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Personally, as a writer and game designer, I find most emergent narrative is actually simulation, and the ones that work depend on the players imagination injec
by Rd6n6 5y ago
Personally, as a writer and game designer, I find most emergent narrative is actually simulation, and the ones that work depend on the players imagination injecting meaning into the game events. Another version is basically just social media, with game rules and a sandbox aspect. That’s cool, and it can pay off massively, but narrative just feels like a strange word for it. World of natural consequences without imposed meaning seems a better fit, although it’s a mouth full. In tabletop games, we just call them sandboxes
People wish sometimes that video game ai could keep up with a good game master - but then again, you would lose the fun of hanging out with friends in person
- p1necone 5y agoI think there's sort of three broad categories here: Narrative "emerging" because the level of risk, broad array of "ways to fail" and/or simulation complexity enables players to tell the story of their playthrough in an interesting way. (See: 'boatmurdered', Kenshi). Narrative "emerging" out of inter player conflict and politics in large multiplayer games. See guild politics in PvP-with-consequences focused MMORPGS such as Lineage II (at least back in the day, it's a bit of a different game now), and EVE Online. (This sort of narrative blends with the first as well, see: http://www.wirm.net/nightfreeze/part1.html http://www.wirm.net/nightfreeze/part1.html) Narrative "emerging" as a result of very intricate procedural generation that actually does create logically consistent histories and conflicts in a single player world. (See: Dwarf Fortress and Ultima Ratio Regum). I guess things like GPT generated dialog belong here too, but that hasn't really achieved the "logically consistent" part yet. This article seems to exclusively talk about the first one.
- ksia 5y agoInteresting. So the more risk...more ways to fail...more suffering produces narratives...religion -> religious wars -> drama -> fun. Thanks for the categories. Havent thought about the differences too much before.
- p1necone 5y agoI think also because of that rich possibility for failure, heroic successes are also much more interesting tales in those same games.
- jameshart 5y agoTynan Sylvester (creator of Rimworld, and author of "Designing Games: A Guide to Engineering Experiences") has some great thoughts on this in the early part of his GDC talk on building a 'story generator' rather than a game. He talks about 'apophenia' - the propensity of players to ascribe narrative meaning to events - and the way in Rimworld they strive to create simulation systems that facilitate that kind of player-provided narrative reasoning. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdqhHKjepiE
- PenguinCoder 5y agoFirst game I thought of and glad it was mentioned in the article. It's a brutally fun game, full of sadness and triumph.
- hoseja 5y agoAnd the gameplay suffers greatly for it. If he strove to build a good game first, the stories would eventually be much more robust.
- p1necone 5y agoI'm not sure I agree with this, I had a great time playing Rimworld. It might not be to your taste, but it doesn't feel like there's any objective sacrifice to gameplay just for the sake of making the stories better - are there particular design choices you're thinking of?. Although I do get a nagging feeling that I would get more out of playing Dwarf Fortress instead every time I play Rimworld, and usually end up binging that for much longer.