The Hard Problem: Dynamic Content

[R.O.]

I think this article could have been classic but degenerated into him fantasy wishing about what he wants to see in a GTA game. Look unless you own or have access to a PS3 you get what you deserve horrid Wii graphics or a inferior PS3 clone with rip off online capabilities, Xbox 360.

I do agree that games are not virtual books. They are way more than that. If people wanted to read virtual books they would be flocking to Google Reader right now. But games are also not physical sports which is why the Wii sucks. You don't buy a game to swing a baseball bat, you buy a game to enjoy a game in the safety of your own home.

The PS3 has USB ports. That right there eliminates the virtual book aspect of the game because it is more like a computer. You don't need a memory card if you can hook up your PS3 to the internet and download stuff onto the hard drive. The Xbox 360 is a crappy version of this. The Wii? Parker Bros must of helped make it. I don't play Monopoly or Life anymore. This isn't about social interaction. If you still gotta spend time with 10 family members and friends, then you are lame.

Ultimately, if you have a PS3, a PC, or better yet both, then you can still enjoy the arcade era in your own home. Maybe you can buy a Wii for those rare Parker Bros occasions when you and your wife or girl want to get it in but make no mistake about the reason why you are buying it. Don't be ignorant.

 

[hypothetical fact]

I think this article could have been classic but degenerated into him fantasy wishing about what he wants to see in a GTA game. Look unless you own or have access to a PS3 you get what you deserve horrid Wii graphics or a inferior PS3 clone with rip off online capabilities, Xbox 360.

I do agree that games are not virtual books. They are way more than that. If people wanted to read virtual books they would be flocking to Google Reader right now. But games are also not physical sports which is why the Wii sucks. You don't buy a game to swing a baseball bat, you buy a game to enjoy a game in the safety of your own home.

The PS3 has USB ports. That right there eliminates the virtual book aspect of the game because it is more like a computer. You don't need a memory card if you can hook up your PS3 to the internet and download stuff onto the hard drive. The Xbox 360 is a crappy version of this. The Wii? Parker Bros must of helped make it. I don't play Monopoly or Life anymore. This isn't about social interaction. If you still gotta spend time with 10 family members and friends, then you are lame.

Ultimately, if you have a PS3, a PC, or better yet both, then you can still enjoy the arcade era in your own home. Maybe you can buy a Wii for those rare Parker Bros occasions when you and your wife or girl want to get it in but make no mistake about the reason why you are buying it. Don't be ignorant.

Hello R.O, for this insightful post I am going to give you the nickname: PS3 fanboy. Wear it with pride because only a fanboy could turn an article on dynamic gameplay into, lets bash the other consoles.

On topic this article is terrible. Making a game more dynamic means more variables that need to be accounted for, means more glitches, means more development time, means higher costs, means that if the game fails the company goes with it. Dynamic content also makes games shallow, part of the dynamic content of Mass Effect is the ability to make your own name. The result, everyone calls you shepard no matter the situation which is just unrealistic. Games that tout their dynamic nature also either fall into good or evil because it just takes to long to develop a game where character X acts Y because Z happened but also does W because V occured. In a more dynamic world that formula would have to be applied to every character which would take years to make.

Then there is the story. If there is a story then it must be safeguarded so the player doesn't find their vital informant missing because they made a bunch of potholes with rockets in the road a kilometre back. How would the player know why the informant is missing? Either this event along with a million others are predicted or the player sends the game back. If there is no story what so ever then the game has to be bloody fun or you will get the players that don't throw the game out - looking up guides for the best results. Looking at guides may be cheating but in a more dynamic world the player may ruin the game for themselves by their actions. Believe me, when a player gets trapped in a room because they broke the elevators they won't be praising the dynamic nature of the game, they will be pissed.

Oh and if you want a bunch of progress bars in GTA just play Oblivion or something.

 

[Razorback0z]

Open with this

John, you ignorant slut.

Move on to this

Another solution I had in mind was a three tired game. I read an sf story back in the 80s that had humans contracting with aliens that had a lifespan of 10,000 years to some work on some project or another. Thing is, the humans had to subcontract to an insect sized race of aliens with a lifespan of only 24 hours to finish some of the components they needed. How does this translate into a game? In this case, the long lived aliens are represented by the publisher, who have some bigger metaplot ongoing. The short term is represented by casual gamers, who jump on to play quick casual games for free. In the middle we have the paying gamers, who are collecting resources from a block of games being played by the casual gamers to contribute to their part of their project.

