Sean Bouchard tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard/213 2009-11-15T23:13:24Z Movable Type 3.31 Black Swan tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.10579 2009-11-15T21:52:53Z 2009-11-15T23:13:24Z Here is an IF project that I did for World Building last week. Please, try it out and send me comments! A couple notes for anyone who would be interested in playtesting: This is not a complete game, in the... Sean Bouchard Play Black Swan online!]]> Sunday Playtest / Playdate tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.10266 2009-07-27T21:40:00Z 2009-07-27T21:59:38Z First of all, thank you to everybody who stopped by last week for the get-together / brainstorming session. I had a great time, and got a lot of great ideas, so I'm going to hold another get-together this Sunday. All... Sean Bouchard First of all, thank you to everybody who stopped by last week for the get-together / brainstorming session. I had a great time, and got a lot of great ideas, so I'm going to hold another get-together this Sunday. All are welcome! Fun, games, baked goods and pizza (or some sort of non-pizza food, as the group decides) will all be present. We'll start around 2:00 on Sunday the 2nd, but let me know if you can't make that time. This time around I'll have a more complete prototype of Suits for us to playtest, with rules and everything. Building off of the feedback from last time, it's more complex, more cooperative, and more personalized to different character roles. It could still use a lot of work, so I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who's interested in playing it. Again, I've got some Bond movies that I'll bring and there are lots of games to play in the GIL. I've also got a copy of I'm the Boss that I'd really like to try out. And, of course, I'll bring back Dominion for anyone who's interested in playing another game of that. Sunday Get-Together/Brainstorming Session tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.10244 2009-07-14T23:29:13Z 2009-07-14T23:52:33Z Sean Bouchard July 19th 2pm, 8pm 2009 — Suits Brainstorming & Social— at ZML
First we'll brainstorm on a new game (all are welcome), and then we'll hang out and watch movies or whatever.
Greetings, all. I don't know about the rest of you, but I miss the creative fervor that pretty much filled my days just a few short weeks ago, B.S.B. (Before Summer Break). I'm working on my 491 game this summer, but it just isn't the same without other people around to bounce ideas off of and get excited with. So on Sunday I'm going to have a brainstorming session for Suits, and take the opportunity to have a little mid-summer get-together, as well. What do you say?]]> Suits is an online negotiation game set in a reverse-spy-genre office building - you play the villain in a James Bond story, and your primary job is to manage employees and resources so that other people can get on with building submersible cities, smuggling nanobot weapons, and holding the sun hostage. It also might be a management sim, a roleplaying game, or a CCG. If you have any interest in any of this - or just want to hang out and talk about game design for a while - come on Sunday. I'd love to get lots of opinions about the game and the directions that it could go. Don't worry if you aren't enrolled in 491. I'm just looking for people to talk to. I'm thinking that we'll gather at 2:00 at the ZML, if that works for people - let me know if you'd like to come but have a schedule conflict. We can talk about the game for a little bit and then, if you want to stick around, watch a movie or play a tabletop game. I'll bring some Bond films and Dominion (an excellent card game that I discovered recently) and get us a pizza or something. If you have any other suggestions, drop me a line. New Post at Softcore Gamer: Greatly Exaggerated tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.10179 2009-05-19T07:35:39Z 2009-05-19T07:40:30Z Brenda Braithwaite recently made some comments that I consider controversial, and I responded. If you're interested in interactive fiction, you might be interested in this.... Sean Bouchard some comments that I consider controversial, and I responded. If you're interested in interactive fiction, you might be interested in this.]]> Brenda Braithwaite posted a very eloquent eulogy for the text parser as a method by which players can interact with games. I can't help but wonder what brought on this sudden funereal outburst. Did something happen that causes you to suddenly toll the death knell for text-based games? I'm especially curious because it seems a bit premature - or, at least, somewhat misleading.]]> CTIN544 Story Assignment tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.9972 2009-02-21T15:56:42Z 2009-02-21T23:29:20Z I was a little at a loss as to what to do for this assignment. I came up with half an idea for something recombinant based on Jane Austen Unscripted, but I didn't have time to develop it. So I... Sean Bouchard I was a little at a loss as to what to do for this assignment. I came up with half an idea for something recombinant based on Jane Austen Unscripted, but I didn't have time to develop it. So I opted for lots of particles. Particles make everything better. here. (I'm having some inexplicable trouble with YouTube playing this video really slow, but the lossless version is too big to upload here. Suggestions?) To see the code or run it yourself, download the zip package here. If you go into the code, you can set it to produce a 1024x768 version that takes super-long to render, if you want.]]