GDC 2005

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Game Design Innovationsin Interactive Fiction
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• Michael Rubin
• Orange River Studio

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Introduction

• Who am I?
• My credentials

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Introduction

• The quest for the "meaningful" game
• Evocative, memorable, rich stories
• Interactive, vivid characters
• Games about individuals, not things or actions
• "Stories are about people."Chris Crawford,
  "Interactive Storytelling"
• "Story is the shared exploration of a
  relationship over time."Corvus Elrod, "Man
  Bytes Blog"

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Interactive Fiction

• What do you think of when you hear "interactive
  fiction"?

• You mean text adventures, right?
• CYOA
• Zork, Planetfall, and Infocom
• Crappy parsers
• Yawn
• No idea what you're talking about

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West of HouseThis is an open field west of a
white house,with a boarded front door.There is
a small mailbox here.gtOPEN MAILBOXOpening the
small mailbox reveals a leaflet.gt
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"Will you read me a story?" "Read you a story?
What fun would that be? Ive got a better idea
Lets tell a story together."
Adam Cadre, Photopia (1998)
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"Some people have fun spending hours pushing
virtual buttons and pulling virtual levers for no
reward other than a message like 'You have gained
a fabulous treasure!' or You have won .
Then there are the people like me who like the
pleasures literature has to offer -- big chewy
ideas to think about, narrative twists and turns,
funny or beautiful turns of phrase, that sort of
thing -- and also like wandering around someone
else's world and knocking over vases."
Adam Cadre, 1999 (SPAG)
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What if?

• "This is one of those games that will have you
  breathing hard as you uncover the mystery."
• "...(it) exemplifies wonderful characterization,
  character interaction, and open-ended gameplay."
• "I was so deeply affected by this game that after
  finishing it the rest of my day was pretty much a
  write-off. I was emotionally ruined."
• "You make the story unfold, by your actions - and
  the relationship you establish between yourself
  and the other characters will directly affect the
  ending of the game."
• "The emotional impact of this game is
  ridiculously effective. It's beyond words."
• "Sing, burp, yell, light your pants on fire and
  see what happens!"

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Evolution
courtesy of thundafunda.com
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A Unique Medium

• Extrapolating from IF to other game media can be
  challenging because
• Text-based
• Turn-based
• Player Input

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Areas of Exploration

• Alternative conversation interfaces
• Conversations with NPCs and conversation flow
• Stories that incorporate meaningful choice
• Stories integrated into gameplay
• Other areas to explore
• Interactive fiction as promotional component

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Alternative Conversation Interfaces

• Blighted Isle
• Varicella
• Blue Lacuna

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Conversation Interfaces

• Typical IF conversation interfaces
• Simple yes/no/silence (Spider and Web)
• TALK TO ltnpcgt (Many Vespers)
• Menu conversations (Photopia)
• ASK/TELL ltnpcgt ABOUT lttopicgt (Many)

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"The dialogue system...generally allows for free
interaction and often facilitated impressively
smooth conversations."
by Eric Eve, (2007)
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Blighted Isle

• A game that experiments with different modes of
  interaction with NPCs
• Allows for alternative conversation interfaces
• hyperlinks
• numbered topic suggestions
• no additional help
• Allows topic suggestions of varying degrees (low,
  medium, high)
• A good way of introducing players to IF
  conversation
• Also a good way to help players out of difficult
  spots

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The young woman is wearing a single
ear-ring. "I saw you lying here when I came out
of the house just now," she explains, gesturing
vaguely behind her, "so I came straight down to
see if - well, you seem to be alive at any rate,
but are you all right?" (You could say yes or
no, or ask her who she is.) gtNO "No, not really.
I feel half-drowned," you grunt. "You look it,"
she agrees, "But who are you? You're not from
around here and I - well I don't mean to seem
inquisitive, but it's not every day I find a
strange man washed up almost on my doorstep, and
what with - anyway, who are you?" (You could
tell her about yourself, ask where you are, or
ask her who she is.) gtTELL HER ABOUT MYSELF
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"Perhaps the most disturbing work of interactive
fiction ever written." "This game will totally
capture you. Almost everything is interactive.
And, while some NPCs are quite interesting,
others are totally fascinating."
by Adam Cadre (1999)
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Varicella
"You are Primo Varicella, Palace Minister at the
Palazzo del Piemonte. This title is unlikely to
impress anyone."

