ASSESSMENT TASK 2: SELECTED POSTS

Let’s look back into what we’ve done so far and how it shaped my project making!

1. The beginning – the Werewolf game and how it inspires me

Every project has got to start somewhere, right ? This post is the embodiment of that initial rush of motivation, the rough spark by which it all started. I like it because it is full of hope and uncertainty, and I can see how far I have come from there.

2. Specifications

After this initial spark, came the time of refinement. This post is both the follow-up and the opposite of the previous one. The first was about exploring, while this one was about setting the core concepts and boundaries of my project.

3. System of alliances

Making a game is about having multiple ideas at once and trying to make them work together. This post relies the struggle and joy that accompany having a breakthrough and dealing with all the new questions it raises.

4. System of alliances part. 2

This post is interesting compared to the previous one because you can see the progress I made, the answer I started to have ; but at the same time, you see that it doesn’t stop there. There is always more confusion behind any advancement.

5. The costs and advantages of inaction

To fight the ever-going confusion which goes in par with any project, you have to remain lucid and rigorous, to focus on the essential. Here, I relied on my old pal the Werewolves online game to explain how important it was to me to make my game as emergent as possible, to not lock my players in a single way of playing.

6. EPOC

This one is interesting because it illustrates the importance of changing perspective. In all my other posts, I always thought as a creator, but here, I understood I had to be more than that if I wanted to be able to sell my idea efficiently.

I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.

The costs and advantages of inaction

A few posts ago, I mentioned the importance of balance in making a game. This term does not translate perfectly what I mean, so I will try to be clearer. What I want to express with this word is the openness of the gameplay, a certain diversity among the possibilities of action given to the players. I don’t want a certain way of playing to be the only “good” one, which would result in every game to play out the same.

For example, in Werewolves online, when the sun rises and the villagers start debating to decide who they are going to kill, they always follow the same pattern : choosing someone random and asking them to defend themselves. This is now so common that people just ask for a “def” next to their target’s username. Then, you can simply answer with your role or be too vague and become suspicious. Nobody questions this way of playing, it has become the norm and could easily be included in the game rules.

This is what I want to avoid : having a set of actions be the only acceptable way to play my game. I want the players to make choices, to be able to build strategies. This includes having several courses of action possible at all time, but also, having them all be as interesting and useful (depending of course of the player and their situation). And I count inaction as a course of action as well. Too often, in online games, doing nothing can be more profitable then being active : like hiding in a MMO shooting game, or not talking on the chat of Werewolves online. By not doing anything, you don’t attract the attention of the other players and might continue playing unnoticed.

This is not the kind of attitude I want to encourage in my game. Much like in real life, I want someone who stays quiet to be as suspicious as the one who talks a lot. I want inaction to be considered as an active strategy, with costs and advantages, and not as a hiding mechanism or “the easy way”. It is also important to provide dynamism to the whole game : having players be active not only because it is more fun, but because it benefits them.

EPOC

The thing with making a multiplayer game with loads of inter-player interactions is that it is very hard to prototype without having to do the whole thing. Which is why I have been quite anxious about my EPOC since the beginning.

During the break, I tried coming up with ideas on how to show my concept without having to code it. At the very beginning, Andrew suggested making a physical prototype, but one of my main goal with this project is to take advantage of the computer setting to build devices that could not work in real life. And that constraint proved to be the game-breaker in this idea as well as many other.

I was stuck, not being able to code my game but not being able to represent it in a derivative way either.

Last week, by sharing ideas with everyone, I thought of something else. Since I have started this project, I have always been thinking of rules, gameplay, interactions, and all that… They are crucial to my game, and from them derive the storyworld and the characters. But this is a creator’s way of thinking. For the EPOC, I have to think from the user or consumer’s perspective, to give a taste of how it would feel like to play my game. Sure, goals and devices are important, however, they may not be what will catch the audience’s attention and make them want to play. My game is a strategic game, sure, but it is also a RPG.

So, from here, my idea for my EPOC is to make a website that would showcase the game background, with the roles and powers, in an evocative way. I was thinking of character cards and simple explanation of rules. However, I don’t want this website to present these game elements in a linear way : while its goal is to gather the main game elements, it would also have to convey the mood of the game. The interface will be close to the final game’s interface, and the colors and sounds would also be here to suggest how it would feel like to play the final product.