> HanakoLand tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.9954 2009-02-16T16:20:37Z 2009-02-16T16:59:55Z For a CTWR518 assignment from last week, here is my slideshow presentation on HanakoLand, a theme park based on the properties of Hanako Games.... Sean Bouchard For a CTWR518 assignment from last week, here is my slideshow presentation on HanakoLand, a theme park based on the properties of Hanako Games. here. A common theme in all of the Hanako games is a wide variety of possible endings. When the game is over, the player is given a short story the describes what happens to the character. In many ways, HanakoLand is a typical Disneyland-like theme park, with rides and activities based on the characters and locations that visitors know from the games. I thought that people would be able to intuitively understand the park on this level, but I also wanted to incorporate this idea of a variety of endings. So, laid on top of the physical park is a massively multiplayer time-management role-playing game. Each park visitor plays a character, with a set of attributes and skills, and every thing they do in the park changes their statistics. Riding the scary roller-coaster, for example, increases a player's Courage attribute. Taking a ballroom dance class increases their Dancing skill. These statistics have an effect in several park activities, such as in Heileen's Adventure, a branching dark ride, like a nonlinear version of Pirates of the Caribbean. Depending on the combined statistics of everyone in each car, the car will take a different path through the collection of decorated and animatronic scenes. When the visitors leave the park, they receive a print-out of a character destiny, in the Hanako style, based on their own or their group's statistics at the end of the day. When someone comes back to the park, they're likely to plan out their day so that they end up with different statistics and, hence, a different destiny. That gives you an idea of what HanakoLand is all about, so hopefully the slides will make some sense. You can download them here. And I would encourage you to poke around Hanako Games as well, if only to keep up on the world of indie games for girls.]]> Story-o-matic tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.9953 2009-02-16T15:48:39Z 2009-02-16T16:20:29Z A CTWR518 assignment from a couple weeks back. My randomly-generated prompt called for a wealthy person for a protagonist, a ship at sea for a setting, and a murder for an inciting incident. One note: I didn't intend to name... Sean Bouchard A CTWR518 assignment from a couple weeks back. My randomly-generated prompt called for a wealthy person for a protagonist, a ship at sea for a setting, and a murder for an inciting incident. One note: I didn't intend to name the main character after Jack Nicholson's character in The Shining. It seemed like a good name in my head and I didn't realize why it sounded so familiar until after the story was turned in. I'll retcon that, though, and suggest that in the future it becomes popular practice to name children after the villain in old movies. On Thursday, Jack Torrence woke up an extremely wealthy man. He knew it before he checked the logs. He knew it before he had even opened his eyes. For a full minute he lay there in the inch-too-short folding bed, savoring the sensation. He tried out a few different adjectives. Fabulously rich. Outrageously rich. Obscenely rich. He rolled them around on his tongue. He pictured himself in a tuxedo, at a party in a hotel. His party. His hotel, even. He imagined himself in a sleek, cherry-red convertible, some ridiculous gas-powered model from the turn of the millennium, tearing through the streets of Hyderabad, or Cincinnati. Someplace inland. Someplace that didn't smell like salt all the god damn time. He opened his eyes. Soon, he thought to himself. He made himself a cup of coffee, took a shower, put on a t-shirt and a pair of sweatpants, and laced up his running shoes. Only then did he bother to look at the logs from the night before. At 3:07, the package had come to the front of the queue and been pushed into the cloud. At 3:16, the agreed-upon sum had been deposited into the agreed-upon account, exactly the way he had expected it. And he had earned every last penny. He'd known the conditions when he'd taken the job: specific targets, data and encryption keys, that would have to be tracked down before they could be accessed; a high level of network security; cautious personnel. Pharmaceuticals were always cautious. And it was on a city-ship, which made access even more difficult. He had known when he agreed that he'd have to embed here, and that it might take a long time to build up information, to probe the system, to find somebody he could use. And it had taken a long time--eight months, bobbing around the ocean in a tin can--but Jack had found Liu Yung-fa. Liu was a very nice young man who had been promoted to middle-management just a little soon. He attended religious services weekly, and volunteered for a civic organization in his free time. He considered himself a coder, and knew just enough to be dangerous. He sent money to his parents every month to support his mother's chronic illness. He had a girl back home, and had stayed more-or-less faithful to her for almost a year since he'd come to Kurma. He liked the cinema, especially social interactives and comedies. Jack had gotten most of this from digging through the trash in Liu's office and apartment complex while posing as a janitor and a representative of the corporate recycling program, respectively. He'd accessed Liu's phone records, of course, and network usage statistics, offsite storage, email archives, and financial portfolio, by cold-calling various record-keeping agencies as a harried supervisor, as a government regulator, or as Liu himself. Liu was careful with his access to sensitive company data and had quite good security practices, but some of his employees were not quite as careful, and many of them had family in Kurma who could be quite careless. It had taken a long time for Jack to research all of these people, infiltrate the network, work his way closer to Liu, and manipulate circumstances to a point that he could take advantage of all the information he'd gathered. He had done it, though. Yesterday, he'd obtained the last of the data he'd been hired to deliver, and as of 3:07 this morning he had delivered it. He'd done it carefully, and he'd done it well. No one directly connected to Liu knew that their information had been compromised. Liu's corporation would find out there had been a leak in six or so weeks, when competitors started publishing competing drugs. Liu himself would never imagine that he had been the source. Jack had expected no trouble with the upload or about his payment. One advantage of taking a corporate client was that businessmen tended to respect the terms of a contract. He had slept well, and had woken early only because, now that it was done, he was anxious to get the hell out of Kurma. They would be coming within range of Mombasa today, if the forecast hadn't