. The wall textures are carefully painted concrete and there are tiles on the floor. As

it was mentioned before, this district was supposed to have a greater variety of ground

textures but due to the fact that UDK could not handle many textures in the same terrain, it

was used the same with the next district which is the square. All these visuals points out that

this is a nice looking area. It is located in the middle of the map and surrounded by colorful

houses which in some of the stucco have been torn off and bricks are visible. The kitchen on

the food place looks handmade and some tables are well designed in the previous district

while some others are used cable reels. The square as it is in the middle of the map it conveys

elements from both the south nice part and the north slum part. The illegal district in the north

west part of the map and it is the worst looking since it belongs to the bad part o f the favela.

In this district the tables are only old cable reels, the chairs are plastic and the kitchen

handmade. The wall textures are mostly bricks and the tile ground texture looks destroyed.

The doors and the windows are in poor state.

3.2.6.2 Theme Logic

According to what actions take place in each district, states are activated or deactivated and

the proper visual theme is applied. The theme will provide the visual feedback to the players

of what actions are taking place in the district. Then it is upon the players to decide their

actions. The different states were created based on the classification of actions according to

their type. Killing, mugging and beating are violent actions that the players should notified be

about them. Whenever one of these actions takes place, the violent score increases. If the

score passes the violence threshold, the violent state is activated. Similar logic is used for the

second state, the drug state. In this case, the drug score is calculated whenever an action of

drug dealing occurs or whenever money has been earned by scavenging in the garbage dumps.

There are two options for the two states to be deactivated. In the first case, the player

should increase the legal score which he gets on a daily basis and in the second case, donating

to the church, action which deactivates the state immediately. To be more precise, every day at

seven o‟clock in the evening, the time the night lights are switched on, the money a user have

gained legally, namely coming from the legal working spaces, such as food spaces and bars,

are added to the legal score. The legal score is removed from the violent and drug scores and

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if these two scores are below their thresholds then the states are deactivated. This deactivation

only takes place once per day. Alternatively, the players can donate money to the church and

they chose to decrease the violence score or the drug score and thus they succeed in

deactivating the state they want instantly.

3.2.7 Use of Film language

According to what states are activated, the proper themes are applied. To be

more accurate, when both states are deactivated then the Default theme is applied on the

district, which is the starting theme of the game. When one of the states is activated then the

corresponding theme is applied and finally when both are activated then the combo theme is

applied. The theme would provide the visual feedback to the players; these themes were

created using parts of the film language that was presented before, and trying to apply them

into a gameworld. These parts are the lighting, color and props from the setting.

3.2.7.1 Color

Color is a factor which can affect the viewer even subconsciously. It has already

been presented how different colors are used in movies to communicate feelings. In the same

idea colors will be used to interfere with the textures of the district. Walls, doors, windows

will change color according to what theme is applied. Color may be also combined with

lighting. The outcome of this combination will be explained below.

3.2.7.2 Lighting

In films the lighting can guide audience attention to certain objects and actions.

For that reason in the game it was used to illuminate the props and space of interest. Therefore

in each theme the corresponding props were highlighted by theme‟s lighting. But the

application of films‟ lighting techniques into games indicates the differences between the

mediums and as a consequence causes certain problems in its application to the later. The

difference is the set-scene nature of the films opposed to the explore nature of games. In films

the director choses the way he/she will use the camera, what is inside the shoot and what is

not. But in the case of games the players are able to navigate and explore the gameworld; As a

consequence, there is no control over the camera. Especially in the game-prototype, where the

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camera is first-person view, the player is the one who chooses the camera‟s movement. So in

this case it is left to the designer the choice of adjusting the lighting in specific spots that the

players would see because something important was illuminated, like a food space or a prop,

for example. The film lighting could be easily mimicked when the players are looking to a

wall and part of their view is blocked, but when their view is upon the open-space it is harder

to mimic the lighting that as it is used for the movies. To make it clearer an example is used.

It is easy to apply the three-point light combination in one specific shoot were the designer

controls the camera; he/she knows where to place the three lights (the key light, the fill light

and the backlight). But in the game-prototype where the camera is moving this order is

disturbed. These would not happen in situations where the players are looking at a specific

object or spaces where the players can look them from specific angles. This is why the

situations where their view is blocked from a wall behind the object or the space are those

which were used the most to apply the lighting.

In term of color, like in the example of "Ivan the terrible”, Part 2 by Bordwell

and Thompson, in the themes except the default, the projected lights will be colored.

