Good Moods: Outlook, Affect and Mood in Dynemotion and the Mind Module

In this article we describe two systems for autonomous characters intended to simulate the minds of characters in virtual game worlds. These systems, the Dynemotion People Engine (DPE) and the Mind Module (MM), are here presented with special focus placed on the design and implementation of the parts of the architecture that simulate what is colloquially called mood. The mood feature is presented to the user in both applications as a fine-grained matrix that summarizes the character's state of mind, typically a complex state. Thus in both systems the mood feature functions as a qualitative guide describing the affordances for the interaction with one's own avatar or another character at a given moment. This simplifies the design and balancing of game design in terms of authorial affordances and provides a more familiar context for user-character interactions

Players Imbuing Meaning: Co-creation of Challenges in a prototype MMO

This article discusses how components in a game world can carry meaning relevant to individual players. The discussion is grounded in work with a massively multi-player online (MMO) proto- type where players in guided play-tests created their own opponents that they battled in groups of three. The opponents are called Manifestations, and can be compared to the “boss monsters” that in adventure and role-playing games pose the greatest challenges in terms of tactical game play, or battle. When creating Manifestations players define how these shall behave in play, and what they say under different circumstances. The game play mechanics in the world is centred on emotions and social relations. One of the design goals in the creation of the prototype was to cater for a system where tactical game play can be closely tied to the potential narrative contents. The Manifestations players created in the play tests were of four main categories; reflec- tions of persons they had complicated relationships with in real life, difficult situations, abstract concepts, or purely fictional entities. In several cases players brought material into the game that had personal meaning to them. These meanings were developed further when players saw how their Manifestation behaved within the rule system of the world. For example, one player created a Manifestation of an anticipated exam, while another made a Manifestation called “Mother”. The Mother cast spells called “Focused Aggression” and “Cold Ripple of Fear”. It was able to perform acts called “Blame”, “Threaten”, and “Disagree”. The group experimented with tactical choices, while reasoning about the Mother’s potential motivations. They managed to overcome the Mother by alternating between giving each other resistance and casting spells, the winning stroke being a rapid series of spells called “Forgive”

Interweaving story coherence and player creativity through story-making games

In story-making games, players create stories together by using narrative tokens. Often there is a tension between players playing to win using the rules of a story-making game, and collaboratively creating a good story. In this paper, we introduce a competitive story-making game prototype coupled with computational methods intended to be used for both supporting players’ creativity and narrative coherence.peer-reviewe

Game design : c2learn project deliverable no. D4.1.2

This document offers the final game design deliverable of the C2Learn project. It builds on the method and game patterns identified in the first game design deliverable (D4.1.1) and fuses input from work on the C2Learn theory (WP2), learning design (WP2), C2Learn computational tools (WP3 and WP4) and the C2Learn pedagogical practice (WP5). The document introduces the role of game and play activities within the C2Learn environment (identified as C2Space), describes the design process followed and concludes with the descriptions of a number of detailed digital game descriptions (4 game activities) and playful activities (2 play activities) and their links to the overarching C2Learn gameful social environment (C2Space). Both the C2Learn theory and pedagogical practice is realized through the palette of games and tools described herein. Furthermore, the available C2Learn technology is supported under each game and digital tool designed.peer-reviewe

Narrative Substrates: Reifying and Managing Emergent Narratives in Persistent Game Worlds

International audiencePlayers in modern Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games progress through ambitiously designed narratives, but have no real influence on the game, since only their characters' data, not the game environment, persists. Although earlier games supported player influence by persisting changes in the world, they relied on players' capacity to form their own stories and lacked guidance for character progression. We explore how persistence and narrative emergence let us build upon players' influence rather than restrict it. We ran four studies and found that players highly value first-time and unique events, and often externalize their experiences to the Web to collaborate and socialize, but unintentionally also disrupt some aspects of in-game play. We introduce Narrative Substrates, a theoretical framework for designing game architec-tures that represent, manage, and persist traces of player activity as unique, interactive content. To illustrate and test the theory, we developed the game We Ride and deployed it as a two-phase technology probe over one year. We identify key benefits and challenges of our approach, and argue that reification of emergent narratives offers new design opportunities for creating truly interactive games

INDCOR white paper 1: A shared vocabulary for IDN (Interactive Digital Narratives)

COST Action 18230 INDCOR (Interactive Narrative Design for Complexity Representations) is an interdisciplinary network of researchers and practitioners intended to further the use of interactive digital narratives (IDN1) to represent highly complex topics. IDN possess crucial advantages in this regard, but more knowledge is needed to realize these advantages in broad usage by media producers and the general public. The lack of a shared vocabulary is a crucial obstacle on the path to a generalized, accessible body of IDN knowledge. This white paper frames the situation from the perspective of INDCOR and describes the creation of an online encyclopedia as a means to overcome this issue. Two similar and successful projects (The Living Handbook of Narratology and the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) serve as examples for this effort, showing how community-authored encyclopedias can provide high-quality content. The authors introduce a taxonomy based on an overarching analytical framework (SPP model) as the foundational element of the encyclopedia, and detail editorial procedures for the project, including a peer-review process, designed to assure high academic quality and relevance of encyclopedia entries. Also, a sample entry provides guidance for authors

AI-based game design patterns

This paper proposes a model for designing games around Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI-based games put AI in the foreground of the player experience rather than in a supporting role as is often the case in many commercial games. We analyze the use of AI in a number of existing games and identify design patterns for AI in games. We propose a generative ideation technique to combine a design pattern with an AI technique or capacity to make new AI-based games. Finally, we demonstrate this technique through two examples of AI-based game prototypes created using these patterns

Mixed-media game AI

Over the last decades, digital technologies have moved away from the personal computer (PC) into cloud computing, ubiquitous computing, intelligent robots and smart devices. From wearable technologies to remote-controlled household items and from sensors for crowd control to personal drones, there is a broad range of sources which can be exploited for artificial intelligence in games. While artificial intelligence (AI) is already a big part of the Internet of Things, raising concerns in terms of ethics and politics, games have been relatively partitioned away to PCs. Relevant work on wearable technologies as game controllers, mixed- or virtual-reality rendering, or technology-enhanced play in playgrounds, social robots for games or board games, has largely not taken advantage of artificial intelligence for controlling or mediating the experience. Using the term mixed-media to refer broadly to any media, digital or otherwise, outside the game data within a PC or a game-specific database, this working group attempted to map out the broad topic of mixed-media in terms of its applications for game AI.peer-reviewe