changed, and with any luck at all he would be on continent before tea. As Jack stepped out of the small apartment, a door hissed closed behind him. The world was quiet, bathed in the low ambient light that indicated nighttime without impairing vision. He looked up and down Bhandara Road, a corridor six meters wide and half that tall painted powder blue, lined with doors just like his. Just before dawn was the only time that the streets really cleared out; most of the residents of Kurma were coders, and most of the coders were nocturnal. Jack found the empty streets vaguely disturbing. Space was at such a premium in the city, in general, that it seemed improper to have so much of it empty all at one time. And without the heat of moving bodies, the air conditioning seemed oppressive. He set off at a brisk pace, heading upward, toward the surface. Outside was not much better. The strong wind and the ocean spray cut through his clothing and chilled him to the bone. It was dark, too, with nothing but the moon providing light through a thin cloud cover. He had emerged near one of the edges of the city, practically overlooking the water. He peered inward, toward the center, toward the flagpole, but he couldn't begin to make it out in this light. It was only four kilometers, though, and he wanted to see the flag with his own eyes. He stretched his calves and started a slow jog up the radial. There were no buildings on the surface of the city - in fact, there was very little on the surface. Some city-ships experimented with solar arrays to offset the enormous energy expenditure associated with running and cooling a city-wide server farm, but a complex topology made maintenance exponentially more complicated. And protecting the surface from corrosion was a serious concern. Kurma kept its topology simple, its maintenance costs down, and imported all of its energy from continental cities. Jack's path led him up the gentle curve that defined the surface, turning the city into an enormous hexagonal bubble floating in the middle of the ocean. The flagpole at the curve's apex would be flying a Kenyan flag this morning, signaling that the city-ship had come into continental waters and was prepared to abide by the agreements between Kenya and the Confederation of Independent City-Ships. The sun was breaching the horizon as Jack approached the flagpole, and he frowned slightly as he dropped into a walk. Instead of the black, red and green that he had been hoping to see, the flag showed blue and white stripes - the colors flown by a city-ship in independent waters. He scanned the horizon, but there was no sign of the African coast. Something else caught his eye: another hexagonal bubble floating a scant few kilometers to the east. Delphin. They'd been docked yesterday, and they'd been scheduled to remain docked for the next several days. For some reason, the enormous magnetic locks had been released and the two cities had drifted apart. Something was going on, though Jack didn't understand what. He was missing some vital piece of information that would allow him to understand. He turned toward the nearest hatch to make his way back below the surface. He flipped on the intra when he got to his apartment. If something had happened to change the city's itinerary to this extent, there would be something about it on the morning newscast. Not everything, most likely, but enough to point him in the right direction if he needed to investigate further. The hair on his arms stood on end as a large picture of Liu Yung-fa appeared on the screen. “--ice have ordered a temporary suspension of the city's itinerary while the investigation is being conducted, in accordance with international anti-terrorism agreements. Once again, police suspect that the murder of Liu Yung-fa is related to an apparent act of industrial sabotage. A preliminary investigation of the scene revealed that key-logging hardware had been affixed to Mr. Liu's local client, and network analysis shows recent uncharacteristic access of sensitive data. Officials are stepping up their response to this situation given the dangerous nature of the information that appears to have been stolen--instruction-sets for printing newly developed wide-deployment chemical weapons. Police have ordered a temporary suspension of the city's itinerary while the investigation is being conducted.” Jack had gone cold. Chemical weapons? He had believed the data he was liberating from Liu to be some sort of new vaccine. What was it really for? And what had happened to Liu? Someone had killed him, apparently, but why? For the same data that Jack had already stolen? Or perhaps he was being set up. Police had found a keylogger attached to Liu's computer, and that wasn't Jack's. Someone else might have put it there for their own purposes, or it might have been planted simply to point in the direction of industrial sabotage. Either way, it was trouble for Jack. The investigators would start by checking network traffic, local and outbound. Jack had encrypted the package before he pushed it out last night, but he hadn't bothered to reshape it. If it really was the same data that the police were looking for, it wouldn't take them long to come up with a match. And the city was being locked down. There was no way out.]]> CTIN544 Library Assignment (Updated) tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.9882 2009-01-29T21:39:08Z 2009-01-30T05:05:15Z For a CTIN544 assignment, this program demonstrates use of the networking library built into Processing. UPDATED: Fixed a bug in the server and extensively commented the code. No longer including compiled builds, but leave a comment if you need one.... Sean Bouchard For a CTIN544 assignment, this program demonstrates use of the networking library built into Processing. UPDATED: Fixed a bug in the server and extensively commented the code. No longer including compiled builds, but leave a comment if you need one. You can compile it yourself on any system using Processing. Download file. ]]> New Post at Softcore Gamer: Getting in Trouble tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.9821 2009-01-14T04:45:19Z 2009-01-14T05:05:23Z I just posted a new entry, Getting in Trouble, over at my blog Softcore Gamer. It contains a brief review of Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, recently nominated by the WGA for best writing in a video game in... Sean Bouchard Getting in Trouble, over at my blog Softcore Gamer. It contains a brief review of Dangerous High School Girls in Trouble, recently nominated by the WGA for best writing in a video game in 2008, and a long digression about grinding as a necessary feature in RPGs.]]