M U L T I P L A Y E R

Well an obvious thing I somehow missed; Multiplayer. After messing about with AI trying to get them to emulate humans for effect, why not use real humans? Of course this is a natural conclusion if I move to board games, but not so obvious when programming a video game.
There are several benefits:
1. To the player, AI is part of the game system; something to be manipulated to obtain a goal. This encourages negative behavior. As in a lecture from GDC 2010 by ... (I forget who) observes interaction with an AI character in an RPG/action game Mass Effect: "What button do I press to make sex come out of this?"

With multiplayer, the player is now playing through the game system with/against other players.

2. Human-human discussion. The ability to interact with other players not just through the game system, but through the social medium of speech. A requirement for the type of debate that I intend to generate through the game.

Joey_beach progress

After watching a 4 year old named Joey play at the beach, I decided to create a game around his experiences.
In this particular instance, Joey wanted to join some girls building a sand castle, but stomped on it instead which followed a small spat in which the girls threw sand at him and he at them.
Upon asking Joey why he stood on their castle he answered "I like breaking castles" with a cheeky grin.
He obviously did not understand the concept of others rights. An inability to 'role-take' or 'stand in other's shoes'.

I decided to create a game that modeled this behavior, but then had a twist of flipping the player's perspective literally. You would play as Joey, able to throw sand. If it hit the castle the girl AIs would start to like you, but if you hit them or stood on the castle, they would retaliate. The game would then restart, but with you and friends making a castle, and an AI that is modeled on the behavior you took in the previous round with the intention of making the player understand the other side of their actions.

Here is a current build. It is starting to get more complicated than expected and may take too long to complete, it was just intended as a sketch. In light of this Ambiguity of game rules idea also, this sort of gameplay method is a little too closed and forceful..

Ambiguity of game rules

Watching a newly-posted GDC lecture by Brenda Brathwaite she talks about her current work on game design. Brathwaite discusses how the intentional ambiguity of game rules in her game 'Train' allow players to intentionally subvert the game. Train is about the Holocaust (discussed previously), but this theme is 'hidden' from players, and when they find out, many players end up twisting the rules, through 'rule lawering' to avoid the initial 'win' state, so that the game becomes about "winning the least".
Kohlberg's method of answering moral dilemmas through socratic discussions can be used in conjunction with this idea of 'rule-lawering' to bring the transformative power of Kohlberg's methods to games.

Game Design Canvas

Just a quickie, a tool on how to think about the structure of a game.The one on the top is Halo 3, and the one on the bottom is Wii Tenis.

Imperfect AI

Aaand we're back to game stuff.
I was thinking the other day (as I sometimes do) that if I'm going to have any luck at all of creating a convincing interaction, I best know some AI theory.

I found a great discussion over at the GMC forums on creating imperfect AI. Because imitations of humans also have to imitate our humanity!
Check this great post: Imperfect AI at GMC

Some suggested attributes:
varIntelligence: Use a gaussian random
varCourage: Use pure random ;)
varFear
Allies
varAdrenaline   

These are obviously varibiles to be used in tradtional combat games.

varEmpathy perhaps?