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”

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

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

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

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

TOG: An Innovation Centric Approach to teaching Computational Expression and Game Design

This paper describes the design approach TOG (standing for Technology, Ontology, and Game Genre), and how it can be used in teaching game design and technologies enabling computational expression. TOG, inspired by the processes of AI Based Game Design, was conceptualized when teaching a course on computational expression at the University of Malta. The main aim with teaching with the approach was to facilitate innovation and to prompt students to expand their palette of methods for computational expression as game designer

Characterising action potential in virtual game worlds applied with the mind module

Because games set in persistent virtual game worlds (VGWs) have massive numbers of players, these games need methods of characterisation for playable characters (PCs) that differ from the methods used in traditional narrative media. VGWs have a number of particularly interesting qualities. Firstly, VGWs are places where players interact with and create elements carrying narrative potential. Secondly, players add goals, motives and driving forces to the narrative potential of a VGW, which sometimes originates from the ordinary world. Thirdly, the protagonists of the world are real people, and when acting in the world their characterisation is not carried out by an author, but expressed by players characterising their PCs. How they can express themselves in ways that characterise them depend on what they can do, and how they can do it, and this characterising action potential (CAP) is defined by the game design of particular VGWs. In this thesis, two main questions are explored. Firstly, how can CAP be designed to support players in expressing consistent  characters in VGWs? Secondly, how can VGWs support role-play in their rule-systems? By using iterative design, I explore the design space of CAP by building a semiautonomous agent structure, the Mind Module (MM) and apply it in five experimental prototypes where the design of CAP and other game features is derived from the MM. The term semiautonomy is used because the agent structure is designed to be used by a PC, and is thus partly controlled by the system and partly by the player. The MM models a PC's personality as a collection of traits, maintains dynamic emotional state as a function of interactions with objects in the environment, and summarises a PC's current emotional state in terms of `mood'.   The MM consists of a spreading-activation network of affect nodes that are interconnected by weighted relationships.  There are four types of affect node: personality trait nodes, emotion nodes, mood nodes, and sentiment nodes. The values of the nodes defining the personality traits of characters govern an individual PC's state of mind through these weighted relationships, resulting in values characterising for a PC's personality. The sentiment nodes constitute emotionally valenced connections between entities. For example, a PC can `feel' anger toward another PC. This thesis also describes a guided paper-prototype play-test of  the VGW prototype World of Minds, in which the game mechanics build upon the MM's model of personality and emotion. In a case study of AI-based game design, lessons learned from the test are presented. The participants in the test were able to form and communicate mental models of the MM and game mechanics, validating the design and giving valuable feedback for further development. Despite the constrained scenarios presented to test players, they discovered interesting, alternative strategies, indicating that for game design the `mental physics' of the MM may open up new  possibilities.The results of the play-test influenced the further development of the MM as it was used in the digital VGW prototype the Pataphysic Institute. In the Pataphysic Institute the CAP of PCs is largely governed by their mood. Depending on which mood  PCs are in they can cast different `spells', which affect values such as mental energy, resistance and emotion in their targets. The mood also governs which `affective actions' they can perform toward other PCs and what affective actions they are receptive to. By performing affective actions on each other PCs can affect each others' emotions, which - if they are strong - may result in sentiments toward each other. PCs' personalities govern the individual fluctuations of mood and emotions, and define which types of spell PCs can cast. Formalised social relationships such as friendships affect CAP, giving players more energy, resistance, and other benefits. PCs' states of mind are reflected in the VGW in the form of physical manifestations that emerge if an emotion is very strong. These manifestations are entities which cast different spells on PCs in close proximity, depending on the emotions that the manifestations represent. PCs can also partake in authoring manifestations that become part of the world and the game-play in it. In the Pataphysic Institute potential story structures are governed by the relations the sentiment nodes constitute between entities.Because games set in persistent virtual game worlds (VGWs) have massive numbers of players, these games need methods of characterisation for playable characters (PCs) that differ from the methods used in traditional narrative media. VGWs have a number of particularly interesting qualities. Firstly, VGWs are places where players interact with and create elements carrying narrative potential. Secondly, players add goals, motives and driving forces to the narrative potential of a VGW, which sometimes originates from the ordinary world. Thirdly, the protagonists of the world are real people, and when acting in the world their characterisation is not carried out by an author, but expressed by players characterising their PCs. How they can express themselves in ways that characterise them depend on what they can do, and how they can do it, and this characterising action potential (CAP) is defined by the game design of particular VGWs. In this thesis, two main questions are explored. Firstly, how can CAP be designed to support players in expressing consistent  characters in VGWs? Secondly, how can VGWs support role-play in their rule-systems? By using iterative design, I explore the design space of CAP by building a semiautonomous agent structure, the Mind Module (MM) and apply it in five experimental prototypes where the design of CAP and other game features is derived from the MM. The term \textit{semiautonomy} is used because the agent structure is designed to be used by a PC, and is thus partly controlled by the system and partly by the player. The MM models a PC's personality as a collection of traits, maintains dynamic emotional state as a function of interactions with objects in the environment, and summarises a PC's current emotional state in terms of `mood'.   The MM consists of a spreading-activation network of affect nodes that are interconnected by weighted relationships.  There are four types of affect node: personality trait nodes, emotion nodes, mood nodes, and sentiment nodes. The values of the nodes defining the personality traits of characters govern an individual PC's state of mind through these weighted relationships, resulting in values characterising for a PC's personality. The sentiment nodes constitute emotionally valenced connections between entities. For example, a PC can `feel' anger toward another PC. This thesis also describes a guided paper-prototype play-test of  the VGW prototype World of Minds, in which the game mechanics build upon the MM's model of personality and emotion. In a case study of AI-based game design, lessons learned from the test are presented. The participants in the test were able to form and communicate mental models of the MM and game mechanics, validating the design and giving valuable feedback for further development. Despite the constrained scenarios presented to test players, they discovered interesting, alternative strategies, indicating that for game design the `mental physics' of the MM may open up new  possibilities.The results of the play-test influenced the further development of the MM as it was used in the digital VGW prototype the Pataphysic Institute. In the Pataphysic Institute the CAP of PCs is largely governed by their mood. Depending on which mood  PCs are in they can cast different `spells', which affect values such as mental energy, resistance and emotion in their targets. The mood also governs which `affective actions' they can perform toward other PCs and what affective actions they are receptive to. By performing affective actions on each other PCs can affect each others' emotions, which - if they are strong - may result in sentiments toward each other. PCs' personalities govern the individual fluctuations of mood and emotions, and define which types of spell PCs can cast. Formalised social relationships such as friendships affect CAP, giving players more energy, resistance, and other benefits. PCs' states of mind are reflected in the VGW in the form of physical manifestations that emerge if an emotion is very strong. These manifestations are entities which cast different spells on PCs in close proximity, depending on the emotions that the manifestations represent. PCs can also partake in authoring manifestations that become part of the world and the game-play in it. In the Pataphysic Institute potential story structures are governed by the relations the sentiment nodes constitute between entities

Teaching Game System Building as an Artistic Practice

In this vision paper, we posit ‘game system building’ as a paradigm for game design. Inspired by earlier perspectives on cybernetic art and generative art we consider the creation of dynamic game systems as an artistic practice where the consideration of complex and often unpredictable behavior and effects are as foundational as the individual elements (rules, graphics, characters, UI etc.). The perspective of ‘game system building’ has important implications for the education of designers and games scholars. In this paper, we introduce the paradigm and its lineage and propose an educational approach that reflects ‘game system building’