> New Post at Softcore Gamer: Learning Curve tag:interactive.usc.edu,2009:/members/sbouchard//213.9816 2009-01-12T22:30:08Z 2009-01-14T04:45:55Z I just posted a new entry, Learning Curve, over at my blog Softcore Gamer. It might be of interest.... Sean Bouchard Learning Curve, over at my blog Softcore Gamer. It might be of interest.]]> Butterfly Garden: Capture Prototype tag:interactive.usc.edu,2008:/members/sbouchard//213.9738 2008-11-26T10:30:35Z 2008-11-26T11:00:04Z My Xbox is out of commission and I'm so burned out on my 534/541 final that I can't even make my brain think about it, so instead I spent the evening making a digital prototype for the casual game I... Sean Bouchard Butterfly Garden: Capture. There was some amount of skepticism that the idea would actually make a workable game, and I figured there's only one way to know for sure. So you can check out the rough prototype here, if you like.]]> to quote Raph Koster. But it's not a whole lot of fun. This is a very early prototype, so more than anything else I'm looking for potential, and I think it might be there. But if you have a chance, give it a look and let me know what you think.]]> Boundary Conditions: Trust and Consequence in Negotiation Games tag:interactive.usc.edu,2008:/members/sbouchard//213.9594 2008-10-23T19:31:06Z 2008-10-23T19:54:29Z (For a CTCS505 assignment.) The concept of boundaries is fundamental to the design of games. Traditionally, games have explicit and unequivocal demarcations that separate the space of the game-world from the larger world around it. The spacial boundaries of a... Sean Bouchard (For a CTCS505 assignment.) The concept of boundaries is fundamental to the design of games. Traditionally, games have explicit and unequivocal demarcations that separate the space of the game-world from the larger world around it. The spacial boundaries of a game like tennis are clearly marked by the court; games like chess and go are likewise bounded by the edges of the game board. But even more important than spacial boundaries are the ideal conditions that determine when a game is being played and who is a participant in it. Participants are always clearly differentiated from non-participants, even when the two groups occupy the same space. The act of participation, which extends from the moment of invitation to play until the conclusion of the game, is an implicit social agreement between parties that a game is taking place within the agreed-upon spacial, temporal and conceptual boundaries, and that the actions they take within the context of that agreed-upon game have a different meaning than they would have outside the game. In Rules of Play, Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman say that within the boundaries of the game, "special meanings accrue and cluster around objects and behaviors. In effect, a new reality is created, defined by the rules of the game and inhabited by its players."1 All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course... The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc., are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e., forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.2 The magic circle describes the constructed reality that players create when they agree to play a game. Ideally, perhaps, this constructed reality is separate from the real world. In Game Design Workshop, Tracy Fullerton states that "the rules and goals that are driving the players apply only within the game and not in 'real life,'"3 and goes on to say that "the act of agreeing to play, to accept the rules of the game, to enter what Huizinga calls the 'magic circle,' is a critical part of feeling safe that the game is temporary, that it will end, or that you can leave or quit if you don't want to play anymore."4 This sense of safety is vitally important to our understanding of game-playing, and its relationship to the explicit boundaries placed on the magic circle is instinctively understood. Movies like The Game (1997) or Saw (2004) play off the audience's intuitive understanding of this relationship by describing games that extend beyond established boundaries in order to elicit anxiety from the audience. Chris Crawford, in The Art of Computer Game Design, asserts that this notion of safety is one of the fundamental properties of games. "In short, a game is a safe way to experience reality... This is not to imply that games are devoid of consequences. The penalties for losing a game can sometimes be a significant deterrent to game play."5 It's worthwhile to note that even when Crawford is talking about the potential consequences of a game, he limits himself to the case where the penalties associated with losing the game affect a player's willingness to participate in future games. To some extent, it is taken for granted that games are self-contained worlds, the events of which have little or no effect on the reality outside of them. In most cases, perhaps, this is true. But the nature of negotiation games causes a greater interaction between the internal reality of the game and the external reality of the real world. In fact, the genre of negotiation games is built upon ideas that depend on the permeability of the magic circle. This interaction between the real world and the constructed reality of the game taps into the same discomfort and anxiety as The Game and Saw, and this emotional resonance can heighten the experience of the game for the players. It also means that the events of the game can have greater consequences in the world beyond the boundaries of the game. Negotiation games are frequently classified as a sub-genre of strategy games, and certainly there are similarities. Strategy games are based on rational decision-making and a player's ability to outwit his opponent to gain an advantage. Fullerton describes them as "focus[ing] on tactics and planning as well as the management of units and resources."6 Because of the focus on tactics and strategy, these games generally involve highly formalized systems that