3.2.7.3 Props

The props in the game-prototype have two functions. The first one is to assist on

setting up the atmosphere the designers wanted to communicate with the players. For

example, blood stains and bullet shells cause a totally different atmosphere than bicycle toys

and teddy bears. Props‟ function do not stop on the atmosphere, they also contribute in the

narration. In films, props also have a function within the ongoing action; their goal is to lead

the players to start formulating a story with these props. Why and how they got there, who is

using them and similar questions would motivate them to fill on the narration gaps in their

mind. This is the third way of Jenkins when he stated “environmental story telling creates the

preconditions for an immersive narrative experience in at least four ways” (Jenkins, 2004),

which is that “they may embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene” (ibid). In

this case props as part of the mise-en-scene not only embed narrative information if a

neighborhood has bad reputation or not for example, but have a function within the ongoing

action since they appear only if special conditions are met.

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3.2.7.4 Themes

Four different themes where implemented, and they applied according to which

states are activated.

3.2.7.4.1 Violent Theme

The violent theme was designed to communicate to the player the violence of the

actions which have activated it. Where violence is a dominant element, aggression and fear

are also part of that environment. To communicate these feeling the red color was selected as

the color of this theme. An obvious color choice in terms of violence and aggression as it was

reviewed earlier at this paper as an aggressive, anxious and violent color.

Concerning the night lighting, the Low Key lighting type was chosen. Once

more, it seemed an obvious choice because of the use of this type of lighting in film noir and

mysterious scenes through the film history. In the game engine this was accomplished using

spotlights which were casting the object from high and create hard shadows on the walls

behind them.

For props were used blood stains, bullet shells on the ground and bullet holes on

the walls, as these visuals easily communicate the use of guns and violence. Coincidentally

most people are familiar with these, especially the bullet shells, from movies and not the real

life.

3.2.7.4.2 Drug Theme

The drug theme is activated by drug exchanges or by scavenging the garbage

dumps. Drugs are a problem of the society and normally close to drug, signs of decadence are

visible. Most of the times drug environments are dirty and scary, so the theme was created in

order to communicate the image of decay though a dirty and unhealthy environment plus a

feeling of scare. To communicate this, blue color was selected for the cold characteristics, the

melancholy that a drug society is creating and the passive nature of drug addicts who are

trapped in their situation. The textures becoming more blue when the theme is applied and the

lights are blue.

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The scary element of the theme was decided to be communicated to the players

through the lighting. For that reason the underlighting has been used which, as it was

mentioned above, tends to distort features and often create dramatic horror. In the game editor

point lights where place where are in the default theme but lower and more blue. Also blue

spotlights from underneath the lit objects especially close to walls so the objects shadow

would cast on the wall and create a scary feeling.

As props for that theme were used of course needles and heroin packs to signify

drug and for signifying a dirty and unhealthy environment it has been used opened cans as

garbage dumps, graffitis and damages on the wall of the buildings.

3.2.7.4.3 Combo Theme

The combo theme is different from the previous two themes. It is applied in the

situation when both violence and drug states are activated, so in a sense is a blend of them.

For that reason the combo theme does not have each own lighting and props but more of a

combination of the two previews themes. In fact the props of both themes appear and as far as

the lighting is concerned at some spots is used the low-key lighting with red color and at some

other the underlighting with blue color. The selection has been done according to which

lighting fits better a specific spot but also keep a balance between the two different types. As

it was mentioned, the color of the lights was connected with the type of the lighting it was

used. So, red and blue lights were illuminated the district. Considering the color of the

texture, it has been selected not to use red or/and blue neither a third one because of the fear

that such a choice would confuse the players. It was selected to make the texture much darker

that it was already, in an attempt to convey both violent and drug themes‟ feeling since a dark

color can be associated with them.

3.2.7.5 Default Theme

The default theme was designed to be more plain and empty that the others. The

reason for that was that in the initial design the default theme was the starting theme and it

would exist also a clean theme. The clean theme would be applied if both violent and drug

states were deactivated and the legal score has reached the legal threshold . In this case the

clean theme would be applied. It would communicate to the player that the favela is not a

notorious place anymore but more a nice descent neighborhood. Visually it would make the

favela look nicer, with shiny, clean and bright textures, more lights during the night,

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children‟s toys and flowers used as props and as theme color could be orange as the sweet

color of warmness. The lighting that would be used would be the high-key lighting as the one

used in Hollywood classical cinema. Due to the complexity of the system (Appendix, p.49)

the clean theme was dropped and the default theme remained as a plain starting theme without

the use of props or of a theme color. In case of lighting, the color was white and the type

could be paralleled with the high-key lighting.