System of alliance part. 2

Remember my last post and all those questions I had ? Well, I won’t try to say that I found an answer for all of them, far from it, but I now have several ideas that really help into establishing a core structure of gameplay. First, during these holidays, I had a breakthrough about my system of alliance : I think I am going to make it so that being in an alliance enables you to switch roles with the person(s) you start an alliance with. This is both very simple and full of potential, because it provides the dynamism and fluidity I wanted to incorporate in my game. No role would be fixed, you could keep switching roles with your ally or break the alliance if you are happy with the role you have (or the role you just got). The roles could be switched automatically every X seconds/minutes or it could be at the request of one the allies, and the others would have a certain time to refuse.

The way I see it, this system would mean that unlike other games in which you can see the players but not know their roles, this time, you would see the roles but not know who play them. I like this because it evokes a masquerade, where anybody can potentially take and wear any mask/role but it’s what’s behind that mask that is of interest. The roles would not be a secret, they would serve as props for the players to achieve their personal agendas. This would make the game more Murder-style, with people starting the game with a role and a goal to achieve.

As I continue to think about the mechanics of my game, I try to keep in mind two main principles : usefulness and balance. Indeed, there is no point in designing an in-game system if the players don’t use it because there is nothing to gain from it. All parts of the gameplay must be useful. There also has to be a balance between the different roles and goals in order to maintain an agreeable game experience for all players.

System of alliances

The main difficulty of my project, at this stage, is that I want to create something new without an initial canvas. I don’t have a driving inspiration to translate into a specific medium, which is why I previously listed my specifications. This way, I had something to support my reflection.

Since the beginning, I have had lots of ideas but they were often isolated and did not help me envision a global concept, up til I thought about the “system of alliances” I talked about in my pitch. I wanted to use this post to mention its outline.

One of the aspects on which I want to work is the faction and role system. In Werewolf, the gameplay revolves around two main factions : the Villagers and the Werewolves. This can be interesting when you have to defend yourself to the village, while not making yourself a target of the wolves. But in my project, there is no “debate” time, since I don’t want people talking. So I was thinking of replacing the faction system by a kind of flexible social structure similar to a royal court, in which people could form and break alliances depending on the information they get and the trust they manage to build with the other players.

I think this system could be a source of dynamism and fluidity, with plot twists and power plays. Also, talking about alliances, spies and power gives me a starting point on which to derive interesting roles and power, as well as a story world in general. I can ask myself a lot of “Yes/No” questions instead of the never-ending “How ?”s. Are powers and roles fixed at the beginning on the game, or can people gain or lose theirs ? By having people trust you, do you gain more power ? And how does that translate into the game ? Should I create some type of money/resource to materialize the trust put in others ? What goals should the people pursue ? Should every player try to reach the top of this social hierarchy/system or are there other agendas possible ? …

I plan on taking advantage on the mid-semester break to refine my ideas, so see you next week-end!

ASSESSMENT TASK 1: PITCH PEER FEEDBACK

Hi everyone ! As the title states, in this blog post I am going to provide feedback on my peers’ pitches for their digital narrative project.

Be sure you are comfortably seated, because Company #3 has some big projects coming !

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Makara’s project : The Land of Sanctity

What I really liked about Makara’s pitch was that from the first slide of her presentation, thanks to her choice of pictures, you understood immediately what it was about : the aboriginal culture. She then managed to convey the concept of her project : a 360-degree video that serves to show the potential tourists how to respect the aboriginal on their lands, specifically in famous sites such as Uluru. Usually, warning addressed to the tourists are not really effective because they are written on signs people can easily ignore, which is why I find the use of a 360-degree video interesting, because as a new media form it is intriguing and can attract the attention of the general public. Moreover, it is particularly immersive and can manage to convey the message more efficiently by creating an emotional connection to the viewer.

I feel a bit frustrated on one point though. The presentation was very succinct as is the point of a pitch, but I wish it included a mock up of an interface so that we could see how the content would look like from the viewer’s perspective, and how the interaction with him or her would play out.

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Mona’s project : What if one day there is no more infant formula for ‘your’ baby ?