regulate the way players interact. Negotiation games typically focus on exactly these same elements, but also add negotiation, a channel of informal interaction between players that allows them to bargain, make deals, and trade favors in order to attain a mutually advantageous position. This introduces the concept of social play to the game, which fundamentally changes the dynamic systems that emerge. Brenda Braithwaite and Ian Schriber describe the effects of introducing this type of element to a game in Challenges for Game Designers: "Whenever multiple players are working together toward mutual goals, a whole host of social choices come into play. There's the mix of cooperation versus competition. Alliances can be forged and broken. Promises of future considerations in exchange for help at present can be made."7 The archetypal example of a negotiation game is Diplomacy (1959), a board game set in pre-WWI Europe. Diplomacy is, in many ways, reminiscent of the classic strategy game Risk (1957): players in both games act on behalf of an international power, amassing and deploying military forces, in an attempt to gain control of territory. The greatest difference between the games is that the design of Risk only recognizes interaction between players through movement of pieces on the game board, while Diplomacy includes an explicit period of verbal negotiation between players as a part of every round. The purpose of this negotiation is to allow players to coordinate their actions to achieve short-term goals. The design of the game means that a move which is not well-supported by other players is likely to be negated. Accomplishing anything, then, depends upon a player's ability to successfully arrange support for his moves, generally by forming alliances or making agreements with other players. This is a selling point of the game; the marketing for Diplomacy states that the game "challenges players to rely on their own cunning and cleverness, not dice, to determine the outcome[.]"8 The key to understanding Diplomacy is the fact that effective action requires cooperation in the short term, but cooperation is a bad long-term strategy. As Salen and Zimmerman describe, "Only one player can ultimately emerge as victor, and it is usually just a matter of time before deceit festers and player alliances are broken, reshuffled, and reformed. Which of your allies are going to betray you - and how? In the game of Diplomacy, as in the diplomatic processes it depicts, social skills are at least as important as strategic thinking."9 This point is important. Negotiation games are performative in a way that pure strategy games are not, involving social interaction that is not regulated by the rules of the game and, specifically, acts of persuasion. Persuasion requires a certain amount of rhetorical skill and a certain amount of trust. In order for any persuasive argument to be effective, the persuader must first convince the listener that he can be trusted, even if, in reality, he can't. This is all well and good as far as the design of the game dynamics goes, but the involvement of trust is important for two reasons. First, trust between individuals is inexorably tied to the interpersonal relationship between those individuals. Second, trust is emotional. Game Design Workshop reminds us of the earlier assumption that games are completely self-contained and completely isolated from the real world when it says, "Players are not precisely bound in a physical sense by any of the rules... They are, however, conceptually bound by the social agreement that they are playing the game and that they will not leave the game with some of the cards or add extra cards to the deck."10 In truth, however, players bring things to the game and take things from it all the time - although not necessarily physical materials like cards.
The idea that games exist within a larger context that affects and is affected by the behavior of player's while they play the game is called metagaming. Rules of Play describes it like this: "In metagaming, players engage with the game and each other through activities and interactions outside the confines of explicit game play."11 Metagaming was described by Richard Garfield in an essay titled "Metagames" in four broad categories: What a player brings to a game, what a player takes away from a game, what happens during a game other than the game itself, and what happens between games.12
It is worth considering these categories with respect to the specific issue of trust as a key element in negotiation games. In this case, what a player brings to a game is a set of existing relationships with the other players. Arguably, this is something that negotiation games have in common with every other type of game. In negotiation games, however, the significance of this fact changes. As Brathwaite and Schreiber put it, "There are even metagame considerations of the social relationships of the players outside of the game itself; one plays the board game Diplomacy differently with close friends than with total strangers."13 One plays differently with close friends because of the trust that is tied to the preexisting relationship between the players. What the player takes away from the game is essentially the same thing that he brings to it: his social relationships to the other players, based on their mutual trust. Garfield's third category concerns what happens during a game other than the game itself. Rules of Play says:
This category of the metagame is quite diverse, and refers to the influence of real life on a game in play. There are many factors external to the magic circle that enter into the experience of play, factors that are always present and often quite powerful. Among the ways that the metagame occurs during play are social factors such as competition and camaraderie, or the physical environment such as good lighting or a noisy atmosphere. Trash talking, playing "head games," and exploiting player reputations all affect the metagame as well.14