3.2.8 Procedurally Generated Feedback

In contrast with the scripted feedback which is planted by the designers in

specific spots of the district, the procedurally generated feedback would provide everywhere

in the gameworld and is generated in response to the actions happening. The actions which

occurred among the characters and do not depend on the space - these actions are: killing,

mugging, beating and drug exchanging- would leave a trace behind them related to when and

where they happened. These traces would act as props on the themes. They would contribute

on tuning the atmosphere and would have a function within the ongoing action and help the

players to motivate them on filling the narration gaps in their mind and formulate a story. The

procedurally generated props would be visually different than the scripted props, for example

blood stains could not be used as props which appear in the blood theme and when a beating

takes place. Also the procedurally theme could be different for an action according to the

theme applied that moment. For example, if a killing happened in a district where the clean

theme is applied the prop the action leaves behind is either the chalk outline or the prop would

be the dead body. A chalk outline is also a prop which most of the players are familiar with

due to films, since most of the players have not experienced one in real life. Eventually the

procedurally generated props could not be implemented due to technical limitations. The only

one which was implemented is the one referring to the action of killing and the prop is the

dead body. This feature was already existed in UDK and as a consequence easy to be

implemented.

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4 Method

4.1 Instruction and Survey

When introducing our test subjects to the game, we naturally had to tell them how to

interact with the system, but had to also strike a balance between telling them how the world

worked, and leaving it open for their interpretation. The amount of background description of

the world we gave the test subjects is reflected in the User Manual in the appendix. It also

informed the testers that there was no stated in-game goal for them to complete, other than

just getting to know the world and impose their will on it. Finally, we explained how the stats,

actions and interaction through dialogue worked.

It should be noted that our testers were all game developers themselves, so some of the

feedback they gave were suggestions for design changes, rather than a recount of their

immersed experience, although that was what we asked them to focus on. After the

playthrough, we had each tester answer a prepared online survey, with the following

questions:

1. Please re-tell your playthrough, noting the most important events you either caused or

observed. Did you make an impact?

2. Please list the events you mentioned above (including events you only observed),

giving them 1-5 points according to "importance"

3. Did you notice the lighting in the different districts change over the course of your

playthrough? Please describe why you think that happened.

4. Why do you think the objects/props (needles, bullets, damage on walls, blood stains

etc.) and textures in the environment appeared or disappeared?

5. Did the props help you construct a story?

6. Did you realize that the events in the game and the environmental changes are

connected?

7. Did you formulate a 'story' from the actions, relationships, props and events in the

game?

8. Did you notice specific NPCs you had a good/bad relationship with? (we don't need

names, just y/n, and any relevant description)

9. Did one event lead to another in a way that made sense? Can you narrate your game

experience in the form of a story? (y/n/why/why not)

All replies are included in the appendix, testers are marked T1 through T11.

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The questions lent themselves to a qualitative description of experience, rather than a

statistical comparison, and we were not looking to optimize the amount of affirmative

testimonies that players had, in fact, constructed a narrative based on events in the play

session. We were examining whether it was possible at all, and if any particular game

elements were aiding or disrupting the process.

4.2 Test Sessions

Our objective with the tests was to examine if the environment creates the preconditions

for an immersive narrative gameplay and whether film techniques can be used to provide

visual feedback of the gameworld or not. The outcome of the first four sessions did not

provide any of these data due to a bug, explained below. They can only provide data in

general terms for the gameworld, if the players can create a map of the world into their mind

so they can easily navigate on it or every time they enter on the same space they think they

enter in a complete new space.

Following the phases of a complete software design process, an evaluation phase could not

be missed. The game-prototype was evaluated by playtests sessions. These sessions provided

useful feedback on how the players reacted to the game overall and to the introduced

innovations with more interest. The goal is that narration should emerge from the environment

so the players can formulate a story, and if the players can understand the visual feedback that

will be provided by the use of film techniques. The playtests were conducted in a form of

fifteen to twenty minutes of think aloud sessions, during which the players were encouraged

to explain what they are doing and whatever they feel and notice about the game. These

sessions were recorded to video (apart from the last one which was not because of a

malfunction of the equipment) in order to capture every reaction of the players. Then a

questionnaire was provided to the playtesters to answer related to their perception and

interpretation of the game. Eleven players tried the game in these sessions, in the first three

sessions (Tester9, Tester10, Tester11) the visual feedback system could not be activated due to

a bug which appeared last minute because of the complexity of the system. The initial bug

was fixed but the visual feedback did not work also during the fourth session (Tester8A)

because of problems on balancing the variables. The following seven sessions with new

playtesters (Tester1-7) took place with the visual feedback system on. Finally, one of the first

playtesters (TesterT8A) who tried the game without the visual feedback retried (TesterT8B)

with the system working properly.

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4.3 Recorded Data

Effectiveness of the Carioca game, in terms of narration, was tested through a combination

of qualitative and metrics test.