This one is a bit harder for me because I feel like I did not really understand the phenomenon at the root of the project. It was very precise, with some very specific words, and I think Mona could have taken more time explaining the problem because I felt a bit overwhelmed during her pitch, trying to keep track of what was said. However, in retrospect I think I understand now, but I will have to check with her next week : the situation is that companies buy massively infant formula from local stores, leaving them empty for the families that need them in these areas, while these families may be the ones who provided it in the first place.

If I got it right, then I think it is a really interesting subject because it is the kind of economic practice you don’t hear about in the mainstream media despite its gravity. In this regard, I like how the title is aimed at generating a reaction from the viewer.

Mona seems to have a precise idea of both the form and the content of her project and I find it impressive. She is passionate about it and already thought of many aspects, such as taking into account both English-speaking and Chinese audiences by allowing the viewer to choose the language they want and to share it on several platforms.

However, I am worried about the feasibility of the project, which to me seems rather big and complex to tackle, especially from Australia. But Mona seems truly engaged so I would not be surprised if she had already thought about it and come up with solutions.

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Shena’s project : Samsara

I have something to confess: stories revolving around time-travel are my weakness. I really love the possibilities they give in terms of character dynamics and plots. I also think it is particularly appropriate for this kind of digital narrative because you can do a lot in terms of interaction with the player by building a dramatic tension surrounding his or her choices.

About the presentation itself, I think Shena may have spent too much time detailing the plot of the game while I would have liked to hear more about the gameplay and the system of points she mentioned. If I understood it correctly, by making “good” choices, you gain points and in the end your number of points dictates the ending. I think it is a simple yet efficient system, but I would like to know more about it. Is there only one type of points, and if you pass a certain threshold you win, otherwise you lose ? And if I “get along” very well with a certain character, but another becomes an enemy, will that have the same impact of the story as if I just stay “neutral” with both of them ?

I really liked the idea of time circling on itself with the best friend in the future building the notebook that saved her, and I wonder if Shena intends to find other ways to play with time. Life is Strange is an amazing game, quite different from what Shena plans to do, I think, in terms of gameplay, but the main theme is quite similar : manipulating time to save the main character’s best friend. She could look into it to see how it was handled. And as I am talking about gameplay, I found the images used in the presentation to be really pertinent : “RPG” is quite a broad term and can encompass many types of games, but the screenshots that were shown managed to convey what it meant in this case and how the game would look like.

I wished Shena would have talked a bit more about the personality of the characters, as she said that was one of the key feature of a good text-based RPG game.

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Lyn’s project : Butterfly Effect

With « Butterfly Effect », Lyn wants to make a webseries following a multilinear story in which each of the six storylines would be linked by seemingly innocuous objects, and lead to a tragic global final event.

I love this kind of stories, and here I find particularly interesting how Lyn wants to focus on objects instead of simply lining up the scenes or following the characters. From my experience, these kinds of multilinear stories usually focus on the characters and how they can easily affect each other, by using the different narrative segments to portray different points of view. These is the case for example in Gus Van Sant’s Elephant which I appreciated seeing among Lyn’s examples because it managed to efficiently convey the building of the tension towards the tragedy that the viewer knows is coming. So, in the case of Lyn’s project, I like the change in focus : the story is non-longer character-driven but is instead pushed forward by the little, apparently random things.

About the presentation itself, I found the diagram explaining the structure of the story to be clear and successful in translating the concept of the project. However, the detail of the storylines maybe should not have been fully included in the pitch, because there was too much information and it was written in too small letters. I think quick summaries of the characters and events would have helped more. Some pictures could have been an asset, too. As it is, I have trouble visualising how it is supposed to look like, it terms of decor for instance.

I also wonder about the feasibility, because if I remember correctly, Lyn talked about a truck accident. This sounds quite difficult to film at our level, so it may be a problem. But I am in no way a filmmaker, there could be some way to do it using after effects or other tricks. I will have to ask him next week.

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I declare that in submitting all work for this assessment I have read, understood and agree to the content and expectations of the assessment declaration.

Comparing two indie horror games

A few minutes ago, I finished The Moon Sliver, a indie horror game I bought for 1,99€ on Steam a few days ago along with other cheap horror games to see what was out there besides the widely known Outlast and Amnesia.