• Experiments with the use of emotional modifiers
  (tones of voice)
• Cordial
• Hostile
• Servile
• Impact on result of classic ASK/TELL commands

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gtTONE CORDIALYou adopt a cordial manner.gtASK
STEWARD ABOUT NAILSHows the manicure
proceeding? you ask.Shouldnt be much longer,
sir, the steward says.The steward expertly
attends to your fingernails with an emery
board.gtTONE HOSTILEYou adopt a hostile
tone.gtASK STEWARD ABOUT NAILSHow much longer
is this going to take, you mediocre manservant?
you bellow.Shouldnt be much longer, sir, the
steward says.The steward lightly blows on your
fingertips.
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"You make the story unfold, by your actions - and
the relationship you establish between yourself
and the other characters will directly affect the
ending of the game."
by Aaron Reed (2009)
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Blue Lacuna

• Takes a different approach by highlighting
  keywords of different types in the prose
• blue nouns
• green exits
• bold topics
• Type the single word as a command to perform the
  expected action (examine nouns, move in direction
  of exit, direct the conversation toward the
  topic)
• Central concept "Type words that interest you to
  advance the story"

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Blue Lacuna

• As conversations move forward, old keywords
  become no longer relevant and are not repeatable
  conversations thus move through a series of
  phases
• Also includes a "compassless" navigation system
• Still allows the typical IF commands
• Includes a custom extension ("Smarter Parser") to
  look for a number of forms of input that newer
  players might use, and interpret them or provide
  a helpful error message
• gt I DON'T KNOW WHAT TO DO
• gt I WANT TO GET THE SWORD

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The Tumble, On the BalconyThe balcony overlooks
the roomy interior of the lodge, running the
length of one wall covered in shelves. Beneath
your feet, the chattering stream that named this
place emerges from its bed under the loft,
tumbling down the exposed rock face to the main
floor below.Stairs parallel the stream's
journey down to the kitchen, and an open doorway
leads back into the dark interior of the
loft.Only the glow of the fire below is
reflected in the black skylights slanting above
you. It must still be very early.gtdownYou
descend the curved staircase silently, following
the stream as it tumbles down the slope, touching
the polished wood of the banister more for
comfort than balance.
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Rume examines you in return, thoughtful, her
expression unreadable. "No goodbyes from a
wayfarer, then," she says in a quiet voice that
hangs heavy nonetheless among the wooden rafters,
seeping only reluctantly to the level of your
ears. "No scenes, no protests. Yes, I understand.
The way of your people, I imagine a quiet
departure in dim night, stealing away to new
dawns in new worlds, fresh and unspoiled."She
lowers one hand to the railing and grips it
calmly, but her knuckles are white. "An easy
road," she adds, "for the man I thought you
were.gt easy"Easiest for someone, yes," Rume
muses, taking another savage pull at the sikar,
watching you. "But for whom? The one who
wayfares? Or the one he leaves behind?
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Conversations with NPCsConversation Flow

• Galatea
• Alabaster

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by Emily Short (2000)
"A conversation with a work of art."
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Galatea

• "...exemplifies wonderful characterization,
  character interaction, and open-ended gameplay."
• Multilinear plot no single path to "victory"
• Ambitious approach to NPC conversation, in terms
  of volume and complexity
• Many hundreds of quips
• Keeps track of the state of the conversation
• Keeps track of which conversational options have
  been used
• Reacts differently according to what has been
  said and done

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Galatea

• "The options in Galatea are all predicated on the
  idea that, if you want a positive interaction
  with another human being, you have to approach
  that person willing both to listen and to talk
  about yourself." (Short)
• The title character has moods, background, and
  memory how she treats you will depend on how you
  choose to treat her
• NPC designed to continue the conversation herself
  if the player stops to listen to her rather than
  talking