The specific questions of importance in analyzing the emergent narrat ive framework are

question numbers 2, 7, and 9 (p.60).

The final part of the test comprised of analyzing player action data after the play session.

Each tester‟s actions are recorded by the game in a SQLite database system that can be

analyzed after the session to see player‟s behavior towards system as well as the system‟s

outlook towards the player. All references to test sessions will use the shorthand

representation of testers as T# (such as T3 would mean tester number 3).

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5 Playtests and Evaluation

5.1 Response to Game Rules

Overall, there turned out to be some major limitations and obstacles to immersion and

narrative generation in our game. We did see some of the testers interpreting a narrative from

events as we hoped, but others expressed indifference, focus on playing the numbers at the

expense of immersion, or abandoning the gameplay to go exploring the environment at the

cost of interacting with the NPCs.

5.1.1 Information overload

Most of the testers replied that the first thing they did was spend some time getting familiar

with the way the rules worked, as well as exploring the environment. Some crucial mechanics

that we had forgotten to reveal in the introduction had to be introduced while they were

playing, such as how to buy a gun. The amount of information that had to be conveyed before

the players were comfortable with the world, and felt they could take purposeful action inside

it, and even chains of actions, leading to overall plans, was perhaps too much. This could be

improved, however, with more obvious feedback to the player when he/she or others are

engaging with the rule system. Not many testers noticed that NPCs conducted their own

actions, apart from running around or standing in stat-replenishing areas. We had in fact

implemented several other actions, such as gangsters mugging civilians, drug trading, and

intimidation of civilians, but our lack of art assets and animations was probably a detriment to

the players‟ understanding of the world. Due to difficulties with UDK, we had implemented

the visual grammar discussed previously in the paper, which turned out to be less than

intuitive to some testers. Animations and even voice acting would of course have been

preferable, but this is one (of many) parts of the concept we started out with that turned out to

be much better suited to a large budget and staff, rather than 3 students. The sessions followed

a pattern that can roughly be described like this:

Explore the rules and game world, employing both trial and error, understanding

introductory information, and typical actions known from other FPS games

Exploring the different actions the player has available, and what their results are.

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Assess the world, rules and available actions as a whole, and formulate an overall goal

within the game world, which implies a series of necessary actions ( i.e. „I want to

become a drug lord‟ or „I want to save the favela from crime and drugs‟)

Attempt to carry out plan.

This is somewhat at odds with many typical sandbox-games, where the player is usually

given missions or quests, but there are a few similar examples, such as The Sims, where there

is no stated end goal, and the player can take her Sims‟ lives in a positive or negative

direction as she sees fit, and be presented with agency-confirming feedback of her actions.

Another example is Mount and Blade, which is quite close in structure to our experiment, in

that it is a persistent simulation containing NPCs with motivations, relationships, and great or

small ability to perform actions that change the game world.

5.1.2 Poorly calibrated stats

The fact that our simulation system had values that were not fully adjusted to give the best

possible experiential impact was something the players noted in survey responses. They

wondered why their supposedly powerful actions, such as donating thousands of reais (the in-

game currency) to the church, did not result in any obvious change in the environment. In

some cases this is simply because of insufficient testing and calibration, which means that

there currently is a mismatch between an action‟s impact in the simulation, and the dramatic

necessity communicated by its presentation (presenting what is actually just a dialogue option

as e.g. “beating somebody up” creates the expectation of dramatic consequences, and

correspondingly a disappointment and loss of feeling of agency if the expectation is let down

by a perceived lack of change in the simulation).

5.1.3 Lack of feedback from animations

Many respondents complained that they did not see much evidence of the supposedly

complex system, and attributed it to poor interface design, as well as the short period of the

play sessions: An interface cannot be so intuitive as to be instantly understood. It must

necessarily use non-iconic symbols which has no actual resemblance to the things they

signify, but must be associated with the signified by informing the user directly of the

relationship, or by repetition until the connection between interface and game element is

perceived

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5.1.4 (+/-) dialogue

Writing the dialogue was an exercise in restraint, because text is cheap, so it would have

been easy to write long dialogue trees with florid descriptions of the world, and exposition

about the characters in the favela. Since our art was so sparse, though, with only 2 charac ter

models (male and female) representing villains and good guys, rich and poor, there were

already so many obstacles to suspension of disbelief, that introducing cognitive dissonance

between descriptive dialogue and simplistic world would not have been helpful at all. Even

so, where it was possible, we wrote dialogue that corresponded with the feel of the world and

people, while being purposely vague about anything (including the player) that could not

directly experienced by the player while playing the game.