4 words.
Pot
Kettle
Crack
Pipe

 

[CanadianWolverine]

At least one thing evidenced by the comments left here is that one of the things that make dynamic content hard is fanboyism and a misunderstanding of what dynamic content is - some seem to be confusing it with random content. Random content is minimally or doesn't take into account at all the actions of the player.

Left 4 Dead is a good example, even when one is aware of the under lying mechanics, that shows that deciding factor in what happens is in regards to what actions the player characters take.

I came to a similar conclusion as this article's author with regards to the percentage markers in the past, dreaming up a system of game event nodes that could have either NPC rivals plugged into or the PC, so that the stories of games could be driven by player choice and decide the outcome of the setting.

And that is ultimately what I think game designers are there to provide: Game Mechanics that the player and NPC follow, Setting that the PC and NPC live in accordance with the Game Mechanics, Friendly/Neutral/Aggressive NPC that have Goals within the Setting, and Tools that the PC and NPC use the Game Mechanics to manipulate the Setting so accomplish their Goals.

In some ways I think this is what helped make games like Half-Life and Unreal Tournament so popular, yes they were linear in some if not most respects, but the reactions of the NPC allowed for some dynamic content, for example the different reactions to a grenade being thrown.

It is my strong opinion, I don't even want to bother being humble with it, that games stories irregardless of the intent of the developers have been decided by the player and the more freedom a game allows for that to be impacted by the player's character actions, the larger consequences for those actions improve the scope of the player's character story resulting in more "Wow!" moments that a player would be willing to tell as a story to other players who can relate their own stories. Possibly one of the best examples of this that I have seen has been Dwarf Fortress, if one can suffer the steep learning curve of the interface (it is possible to get graphical tiles, also check out this site if you are interested and new to it: http://afteractionreporter.com/2009/02/09/the-complete-and-utter-newby-tutorial-for-dwarf-fortress-part-1-wtf/ ) it reveals that a player's so called mistakes can be as rewarding as his successes because the setting of the game responds to the actions of the player. But other examples of this include things as simple as gameplay videos (sometimes even going so far as to create Machinema) on Youtube of player's discovering their own unique unscripted events that their character pulls off - since the game isn't reacting to their improvised story as satisfactorily as they might like, they turn to their fellow gamers to acknowledge their accomplishment, a reward of cheers or jeers that won't be forth coming from the game. Still yet other examples are of online journals of characters, telling their character's story within a game, many which are very fun reads.

Without a doubt in my mind, the world needs more games with dynamic content, it has been one of the driving forces of great games through out the decades since our hobby first began. Without it, we would still be facing Wolfenstien 3D level AI running straight at us and NPCs would still be waiting for us to speak to them to repeat the same old tired thing if it weren't for dynamic content. When there is limited or no dynamic content in a game, we notice.

Of the game development I am aware of at the moment, one of the more interesting player driven games is one called Love being developed by Eskil Steenberg. Also notable is how Pen & Paper games can also have very dynamic content with an engaging Game Master.

Well, best of luck to my fellow players in discovering your character's unique stories! I hope you get to share them with me one day. :-D

 

[Clemenstation]

The PS3 has USB ports. That right there eliminates the virtual book aspect of the game because it is more like a computer.

A fine bit of analysis right here.

Back on topic, I like the notion of rivals in a sandbox game: opponents who are out there getting shit done, as opposed to sitting around all day waiting for you to show up and play their prefabricated mission. Seems that developer response to complaints of 'this world feels dead' is usually to ram-pack tons and tons of strolling idiots onto the sidewalks, and maybe a few armed street gangs as well. A handful of unique bad guys with a bit of agency and a list of objectives to complete would help alleviate the feeling that the world is constantly waiting for you to get on with the show.

Of course, some players feel overwhelmed by the huge amounts of 'passive' activities, quests, and challenges already, so having them under the gun of racing against enemies at all times might not be the most enjoyable addition.