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gtexamine galateaShe is facing away from you.
You cannot see her face, only her hair, and the
line of her shoulder. It's hard to know what
she's looking at -- the velvet backdrop, if she
has her eyes open, but there's not much to see in
that. Mostly, it is obvious, she is not looking
at you.Her green dress widens out at the knee,
falling over the pedestal on which she stands in
a way that would probably be very awkward, if she
wanted to move.gtask galatea about curtainShe
turns -- not her whole body, just her head, so
that you can see one ear behind the cascade of
hair. "What's so fascinating about the curtain
that it merits your fixed attention?"She
laughs turns a bit towards you seems to relax a
shade. "Nothing," she says, "except that it
presents no surprises."You raise an eyebrow.
Processing humor in an apparently spontaneous
manner is a rarity.
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An experiment in open authorship (multiple
authors, 2009)
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Alabaster

• A conversation system that not only keeps track
  of quips and topics previously used or discussed,
  but also models the structure of conversation
  threads
• Where are we in the conversation?
• Where can we go from here?
• How to continue conversation if player remains
  silent
• Ability of NPCs to change subject (or stick to
  the current one)
• A more natural flow of dialogue
• In this case, a "fractured fairy tale" involving
  Snow White

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Alabaster

• Explores different types of NPC initiative
• Quips are given two kinds of priority
• "obligatory" or "optional"
• "immediate" or "postponed"
• Results in a variety of ways an NPC would
  continue
• Responses to direct stimuli (immediate
  obligatory)
• Continuations of earlier speech
  (immediate/postponed optional)
• Planned sequences (postponed obligatory)
• Pieces of sequence can occur in different orders

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Alabaster

• Threaded conversation system
• keeps track of which quips follow naturally from
  which others
• Allows NPCs to actively change the subject or to
  challenge the player's attempt to change the
  subject
• Structure applied to conversation "beats"
  provides a rhythm
• PC comment
• NPC challenge (if relevant) or NPC response
• optional Grounding beat (pause in conversation)
• optional NPC starts new conversation thread

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Alabaster

• Begins to deal with the issue of NPCs repeating
  topics
• Allows players to repeatedly ask about common
  topics
• NPCs response generated from several random
  elements
• Always contains roughly the same set of facts
• NPCs notice and remark on the repetition

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Alabaster

• Also allows NPCs to
• Ask questions
• Remember the answers
• Pester the player if he doesn't respond
• Refuse to move to new topics
• Incorporates both open-ended and restrictive
  questions
• Also includes "restrictive and release"

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Conversation Innovations

• NPCs that are more vivid, responsive, central
  rather than acting as vending machines
• Allows games to experiment with character
  interaction and relationships as the focal point
  of play
• Choices (and their impact) related to NPC
  interactions as much as player actions

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Stories that incorporateChoice

• De Baron
• Blue Lacuna

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Choice
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(2006)
"...it succeeded in its ambitious aim of making
me think about human will from a novel angle."
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De Baron

• "The Baron is a provocation, both in form and
  content."- Emily Short
• Begins as a quest to rescue your kidnapped young
  daughter from the evil Baron
• A game about talking to characters and
  confronting moral dilemmas with each one every
  choice has some bearing on the thematic issues at
  work
• Choices (commands) are often followed by
  multiple-choice questions asking the player why
  that choice was made the motivation then impacts
  the description of the result

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On a path in the forestHere the path is narrow
and winding, and hardly recognisable under the
snow. Moonlight penetrates the dense foliage only
sporadically. Eastwards lies the baron's castle
to the west, your own footprints lead back to the
village.From the trees to the left, a dark
shape suddenly jumps forward. It is a she-wolf
she stops a stone's throw away from you, in the
middle of the path, fixating you with two eyes
that mirror the moon. From her throat comes a
fierce growl.gt_
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Blue Lacuna
"How long has it been since you played an IF game
that really reacted to your actions and shaped
itself accordingly, offering you a wide gamut of
choices some of them don't even look like
choices which allow you to shape the course of
the story in uncountable ways?"