5.1.5 Constructing a narrative

This did not occur as much as we would have liked, or at least was not expressed clearly

enough for us to note, in most cases. T1 did make clear interpretive comments about his

experience and plans, such as “it‟s like a rich guy [that] you get to kill in the end” upon seeing

the mansion atop the hill, and T10: “I‟m the friendliest robber in the world, kind of like Robin

Hood of the favela”. Some testers focused a lot on the environment, noticing the change of

decoration; others ignored that completely, and focused on managing stats (such as money –

mugging was very popular), while others again spent time on cultivating good or bad

relationships with the people of the favela, and going through the dialogue options.

5.2 Environment and Visual Feedback

Starting the game the players needed some time to understand the Heads-Up Display

(HUD). On the right they were able to see their stats (health, hunger, fatigue, menace, if they

are armed or not and what actions they executed) and on the left the stats of the NPC they

pointed at, plus if that NPC was a civilian, gangster or druggie and their relationship with the

NPC. Most of the players spent some time to understand the HUD and the stats system, how

the bars are connected with each other and with spaces. Most players after consumed some

time on that procedure they were trying to improve their stats, by resting, eating or working.

The rest of them start talking to the NPCs and they were trying to interact with them.

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5.2.1 Navigation

In terms of navigation, the players faced difficulties to recognize where they are in the

level and register it in their mind. Most of them found themselves wandering around without

being able to associate with their previous visits in each area. Especially a few players

continue having these problems until the end of the playtest, failing to navigate themselves

naturally.

The navigation problems arose due to three reasons. Firstly, because the map was designed

taking into consideration that a mini-map will exist in the interface to point out the places of

interest and assist the players to navigate. The mini-map was not finally implemented

eventually because other features with higher priority had to be implemented. The absence of

a mini-map forced the players to construct a map in their mind on their own, thus it created

one more task for the players to deal with. The second reason was that the favela was

designed to have fifty to seventy inhabitants but due to technical limitations, the favela was

populated by thirty NPCs. Map‟s size scaled down but as the playtests reveal it was not

sufficient enough. The ultimate reason is related to the warehouse and the mansion as features

which were not finally implemented in the game. That fact affected the flow balance of the

map. Namely, the west side had points of interest (the three districts) while the east side had

only the church. Therefore when the players navigated on the east side they didn‟t have many

options for actions.

For better results, in terms of navigation, the map should be even smaller and the district

distributed all over the map and not in one side with the church on the center acts as a

landmark.

5.2.2 Environment

One of the goals of the game-prototype was to let narrative emerge by the gameworld. As it

was reviewed before, Jenkins states that

“Environmental storytelling creates the preconditions for an immersive narrative

experience in at least one of four ways: spatial stories can evoke pre-existing narrative

associations; they can provide a staging ground where narrative events are enacted. They may

even embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene; or they provide resources for

emergent narratives” (Jenkins, 2004).

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The game-prototype succeeded in creating all four ways and let narrative emerge. This

conclusion can be drawn examining the replies of some testers. T2 mentioned that he adapted

his playing style to the environment of the favela (first Jenkins way), and T4 that maybe there

was a drug war going on (2nd Jenkins way). But it gets more powerful in the case of T1, who

saw the mansion, he tried to go there but the path was blocked by a fence. When he left he

said “I was interested in it, it could be a rich guy that you get to kill in the end, or you get to

usurp” (Appendix, p.86, i., 15:13). As it was said before mansion‟s purpose was what T1

assumed, but eventually it was not implemented and there was no reference about it, neither

about the mansion and the kingpin in the dialogues or anywhere in the game. But T1 by only

seeing the mansion, he created the proper assumption for it. In case of T1 all four Jenkins‟

ways were recognized.

5.2.3 Results on the visual feedback

5.2.3.1 Props

All of the testers acknowledge that the props helped to set up the atmosphere of the

environment and make it look more dangerous, especially the blood stains. Half of the testers

notice that the props appear and disappear and three of them filled in the survey that they

realized that the events occurring at the game are connected to the changes on the

environment. Another tester replied that it was hard to connect them and he would guess that

they are. The other half of the testers thought that it was a fixed part of the decoration. Only

one of them (T4) later was able to realize that the props appeared and disappeared since he

remember that after robbing an NPC he saw a pack of drugs appearing on the ground. The

reason that they didn‟t notice the absence of the props in the beginning of the session is

related to the fact that they were concentrated on recognizing how their statistics work and

how they can improve them or interacting with the NPCs, in both cases without paying

attention on the environment. When they start looking to the environment most of the props

were already there. It was mentioned above the narrative role of the props. Four testers clearly

replied to the survey that the props helped them to construct a story and they eventually were

able to formulate a story.

In these cases the in-game props achieved to have a similar role as they have in films and

manage to emerge narrative for half of the testers and give feedback to four testers for the

state of the favela.