In the case of negotiation games, playing head games and exploiting player reputations are built into the dynamic systems of the game. Specifically, these games call for the agreements and understandings based on the trust inherent in the pre-existing relationship between two players, and then create incentives for those agreements to be broken and that trust to be betrayed. Because the trust that underlies the interpersonal relationships between players was not created within the confines of the magic circle but rather was brought in by the players from their social relationships in the real world, breaking that trust within the context of the game has the potential to damage the relationship that persists past the conclusion of the game. Another passage from Rules of Play describes this mixing of the real world mixing into the formal system of the game through social play:
We sometimes viewed games as enclosed, internally driven systems of experience, at other times as systems that interact with the world at large. Nowhere has this double-framing been as evident as in our discussion of social play. Whether it is bounded and unbounded play communities or the ideal and the real rules of games, social play is at once contingent on the formal structures of rules, while also very much a product of larger social contexts.15
This potential shouldn't be overestimated. People play games, including games with strong components of social interaction, even negotiation games, without destroying their friendships with other players. Keep in mind the way Fullerton describes the alternate-reality of the game-world: "The boundaries of the game serve as a way to separate everything that goes on in the game from daily life. So while you might act the part of a cutthroat opponent facing off against your friends within the boundaries of a game... you can shake hands at the end of the game and walk away without any real damage to your relationships."16 Usually, the boundaries that separate the game world from the real world operate the way that they're supposed to. A betrayal of trust within the context of a game of Diplomacy is understood to be an emergent element of the game design and an action limited to the context of the game, not reflecting the real-world relationship between players. But this is the point when it is prudent to recall the emotional nature of trust. Emotions can be difficult to predict, or to control, even when the rational mind understands the distinction between the game-world and reality. Popular amateur game critic and humorist Matthew Baldwin describes negotiation games like Diplomacy as "friendship-enders" because they are capable of "wreak[ing] complete and irreparable damage to your hard-won friendships."17 Because negotiation games utilize the established trust of players' existing relationships, they tap into an emotional core that can serve to provide tension and heighten the intensity of play. This is a powerful tool for game designers, but there is a potential danger. The nature of the magic circle is fundamentally the creation of a shared, constructed reality within which players agree, implicitly, to follow a certain set of rules and associate a certain set of meanings with particular events and actions. This understanding of the game-world as a separate reality, and each player's willingness to cross that participatory boundary, is based on each player's trust that the other players will uphold the rules of that constructed reality and its distinction from the real world. When the procedures of the game call for breaking trust, it can call into question the mutual trust on which the construction of the game reality is based - and hence, the legitimacy of the understood boundary between the game and reality. If a game tries to tap into this particular emotion without becoming a "friendship-ender," it must be carefully designed to make sure the players do not lose their sense of separation from reality, the safety which, as Crawford said, a game is meant to provide.
Works Cited 1. Salen, Katie and Zimmerman, Eric. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. MIT Press, 2004. p. 96. 2. Huizinga, Johan. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture. Beacon Press, 1971. p.10. 3. Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop: A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. Elsevier Inc, 2008. p. 32. 4. Ibid. p. 78. 5. Crawford, Chris. The Art of Computer Game Design: Reflections of a Master Game Designer. Osborne/McGraw-Hill, 1984. 6. Game Design Workshop. p. 416. 7. Brathwaite, Brenda and Schreiber, Ian. Challenges for Game Designers: Non-Digital Exercises for Video Game Designers. Charles River Media, 2009. p. 90. 8. "Wizards of the Coast Diplomacy." 2008. Amazon.com. 22 October 2008 . 9. Rules of Play. p. 429. 10. Game Design Workshop. p. 32. 11. Rules of Play. p. 540. 12. Garfield, Richard. "Metagames." Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Essays on Roleplaying. Jolly Roger Games, 2000. 13. Challenges for Game Designers. p 90. 14. Rules of Play. p. 483. 15. Ibid. p. 485. 16. Game Design Workshop. p. 79. 17. Baldwin, Matthew. "Friendship-Enders." 2008. Defective Yeti. 22 October 2008 .]]> Photopia and the Illusion of Control tag:interactive.usc.edu,2008:/members/sbouchard//213.9593 2008-10-23T19:02:38Z 2008-10-23T19:55:17Z (For a CTCS505 assignment... uh, a while ago.) (Note: I highly recommend that you play Photopia, and that you do so before reading this, as the following will contain some spoilers for the game. Photopia is one of the defining... Sean Bouchard Photopia, and that you do so before reading this, as the following will contain some spoilers for the game. Photopia is one of the defining works of interactive fiction and, in addition to that, it is relatively short (around forty minutes) and accessible to newcomers to the medium. If you haven't yet played the game, you can find an online version here, or download the script and interpreter from here.) ]]> Photopia is an interesting example of nonlinear narrative because, within the interactive fiction community, it's considered extremely linear. In the context of traditional media studies, of course, the story is told in a nonlinear manner - segments appear out of chronological order and interrupt what would otherwise be a continuous narrative. In interactive fiction, however, linearity is generally used to describe how much the story can change based on the actions of the player. IF is frequently based on a branching narrative structure, in which the player's decisions affect the outcome of the story. In this sense, Photopia is quite linear. Regardless of what actions the