Dramatic Gaming

Jarmo Laaksolahti

jarmo@sics.se

A few facts about myself…

Background in computer/systems science Researcher at SICS since 1997 Part time at DSV/KTH 2004-2006 Research interests

Humanistic IT People have spare time, emotions, religion, social

needs,…

Entertainment applications Games and interactive drama

Swedish Institute of Computer Science - SICS

Independent non-profit research organisation Employs ~ 90 researchers in 7 labs

Computer and Network Architectures Distributed Systems Industrial Applications and Methods Intelligent Systems Interactive Collaborative Environments Interaction Laboratory UserWare Lab

Recently nominated one of the top 15 IT-research institutions in the world

Outline

Introduction Overview of Interactive Drama Kaktus - The story of a dramatic game

Socio-Emotional gaming Expressive cinematography Plot control mechanisms

Interactive Drama/Games Research

Why? Explore the medium New domains bring new solutions to (old)

problems Is it important?

We have lives outside the workplace… People have always played and told stories Games and storytelling can be used for other

purposes than entertainment too…

Gaming defined

Play is an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill and often money. (Caillois, 1958)

Play is essentially: Free – you choose to play Separate – limited in space and time from other activities Uncertain – you don’t know what will happen beforehand Unproductive – does not create goods or wealth Governed by rules – game rules Make-believe – as opposed to real life

• Agôn – competion

• Alea – chance

• Mimicry – simulation/role play

• Ilinx – vertigo (e.g. roller coasters)

• Agôn – competion

• Alea – chance

• Mimicry – simulation/role play

• Ilinx – vertigo (e.g. roller coasters)

What do players want?

Challenge Compete Social Emotional experience Fantasy/Story

(Rouse, 2001)

Computer Game Genres

Action games Racing games Sports games Strategy games Simulation games

Platform games Role-playing/

Adventure games Puzzle/Board

games ”Edutainment”

Source - Teldok 133

Affective Games?

Quake Baldurs Gate Warcraft3 …

goal

subgoal subgoal …

subsubgoal subsubgoal

Problem solving Simple emotions!

More Affective Games

Sims Planetfall

From within the lab you hear ferocious growlings, the sounds of a skirmish, and then a high-pitched metallic scream!> WAITTime passes...

You hear, slightly muffled by the door, three fast knocks, followed by the distinctive sound of tearing metal.> OPEN THE DOORFloyd stumbles out of the Bio Lab, clutching the mini-booth card. The mutations rush toward the open doorway!> CLOSE THE DOORAnd not a moment too soon! You hear a pounding from the door as the monsters within vent their frustration at losing their prey.

Floyd staggers to the ground, dropping the mini card. He is badly torn apart, with loose wires and broken circuits everywhere. Oil flows from his lubrication system. He obviously has only moments to live.

You drop to your knees and cradle Floyd's head in your lap. Floyd looks up at his friend with half-open eyes. "Floyd did it ... got card. Floyd a good friend, huh? Quietly, you sing Floyd's favorite song, the Ballad of the Starcrossed Miner: ....

As you finish the last verse, Floyd smiles with contentment, and then his eyes close as his head rolls to one side. You sit in silence for a moment, in memory of a brave friend who gave his life so that you might live."

Relations Deeper emotions! Much work is

needed!

Our research

Explore ”games” that are Emotional Social Narrative

Interactive drama It has less focus on action Attempts to merge interactivity with a narrative

experience Emotion is a vital ingredient

Outline

Introduction Overview of Interactive Drama Kaktus - The story of a dramatic game

Socio-Emotional gaming Expressive cinematography Plot control mechanisms

What is a narrative?

A narrative is an account of events that has happened to someone.

Narratives order events temporally… A happened first, then B

and C. …and causally

C happened because of A.

Focus on characters. Narratives are about

important events. Plot refers to how events

are retold (e.g. in reverse)

A CBthen then

because of

Dramatic Narrative

ValuesLove/hate, life/death, rich/poor, …

EventsActsSequencesScenesBeats

CharactersMcKee, 1997

Dramatic arc

12

3

4

5

6

7

1. Exposition2. Inciting incident3. Rising action4. Crisis5. Climax6. Falling action7. Denouement

Time

Com

plic

atio

n

Stories and Games

What are the differences? Games focus on interactivity, stories on

control Games involve solving puzzles, scoring

points and winning What is the role of story in games?

Games often involve stories (in some way) don’t they?

Traditional stories vs. Interactive stories

The author controls What happens when in

the story world What the reader finds

out about it, and when

The reader controls Whether to read on or

stop (or skip)

Author shares control Players actively

participate in the creation of their own experience

Conflicting demands Players want freedom

to do and see whatever they find interesting (?)

Authors want to tell their (a) story

Making it interactive

Aren’t all stories interactive? Constructivism Explicit vs implicit

interactivity

Interactive Plot Make the links between

events virtual Creating new plots

Interactive Story Make the events

themselves virtual Creating new story events

A CBthen then

because of

A CBthen then

because of

Structure of Interactive Narrative

“The narrative potential of the interactive text is a function of its system of links” (Ryan, 2001)

Does this also apply to other media?