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In these cases the in-game props achieve to have a similar role as they have in films and

manage to emerge narrative for half of the testers and give feedback to four testers for the

state of the favela.

5.2.3.2 Lighting

Answering the question “Did you notice the lighting in the different districts change over

the course of your playthrough? Please describe why you think that happened” only three out

of eight testers mentioned anything more about the lighting apart the day/night cycle. T4 said

that “the impression is that it is darker in the bad neighborhood”, but did not mention

anything about the change on the lighting and the other two did not clearly notice them. T1

said that “looking back on it now I think there were some lighting changes, but they were too

subtle for me to notice” which shows that he could not completely understand the lighting

changes but seems to have a subconscious effect. T6 replied that, “Yes, to implicitly signify

time of day to the player, possibly to also hint as to what types of people are around and

therefore what activities are possible”. T6 went one step further and conjectured the concept

of how the lighting was set up.

At a first glance the lighting seems to fail, the change was not noticeable and

understandable. Remembering how lighting functions in films, it is not noticeable or

understandable from most of the audience neither, but it guide audience‟s attention to certain

objects or action and audience‟s feelings to the drama of the film. It has a function in a second

subconscious layer. Looking the playtest results from this point of view, two playtesters

managed to notice this function of lighting one of them almost understand it. Taking that into

consideration, it seems that the lighting had a fairly good degree of success.

5.2.3.3 Color

As it was reviewed in the theory section, color has more of a subconscious function. Even

though the players do not consciously notice the change of color, the change may still have an

effect on them. Color has an effect on shaping the feelings of the viewer subconsciously. In

those terms is difficult to evaluate that from a play session and answering a survey but

looking into testers‟ reactions on the environment it seems that the color changes on lighting

and textures helped towards the desirable direction.

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5.2.4 Improvements

Analyzing the playtests helped to point out changes that would make the game-prototype

even more successful. The districts should be equally distributed in the level with the church

in the center. The paths that connected the districts should be smaller, narrower and with less

significant space, so the players would not spend much time outside the district especially

since the procedurally generated feedback was not implemented. The districts themselves

should be smaller since they would be populated by fewer NPCs as it was originally planned.

Inside smaller districts the props would be more visible and the lighting and the changes in

color of the texture more powerful. One more way to amplify the role of the visual feedback

would be to overcome the set-scene opposed to explore difference of the two mediums by the

use fixed cameras similar to games Grim Fandango (LucasArts, 1998) or Silent Hill (Konami

Computer Entertainment Tokyo, 1999). In this case the designer would manipulate more the

props and the lighting. Finally, the default theme which is used should be replaced by the

clean theme of the initial idea. The clean theme should have props like children toys and

flowers. In that case the players would have noticed the absence of the props after the theme

change. Based on the contrast among the clean theme and the others, the playtesters would be

in position to distinguish the change in the theme and its purpose.

5.3 Evaluation of Implementation

After the test sessions, when players were asked to recount the story of their play session,

many of them created short stories such as (Appendix, p.87-106):

T10 – “I came, I saw, and I robbed people”

T1 – “My playthrough involved being as aggressive and violent as possible… I also

beat as many people as I could, I was hoping this would make people "fear" me more.”

T3 – “I decided I don't have any qualms about mugging gangsters. I took their money

and donated it to the church to fight crime, converting gangsters to civilians.”

T4 –“…. Later, I talked to a woman who also seemed very friendly. We talked

colloquially, and joked about me possibly being a gangster. She thought the drugs were

to (sic.) expensive…..”

T6 – “…. After earning money by working in a factory, I realized that mugging people

was a much faster way to make cash. I then learnt which building was the church and

began to convert the gangsters into civs with a selfish aim of being the only seller on

in the favela. I converted about 7 gansters (sic.) into civs by the fourth morning.”

T8B – “I tried to be a nice citizen trying to avoid selling drugs but being kind of a

Brazilian Robin Hood. Thus, I bought a gun and started to get money from the

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gangsters, killing them, and expending the money in the church to convert drug addicts

into citizens.”

The lack of a longer overarching story was observed, which is understandable due to the

limited content for the test case. When the players got to the part where there were no more

actions to explore, they became bored with the limited gameplay, and lost interest in linking

their actions together as a story.

For understanding the particular shortcomings of the system, in the following sections we

will analyze the test sessions with a particular eye towards our framework.

5.3.1 Simulation

If we compare the bot behavior between two different play sessions, the same bot actors

have sufficiently high difference in stat values. This difference can be seen while comparing

the variable values of Hunger and Money for bot number 65, as shown in Figure 2 & Figure 3.

This tells us that characters behaved very well as per our requirements to generate an

emergent system that can balance itself while interacting with the player.