I finished this game feeling a bit disappointed. Not because the story was uninteresting, or the game not rich enough, as I saw pointed out in a few reviews. To me, this game was simply not horrific enough. I know that by saying this, I sound like your stereotypical dismissive teenage boy, but there is nothing to do about that… The story was good, the ambience was good. But during the course of the game, I never felt threatened or anxious.

This really makes me question what horror is to me. Am I one of these people who need screamers ? Last week, I played another short horror game called Sophie’s Curse which I liked better even though it pains me to say it because it was a whole lot less poetic than The Moon Sliver. In Sophie’s Curse, you need to navigate a house to keep the lights on ; if you can’t, a scary ghost-zombie appears and screams into your face, and you lose. As the game goes on, you will see weird figures crossing the corridor, among other horrific manifestations. To be honest, I did not play for long, because I quickly got stuck (yes, I am bad at games), making me lose and suffer the “game over” screamer twice consecutively… Which frustrated and annoyed me to the point where I just ragequit.

And yes, I still liked it a lot more than The Moon Sliver, because up til the end, it really felt like a horror game. I was unsettled, anxious to see what was going to happen… At the first horrific manifestation, I jumped on my chair… And it was amazing. Because through this scary out-of-place event, the in-game reality of an ordinary house stopped making sense. There was something wrong, something that shouldn’t be there. The artificial production that is this game made me feel a real emotion by breaking the artificial reality of its setting… I don’t know if I am being very clear, I am struggling to find the correct English words.

I would say that Sophie’s Curse managed to establish a certain in-game reality and break it efficiently, provoking the player’s anxiety and confusion ; while The Moon Sliver focused too much on telling an intriguing story from the beginning, resulting in the player waiting to learn the bottom of the mysteries while not worrying too much about it. At least, that is how I felt.

When I play a horror game, I don’t want to feel at ease. I want to question the in-game reality itself. I want to feel threatened, I want to rely on cues only for them to fail me.

This is the really tricky part of it, I think. To at the same time provide a believable trustworthy setting for the player to immerse him- or herself in it, and then breaking it to make him or her anxious or scared…

But figuring this out is what makes this project interesting, isn’t it ?

 

Specifications

To refresh your memory, or to give you an excuse to skip over my first post about this digital media project, here is where I am :

In the spirit of the game Mafia, I would like to build a multiplayer online strategic role-playing game in which each player would be assigned a role with a specific mission and goal, while not knowing the roles of their co-players.

But, the thing is, I don’t want to create a rehash of Werewolf, Mafia, or Town of Salem. Which is why I am thinking of not making the game about verbal communication.

How to do that ? How to create interactions between players without having them talk to one another ? This is a real challenge in terms of gameplay. All the more so because for now, I don’t have any definite idea about anything at this stage.

This made me realize that I was tackling the issue the wrong way. Instead of wondering about what I don’t know, I should think about what I know or at least want. So let’s get going, shall we ? Here are the specifications I have in mind for now :

• The aim of this project is to create a game, which is described in the Oxford dictionary as “An activity that one engages in for amusement or fun.” I must not forget the fun aspect of it.
• The game should be online and multiplayer. The collective aspect is really important to me, and I want the game to be easily accessible by anybody who wants to try it out with their friends for a quick session, without having to download it beforehand.
• The game should revolve around diverse player-to-player interactions.
• Players can have different or antagonistic goals from their playmates. Some people will have the same missions and some will not. As in Mafia, I want the players to have a shared goal, but also to be wary of the others.
• The game should rely on information asymmetry between the players.
• Every action performed by a player should have consequences that are visible and meaningful to the other players.
• The game should not allow the players to talk to each other : their actions themselves must carry enough information so that verbal communication is not necessary.

 

Horror, what horror ?

In 2008, on Halloween, I watched my first horror movie. It was early evening, we were a small dozen of 12 y.o. kids trying to have the most Halloweeny experience possible. What better way to achieve that than to watch a horror film ? My friend had borrowed 1408, adapted from Stephen King’s eponymous novella. We didn’t know anything about horror films so we didn’t argue about it. We put it on…

…and I loved it. It was not the kind of horror movie I expected, it was not about blood or explicit violence, and that’s what made me love it. You couldn’t know what was going to happen, you couldn’t know if what you saw was real or not. Of course, at some point, it reached a point where we altogether stopped trusting anything that was happening on screen, but I still enjoyed it deeply. It was confusing and unsettling, in some very simple but amazing way. Almost ten years after, I still remember the dread I felt when it is understood that the person on the other side of the street is only a duplicate of the main character.