 

[John Scott Tynes]

Thanks for all the great discussion, folks. Except for the completely inexplicable detour into PS3 vs. Xbox 360, which I nonetheless enjoyed for its surreal quality.

Should I become the fascist lord of all gaming, I assure you that I won't eliminate narrative games. The twist in Bioshock was truly inspired, for example, because of how it played on and undercut the traditional goal-based level-progression narrative. But that's a story you can only experience once with the same impact. If you think about something really impressive you've done in, say, a multiplayer session or an RTS or a sandbox game, something that wasn't scripted but that came about because of your own skills and ingenuity and luck, those are the kinds of "stories" that I'd like our industry to better enable because those are the stories players truly own.

However, I'll cheerfully stand behind my dismissal of game developers who write badly. Good writing in games is incredibly rare. We'll get real-time raytracing before we get a broad swath of games with the writing quality of, say, Portal, where the actual line-by-line writing really enriches the experience.

The best time I ever had in a GTA game was in Vice City. There was a shopping mall and I spent an entire evening with a friend of mine just in that one shopping mall. We kept pulling robberies, figuring out how to squeeze cars through the doors, and testing the reactions of the police to learn where we could hide out between heists. It was a blast, and it wasn't a scripted mission at all. It was just us exploring the rules of the game and bending them in ways that were great fun.

I want more of THAT.

One of the great things Bioshock did was take the boss fight and cut it loose from the usual end-of-level sequencing. Instead the boss fight was a wandering encounter and you could choose where and when to trigger it. That one change turned what is otherwise a straightforward, heavily scripted, level-based game into an experience that could be just a little different at every attempt.

I want more of that, too.

 

[DJ OMiY]

KONAMI's new Silent Hill game has a similar adaptive experience that they are implementing into the game. It adapts to the way you play to find the best way to freak you out.

 

[heavyness]

well, to each their own. i personally find there is enough room for both types of games. super dynamic games that change completely every time you play them, and the classics that has set patterns. some days, i enjoy playing a game where i know every enemies' attack patterns and what is next beyond the next door. some days, i want to be surprised by something new.

i don't think developers have to make all games dynamic just because we have the horse power to pull it off, some games work better with set patterns, single path gameplay, and save points every 5 minutes.

 

[TomBeraha]

Interesting--never realized it before reading this article, but I wonder if it's that the Platforming game is so deep in the video game DNA that it wound up determining the course of everything from the FPS to the RPG. Sort of like you're calling for an alternate path that never happened: what if instead gaming grew out of the 4X genre instead of the Platformer?

That's a really interesting question actually. I'm not sure that it's possible for video games to have evolved along a different line, because they've always been held back more by what is possible at a given framerate, than what is imaginable or code-able for the developers. 4X games have expanded and influenced other games, and pick up and play games still exist. I'm not sure resource management (game resources, not system) is a desired attribute in every game, the multiple bars of wealth / infamy etc. would still lead to pretty linear play in my mind.

I myself was reminded of games like Sins of a Solar Empire and Sim City instead of games like Zelda and Metroid when reading through this. Though ultimately, I think levels exist as an essential component of most types of games. It originally existed in FPS's to reduce the amount of data in use at a given time, which is why even when quake 2 came out and had sprawling 'levels' they were made up of smaller connected levels, A process which has continued into the half-life series.

I think the desire to tell a story combined with the desire to have pretty graphics and still be executed on current gen hardware was the prevailing influence on game design as opposed to an unseen need to write a book rule. Every game without a "level" is able to be loaded into memory as a whole, some kick out parts of the graphics as you view different areas to reduce total load, but actions occurring outside the player's view still occur Simultaneously, think of Turn based strategy games, real time strategy games, puzzle games, etc. however, in a FPS you don't have this, the only actions occurring in the world are the ones next to you, and it's because of the amount of stress that puts on the system.

The real trick for procedurally generated content will be to get closer and closer to being able to imitate the Dungeon Master of a Dungeons and Dragons game. That's where your own choices and decisions can REALLY change the course of a game, and no two can ever be the same. To do that, the game developer has to ultimately make the choice to NOT tell the story. This is actually a much bigger hurdle, and thoughts on how to accomplish that, are welcome