player takes, the same story is told. Take, for example, the illustrative third scene of the game, in which the player, as Mary Dawson, witnesses her daughter drowning in a pool in the backyard. The intention of this scene is for the player to discover Alley, pull her out of the pool, and perform CPR. A third character, Gabriel, stands nearby, giving the player instructions, and serving to increase the sense of urgency in the scene. If the player fails or refuses to take the intended actions, however, Gabriel will step in and save Alley, ensuring that the end result of the scene is the same regardless of what actions the player takes. In another work of IF, the same scene might be constructed differently, so that the player could potentially fail to save Alley and thereby change the course of the narrative, or send the game to a failure-state. In Photopia, because it is such a linear narrative, these outcomes are not possible. At the same time, Photopia is not a work of static fiction. The choice to tell this story in an interactive medium was a deliberate one, and interactivity is an essential part of the experience. But, if the player can't actually influence the course of events, what precisely is the role of interactivity? Photopia uses an interactive format and the illusion of control to create a sense of agency, which creates the emotional resonance of certain scenes in the game. The interactive format gives the player a certain expectation about how they will relate to the story - namely, the player expects that the decisions he makes will matter. This expectation naturally leads to a feeling of responsibility. If the outcome of the story is based on the player's decisions, then the player is responsible for making good decisions that affect the story in a positive way. This sense of agency persists, even though actual control over the story is subverted. Again, let us examine the scene in which Alley is drowning in the pool. This scene evokes a feeling of desperation in the player: the shock of seeing the girl face-down in the pool is followed by frantic activity as Gregory continually reminds you that time is running out. The player's natural reaction is to feel pressure to act quickly and without making a mistake. Of course, we know that this reaction is somewhat misguided, since there is, in fact, no chance that a misstep on the player's part will result in Alley's death. Still, the player feels a sense of agency based on the fact that he is allowed to take actions within the context of the story, and this is the root cause of the emotion the player feels during this sequence. In a work of static fiction, this scene might focus on Mary's emotional state, describing to the reader the panic that she feels while trying to rescue her daughter, and the reader might feel a sympathetic desperation. But, in the context of static fiction, it is clear that the author is the one responsible for how the scene resolves. The reader may feel relief when Alley is ultimately saved, but it is relief that the author chose to save her, not that the reader himself managed to save her. By giving the player choices and a sense of agency, even if it is based on a mere illusion of control, the scene's emotional score is altered and amplified. The emotional impact of agency granted by the illusion of control is also well-demonstrated by the second scene of the game, in which the player, as Wendy Mackaye, explores the red planet. The player is permitted to move in any of the cardinal directions among the debris of a failed colony and encounters a series of specific locations before finally arriving at his destination. What is not made clear on the first play-through of the game is that these locations don't change based on the direction that the player chooses to move. Regardless of the player's choices, the events and their sequence is the same. The player's control over the narrative is, once again, completely illusory, but still provides a sense of agency that affects the emotional impact of the scene. The player believes they are actually exploring a space and feels, therefore, anxiety about taking a wrong turn and accomplishment at eventually reaching the goal. Agency, which gives the player a feeling of responsibility over the narrative, changes the emotional impact that the experience of that narrative for the player. The lesson that Photopia teaches us about agency is that it isn't about control over the narrative, but rather the feeling of control over the narrative. A well-constructed game can make the player feel responsible for the outcome of the choices he makes without actually giving him the power to affect that outcome. There are downsides to this approach, of course. If the player recognizes that his choices aren't affecting the course of the narrative, then the sense of agency is lost, and events lose the impact of any agency-based emotions. This makes the second play-through of the game a profoundly different experience than the first, since the player is likely to alter his actions and realize that there is no corresponding alteration in the narrative.]]> Undertow! tag:interactive.usc.edu,2008:/members/sbouchard//213.9453 2008-10-02T01:56:51Z 2008-10-02T07:09:59Z (For a CTIN541 assignment.) Undertow! is a mod of the popular family board game Up the River, with a grim slant. Instead of merrily rowing boats up the river, each player is responsible for a group of swimmers who are... Sean Bouchard Undertow! is a mod of the popular family board game Up the River, with a grim slant. Instead of merrily rowing boats up the river, each player is responsible for a group of swimmers who are being pulled out to sea. We were aiming, in our design, to hit a particular emotional note: hopeless desperation, waxing panic. I believe we hit that mark.]]> Bill Graner and I developed this game last week and had a very successful playtest on Monday night. It's still in the very early stages of development, though, and we'd love to get more feedback on it. To that purpose, we're publishing it here under a Creative Commons CC-BY-SA license so that you can read through the instructions and play it, if it catches your interest. If anyone has any questions or comments, please contact me or Bill, or leave a comment on this post. Download the rules (pdf). Undertow! Rules Overview Turn Summary