After that, I think it was only a matter of circumstances that I didn’t voluntarily watch any other horror film. My friends – nor I, actually – showed any particular interest in watching these kinds of movies. But if someone had suggested it, I wouldn’t have said no.

Fast-forward to two and a half years ago, I decided to watch The Shining. Because I was alone, I had the whole evening to myself, and I suddenly felt this twinge of curiosity for the horror genre to which I had never truly given a chance. So I watched this famous horror movie, and I got bored. I liked the first part, when you don’t know what is going on, but when Jack Nicholson’s character gets completely possessed, the movie lost all its appeal to me. This was just not the kind of horror I was interested in.

This is why I never played horror video games. Because the ones I knew relied too heavily on showing what is scary, whereas I love not knowing. I love not understanding what is going on, being confused and anxious. Once you show that all the other characters are weird cannibalistic zombies, no matter how many screamers you add to your game, it loses most of its appeal to me.

Which is why I am more likely to use Doctor Who’s Midnight episode than, say, Outlast, as a reference point for the project I am concocting. Because as long as there is doubt, to me, there is fear.

The beginning – the Werewolf game and how it inspires me

When I arrived here at RMIT and started thinking about what I wanted to do, I had two ideas in mind :

• The first was about making a horror solo video game that would really unsettle me, as opposed to the gory jumpy games I often stumble upon. I dedicated this project to the Animation, Games and Interactivity course, so if you want to know more about it, refer to the relevant category. I should be filling it up soon.
• While this first idea was about creating a unique immersive experience for one player, this second one is more about imagining a collective role-play strategic digital game.

Have you ever heard of the game Werewolf ? In France, its most famous version is a party card game called Les Loups-garous de Thiercelieux (or The Werewolves of Millers Hollow in English). A website was even created to provide an online version of the game, using a chat. Once again, it is in French ; if you want to test it anyway, I think Town of Salem is kind of similar and in the same spirit. But I have only played it a couple times a few months ago, so I am far from a veteran player.

To summarize the concept of the game : at the beginning of a game, each player is given a role (Townperson, Werewolf, Seer, Hunter, …) and thus a purpose and a set of actions to perform in certain circumstances during the game. Nobody knows the others’ roles, except for the Werewolves who acknowledge one another when they choose their first victim, and possibly other roles depending on the version of the game being played. Most of the times there are two factions : the Werewolves, whose goal is to secretly kill everyone in the Village, and the Village, whose goal is to identify and kill all the Werewolves among them.

What I love about these games is how they manage to mix both role-playing and strategy in the most basic way. A game can last from 10 minutes to a lot more depending on how many people are playing. And every game is different, because it is all about the players : how they choose to go with their role, how they accuse people, how they defend themselves, …

It is a fascinating concept. And the next question would be : how can one make a digital game out of that ? The interesting part of the board game is bringing people together, setting the atmosphere, trying to guess who is lying (or to hold on to your lies) while every accusation and defense is being weighted. The face to face aspect is a major component of the experience ; it raises the stakes by putting every player in the spotlight and creates dynamism.

But the success of the online versions put this fact into question.

I will not dwelve into this because I already spent too much time on explaining the gameplay. But what I will point out is that both real-life and online versions rely on communication. They are all about people discussing, explaining and arguing. The real-life version simply allows for body language where the online one can only rely on what is and was said and comparing it to the actions committed.

My idea for this digital media project would be to create a similar collective experience : having people with different (antagonistic ?) missions and goals, with an incomplete knowledge of what is going on, and making them interact digitally with one another to sort out a situation, without relying on basic communication. Maybe it would be creating something, and each player would have a different agenda and would try to balance the whole construction in their favor depending on their goals, while still relying on the actions of others.

I would need to think about the interactions between the players and the game, but also between the players themselves. There has to be a balance between these elements : the medium, the users and the concept of the game. I want the platform I choose to be sufficient for the users, unlike the chat format used by the Werewolf website which can become quickly frustrating because of its limitations.

This is still vague and I will need to explore these ideas more in depth in my next blog posts. But right now, this is where I am.

Thanks for reading !