The complete graph

Fully connected graph Player can navigate as

she likes Difficult to create

events that can be experienced in any order

Hard to guarantee narrative coherence

The vector with branches

Main story is non-interactive

The player can visit the side branches

Players can decide the level of detail

Popular in children's (educational) games

…and perhaps RPG’s?

Critical Voices

Ludology Narratives retell past events and thus

cannot be interactive (narration collapses)

Story and roles constrain interactivity Narratology

Interactivity only allows simple/uninteresting stories to be formed

Drama management

Policy for “story piece” selection “Null” policy = explicitly coded links

Story library

Selection policy

previous sequence

Null policy

Façade – Mateas & Stern

Story a la “Who’s afraid of Virginia wolf”

Interaction through natural language dialog within story context

The player plays a character in the story

First person view To be released (free)

2004?

IDTension

World of the story

User Model

User

Theatre

Narrative Logic

Virtual Narrator

User ModelWorld of the story

Discourse / Story / Perception

IDTension story Anna tells Joe he could try to buy Mr D., the witness Joe accepts Bill tells Joe to kill Mr D. Joe refuses to do that. Joe tells Anna he could kill Mr D. Anna encourages him to do so! Joe tells Anna he wants to buy Mr D. Anna encourages him to do so Bill incites Joe to kill Mr D. Joe meets Mr D. He proposes him some money for changing his testimony, but Mr D. wants

a lot of money, and Joe is not rich enough He then decides to get money He tells Anna about it Joe tells Sylvie he could kill Mr D. Sylvie dissuades him to do so!

Outline

Introduction Overview of Interactive Drama Kaktus - The story of a dramatic game

Socio-Emotional gaming Expressive cinematography Plot control mechanisms

Socio-Emotional Drama

The Kaktus scenario aims to: Provide an emotional experience. Provide a social experience. Provide a narrative experience. Support replayability – sucess criteria? Include proactive autonomous

characters.

Drama

Kaktus v0.1

You: Lovisa, a party is a great idea! Think of all the fun we will have!

Lovisa gives you a big smileLovisa gives you a big smile

Lovisa: But what about serving drinks?

Ebba, can’t your brother take care of that?

Ebba, do you want to borrow my new DKNY dress for the party?

Lovisa, maybe we can get some alcohol from your fathers medical practice?

Roseman’s model

User study

Aim: To test impact of emotion model 15 subjects (one using emotion model the other

random) ‘Random’ group found characters to be strange

‘…sometimes they changed completely, first they were about to cry, the next instant their eyes were twinkling.’

Some users believed they were doing something wrong! The group using the emotional model experienced

no strange behaviour Emotional expressions need structure and timing!

Kaktus v0.2 - Magicster

Kaktus v0.3 - Magicster

Outline

Introduction Overview of Interactive Drama Kaktus - The story of a dramatic game

Socio-Emotional gaming Expressive cinematography Plot control mechanisms

Film structure

Film – a sequence of scenes Scene – captures a specific situation Shot – interval during which the

camera is continuously rolling ~2-8 sec.

Scenes are made up of one or more shots

Cinematography

Cinematography refers to how something is filmed in contrast to what

Three main factors Photographic aspects -emulsion,

filters,etc Framing – what is included Duration – how long a shot is

Emotions through cinematography

By applying proper visual effects the emotional disposition of viewers can be changed Happy scene: bright lighting, bright colors Sad: dark, low-key colors Terror: quick zoom to a characters face Mental/Sick: fish-eye lens …

Partly learned behavior due to repeated exposure

Shot size

Extreme long-shot

Angle

Line of action

Crossing the line

Examples of shots

Borders

Colors affect how we perceive things

Culturally dependant

Red/yellow is generally more positive than blue/green

Rounded shapes are more positive than jagged

Idioms for sequencing shots

Working knowledge about how to sequence shots to capture situations

Idioms can be modeled as automatons Example: a conversation between two people

Start

Apex(A,B)

Close up(B)

Close up(A)

Over the shoulder(A,B)

Establishing shot to introduce the situation

Close-up or over the shoulder shots for showing the conversation

Cinematographer

Process of cinematographer

Event

SpeakerAddresseeRelations

Idioms

BuildSelect

Idiom

Scene,duration,shots

DirectScene,shots

Outline

Introduction Overview of Interactive Drama Kaktus - The story of a dramatic game

Socio-Emotional gaming Expressive cinematography Plot control mechanisms

Anticipatory systems

Contains a predictive model of itself and the environment

The behavior of the system depends on predictions about what will happen in addition to what already has

The system is executed faster than “real-time”

Anticipatory Drama

The game is turnbased Control variables

Friendship (= social relation) Elapsed time

The value of the control variables determine which agent gets the turn

What about when no good choices exist? Behaviors such as ”throw a temper tantrum” can

be used to pull players in the right direction

Social Configurations – Heider (1946)

P O

X

+

+ +

P O

X

+

+ -

P O

X

-

+ -

P O

X

+

- -

P O

X

+

+ +

X is not good

The anticipatory model

The anticipatory model can be described as a finite state automaton

Automatons that describe generic dramas are context free and hence reusable

S

q1

q2

q3

E

-1,20,2

-2,2+1,2

+1,1

0,2

And so the drama begins…

Thank you for listening!

For more information contact:

Jarmo Laaksolahtijarmo@sics.se