  1. The player may play one Lifeguard/Shark Card.
  2. The player rolls the die, then moves one or more of his swimmers further out to sea.
Play proceeds clockwise. All players take their turns in order until the game ends. At the end of a player's turn, if there are no more swimmers in the water, the game ends, and the player with the most swimmers on the beach wins. Setup Necessary Materials
  1. Undertow! game board
  2. 24 game pieces (4 different colors, 6 of each color)
  3. 1 six-sided die
  4. 8 Lifeguard/Shark Cards
Game Board The yellow portion of the game board is the beach.  The blue portion is the ocean, divided into 10 sections by white wavy lines. Game Pieces Each player takes six swimmer tokens.  Each player places one of his swimmers on each of the six sections of ocean closest to the beach (see diagram). Cards In a two-player game, each player takes 3 Lifeguard/Shark cards.  In a three- or four-player game, each player takes 2 cards. Gameplay Choose the First Player Each player rolls the die.  The player who rolls the highest number takes the first turn.  In case of a tie, re-roll. Turn Structure Each player's turn has two phases, always played in order: Phase 1: The player may play one Lifeguard/Shark Card. If the player has at least one Lifeguard/Shark card, he may play one card, or skip this phase.  If he plays a card, he declares whether it is a Lifeguard or a Shark.  The card is placed in the discard pile, and the event resolves as follows: Lifeguard: A lifeguard swims out from the beach to rescue some swimmers.  The lifeguard rescues all of the swimmers on the occupied section of ocean closest to shore; move these swimmers to the beach.  All of the swimmers on the affected section of ocean are rescued, regardless of what player controls them. Shark Attack: A shark appears and devours all of the swimmers on a single section of ocean.  The player who played the card chooses which section the shark attacks (he may choose any single section of ocean).  The eaten swimmers are removed from the game.  All of the swimmers on the affected section of ocean are killed, regardless of what player controls them. Phase 2: The player rolls the die and moves his swimmers. The player rolls the die to see how many of his swimmers are pulled back by the undertow.  The player chooses a number of her swimmers equal to the number he rolled on the die, and moves them one section of ocean away from the beach.  If he rolls a number equal to or greater than the number of swimmers he has in the ocean, he moves all of his swimmers.  A swimmer can never move more than one section in a single turn. Drowning: When a swimmer is on the tenth section of ocean and is pulled back by the undertow, that swimmer is pulled out to sea and drowns.  Drowned swimmers are removed from the game. Continue Play Once the player has moved his swimmers, his turn is finished, and play proceeds clockwise to his left. Running Out of Swimmers or Cards If a player has no more swimmers in the water but still has cards, he can still participate in the game by playing cards on his turn.  After all, a well-timed shark attack could alter the outcome of the game. Likewise, if a player uses all of his cards but has swimmers in the water, he continues to roll the die and move his swimmers each turn.  With luck, some of the player's swimmers could still be rescued when an opponent calls the lifeguard. When a player runs out of both swimmers and cards, then he no longer takes a turn.  However, he can still win if he has more swimmers on the beach than any other player at the end of the game. Ending the Game When all swimmers have either been rescued or killed, the game is over.  The winner is the player with the most swimmers on the beach at the end of the game.  Note:  Undertow! sometimes ends in a tie.  Because the game is quite short, it is recommended that a group play several games in a row, and determine the winner by the total number of swimmers saved over a series of games.  The number of games should be agreed upon before play begins. Tips
  • Remember that you only have a limited number of cards, which means you can only initiate a limited number of events. You may want to save a card to call the lifeguard. Don't count on your opponents to rescue too many of your swimmers.
  • Shark attacks can be devastating. Be careful when moving too many swimmers onto the same section of ocean. You can discourage shark attacks by keeping your swimmers in the same sections as your opponents' swimmers, but be careful! In three- and four-player games, this strategy only works if all players have swimmers on that section.
  • The fewer swimmers a player has in the ocean, the less choice he or she will have when moving those swimmers. Try to keep as many swimmers in the water as possible, and try to get rid of your opponents' swimmers early.
Creative Commons License
Undertow! by Bill Graner and Sean Bouchard is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.]]> Interesting Interactions tag:interactive.usc.edu,2008:/members/sbouchard//213.9434 2008-09-30T20:38:44Z 2008-10-01T19:42:02Z I just posted "Interesting Interactions" over on my personal blog, Softcore Gamer. It's a response to this post by Leigh Alexander at Sexy Videogameland, as well as musings about this post from Jamie's blog last year.... Sean Bouchard Interesting Interactions" over on my personal blog, Softcore Gamer. It's a response to this post by Leigh Alexander at Sexy Videogameland, as well as musings about this post from Jamie's blog last year.]]>