Figure 2: Graph showing Money values for Bot65 in Tests T2, T3, T7

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

100

120

140

160

Mo

ney

Val

ue

Time

T2 - Money

T3 - Money

T7 - Money

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Figure 3: Graph showing Hunger values for Bot65 in Tests T2, T3, T7

Asking the players

about the importance

of different actions

(Question 3, p.60)

From the play testing

sample informed us

of a general trend. As

expected in any

simulation, the

players rate

important actions for

their advantage, and

neglect a few. The

problem however was

that much more actions comprise of these extremes than expected. It‟s our opinion that the

player‟s perception is limited by a literal lack of options they have, as well as being a

reflection of unbalance in the system. Some actions like “scavenging” just did not make sense

for the players to do because of the presence of better options like “mugging.”

-150

-100

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Figure 4: Average Rating of importance given to different actions in the game

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5.3.2 Interesting Actors

While we want to make distinct characters for the game, the process was never really

possible for the small sized team of three to accomplish on time. Hence, we tried to create an

illusion of interesting actors by using a class structure and personal stats. All interactions of

the player with the bots were administered by logic of the class they belonged to, such as the

gangsters would talk about beating you up, while the druggies would always ask for free

drugs.

However, this strategy did not turn out to be effective enough as most players could not

relate to the bots. As T6 noted in his questionnaire (Appendix, p.98), “they all looked rather

generic.” An increase in immersion can be predicted by increasing the depth in behavior of

characters in the game, via better character models and dialogues.

In terms of the characters presenting social presence of the player, we can analyze the

before and after values representing relationship of bots towards the player. This absolute

change in the relation values is grouped by each class in Figure 5. The advantage of looking at

absolute values is that it helps us to only look at the degree of interaction and not worry about

the kind of interaction.

As is evident from Figure 5, the relationship system lacks balance. While some of the

players (such as T1, T2, T3 and T10) interacted a lot with Civilian type characters, most of

the other players mostly interacted with the Gangsters13

. This was not the intention. Another

anomaly is the extremely low level of interactions with the Druggies. Some players showed

the interest in interacting with Druggie, but weren‟t able to - T8A wanted to “going to try to

sell drugs to the drug addicts” (Appendix, p.86, viii, 10:07).

13 We analyze the reasons behind larger gangster interactions later (p.77)

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Figure 5: Average relationship change (Absolute) on bot classes during test interaction

Moreover, if we take a look at the net change to analyze the direction of relationship

change as shown in Figure 6, player‟s regard for their relationship can be called nominal at

best. Majority of the players show a positive trend in their relationship with the world. But the

number that ignores keeping good relationships is too large. Deterioration in relations with the

actors was given no regard, except only in certain cases where the testers would voluntarily

ask how they can improve their relations with the bots - T10: “… so, how do I make them trust

me?” (Appendix, p.86, xi, 7:15). We also see extremely low levels of interaction with

druggies. This can be because players simply don‟t like druggies, but the universal nature of

this trend signifies that the Druggie class was not performing as expected during these test

sessions due to some implementation bug.

We would like to balance the system so that the player can see clear effects of these

deteriorating relations. One way that this behavior can be modified is by having bots behaving

badly towards the player when their relationship is bad, rather than just dialogues being

disrespectful.

0

0,1

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Relationship Change per Civilian Relationship Change per Druggie

Relationship Change per Gangster

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Figure 6: Average relationship change (net) on bot classes during test interaction

5.3.3 Environment

Since we paid special attention to the environment in this project, individual considerations

that can affect environment‟s influence on the emergent narrative have been discussed earlier

(p.65).

However, we would like to show how the players responded to the environment through a

simple metrics test. The level design used for the game had segregated the playing area into

three “districts” that present different inhabitants as well as scenery. These districts afforded

different kind of narrative potentials. For example, if the player was seen predominantly in the

uphill areas, then he has a higher chance of being involved in a violent situation as compared

to the district down the hill.

Many players commented that they found it more fun and felt it was important to mug

people. This attitude is confirmed if we look at the data showing player‟s location on the map

during the play session in Figure 7. They are more concentrated toward the areas uphill where

the rich actors congregate more (at the entertainment spaces), as compared to downhill

districts.

-0,5

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Relationship Change per Civilian Relationship Change per Druggie

Relationship Change per Gangster

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T1 “Beating” actions T2 “Beating” actions

T5 “Beating” actions T7 “Beating” actions

Figure 7: ”Beating up” actions for players T1, T2, T5, T7

5.3.4 Objectives

The current version of the game really doesn‟t have any objectives. The game is more of a

sandbox system where the players are creators of emergent narrative for the most part rather

than discoverers as explained on p.26. We noticed that players were happy in formulating

narratives in the short term as well as coming up with long-term goals while playing the goal.

For example, while looking up the hill, T1 commented about becoming powerful enough to go

to the mansion at the top and usurp the boss and take over the role of leader (Appendix, p.86,

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76

i., 15:13). But we would have liked more players to come up with such objectives. The game‟s

limited content could only afford activities worth about 2 days play in game time and then the

players would lose focus.

This problem can be helped by having more content and larger map space. But a more

efficient way would be for the system to generate such objectives such as the player‟s friend ly

actors can ask the player to save them from mugging or beating. The key however would be to

make such objectives be voluntary, giving freedom to the player to pick and choose.

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6 Conclusions

The design of the game ended up having many interrelated rules working underneath a

somewhat opaque interface. Some of this is the fault of an over-ambitious concept and choice

of platform, which would need much more time and resources to be realized, and a lack of

focus on conveying information to the player. The use of subtle folk symbols and a Campbell-

inspired relation between world elements fit nicely into the favela setting, but didn‟t elicit as

clear a player interpretation as we would have wanted.

The very varied responses we got suggest that we would need a stricter method for testing

if we want to have more focused data. For now we got a qualitative examination of the

possibilities of the system, despite its flaws, and even a few rather positive results. The flaws

and complexity of the game conspire to make it difficult to get focused results from it, and our

unwillingness to introduce scripts that would force certain events, makes testing specific

elements problematic.

The combination of a simulation and a dialogue system worked reasonably well, although

better communication about how to influence the game state would probably increase agency.

A larger and better selection of dialogue options would also make the difference from a mere

hypertext more obvious, and lead to more player engagement with the simulation , to steer

dialogue options in a desired direction.

The environment of game-prototype succeeded in creating the preconditions for an

immersive narrative experience in all four Jenkins‟ ways, and the props succeeded to let

narrative emerge for half of the playtesters. The lighting had a fairly good success in a second

layer, and the color changes were indicated to assist in setting the desirable atmosphere.

Despite the differences between films and video games, components of the film language can

be used to enrich the video game language, but it should be taken into consideration how the

specific components act differently in the two media.

While the implementation shows many shortcomings, the biggest reason for those seems to

be a small set of player options and overall content. Lack of actions that the bots could do to

the player failed to keep player in check, and allowed rampant abuse and disregard for the

actors. In addition, the lack of deep actions hampered the player‟s ability to piece together a

longer story.

However, most of the framework specific designs made an impact on how players

interacted with the system and how they formulated a sequence of events that expressed their

story. Further development iterations along the lines of the framework can help the game take

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more concrete shape and purpose. In addition, further research into the following topics can

help in creating a more robust emergent narrative framework:

Testing simulations – The definition of emergence through simulation involves a

dangerous pitfall for game design - how to design for unexpected events? This

happened in our case study as well, we constantly kept finding new neat (and

sometimes annoying) side effects that arose from interaction of simulation rules. For

example – during final testing players found a loophole in the game where, because of

the partying nature of gangsters, they could catch them with low Menace most of the

time and stack up on money. Such simulation trends need to be recognized while

designing, so that an emergent strategy does not break the immersion in the story.

Finding out a better methodology for testing the simulation in this case study would

improve its effectiveness as well as streamline development.

Procedural generation of objectives in simulated environments – An interesting

experiment would be to see if the introduction of an objective generation system can

improve the experience. As discussed (p.31), emergent narrative games use such

systems to challenge the player. Introducing a system that can decipher the simulation

state players are in and deliver custom objectives to them could introduce more

dramatic events in the player‟s narrative.

Post-Game Narrative – Since emergent narrative constitutes of actions of the player,

it might also be a good idea to support this story creation mechanism through the

game. Fallout 3 (Bethesda, 2008) has several missions for the player. The player can

take up the mission she wishes, complete it, gather up the reward, and proceed with the

game. There is a story that players experience, but it disappears after the event as most

games forget about them. Fallout: New Vegas (Bethesda, 2010) takes the same model

and improves on it wherein certain actors met after such missions will mention your

performance. Even to the extent that your actions have led to a change in the game

world. This improves the attention that players pay to their own actions, in turn helping

their immersion in the story. Sweetser lists few methods that can aid players in this

process like event Journals of the protagonist (Sweetser, 2010). For the Carioca game,

one of the earlier ideas was to have the player‟s actions and world events being

communicated to the player via a friendly “gossip” system. Such a system was to

comprise of friendly bots that could convey pieces of information deemed important to

the player as well as relay back how important her actions have been on the world. For

example, during conversation with a friendly character, actor would inform player

about the gangster that was killed (by player), and how it has led to a gang war.

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