• Described as one of the most ambitious works of
  interactive fiction ever written
• Enormous in size describes itself as an
  "interactive novel" in ten chapters
• Ambitious in the extent to which it allows the
  player to shape the narrative and define
  character interactions

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Blue Lacuna

• "Blue Lacuna Aspects of an Interactive
  Novel"(http//www.lacunastory.com/overview-paper.
  pdf)
• Three major goals of the project
• Create an interface for IF that was more
  intuitive and required less instruction to those
  unfamiliar with the medium
• Tell a story that revolved around and relied upon
  the player's ability to make serious choices with
  dramatic repercussions
• Create a character to meet and converse with who
  is complex enough to develop a unique and
  personal relationship with the player, and whose
  ultimate fate is not predestined

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Blue Lacuna

• Major design goal was to
• create a story space where meaningful choices are
  possible
• make choices take place early enough to have
  repercussions
• have each ending be equally dramatically valid
  and interesting
• Tells very different stories to different people
• story of a young gay man who must battle with a
  crazed lunatic to do what he knows is right
• story about an aging and bitter widower who
  rediscovers what it means to love and sacrifice
• story about rejecting complacency in the face of
  temptation
• story about love conquering all

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Blue Lacuna

• Progue a sophisticated conversationalist
• Not just in the conversation method, but in the
  way the NPC reacts to the choices made by the
  player
• Over the course of the narrative, Progue evolves
  through five unique psychological states, each
  with different behavior patterns, default
  responses, and conversational scenes
• Player has numerous opportunities to define the
  relationship
• Progue forms an opinion about the player on three
  axes
• affinity axis
• submission axis
• romance/paternalism axis
• Moves toward one of twelve archetypes that define
  behavior

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Stories Integrated intoGameplay

• Blue Lacuna
• Anchorhead

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Blue Lacuna

• Drama Management
• Attempts to overcome the problem that pacing is
  in the hands of the player puzzles often halt
  the narrative
• Game features mechanisms designed to help keep
  the story moving forward if the player gets stuck
  or bored
• Progress along four major pathways
• Puzzle chain
• Dream chain
• Progue's psyche chain
• Event chain
• Chains are interconnected
• Also keeps tabs on how bored the player is

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"By the end you are astounded by your own
deductions - almost at no point does the game
actually tell you anything, forcing you to make
your own connections, and the result is
astoundingly immersive."
by Michael Gentry (1998)
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Anchorhead
"This is a nightmare you'll be sorry to wake
from."

• Lovecraft-inspired gothic horror
• "...a small town full of secrets, a gruesomely
  deformed monstrosity, a vast uncaring force
  awaiting its day."
• Highly open and explorable environment
• Puzzles well-integrated into the storyline
  (optional puzzles, alternate solutions)
• Backstory revealed in a variety of ways

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Anchorhead
"When you finally come away from the game it
leaves you feeling like youve spent a lifetime
in another place."

• Natural and immersive structure of gameplay
• Evocative scenery descriptions and involvement of
  changing weather into the narrative
• Involvement of all senses odors, sounds,
  textures, temperature
• Gradual build-up of tension

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Other Areas ofExploration

• Interactive Fiction as
• Promotional Component

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IF as Promotional Component

• "The Glass Book of Dream Eaters" Online Adventure
• Two text-based mysteries, coded using the INFORM
  engine
• Lets players take control of one of two
  characters
• wealthy plantation heiress Celeste Temple
• assassin Cardinal Chang

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Screenshots with Examples
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Screenshots with Examples
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IF as Promotional Component

• "We Tell Stories"
• A series of six stories based on classic novels
• Each story is written by a different author and
  is retold through a different (digital) medium
• The real purpose they serve is to whet the
  viewers appetites for the original texts
• http//wetellstories.co.uk/
• "Fairy Tales" a type of choose-your-own-adventure
  similar to IF, written by author Kevin Brooks
• "FAIRY TALES" by Hans Christian Andersen

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Screenshots with Examples
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IF as Promotional Component

• "GDC The Game"
• http//www.gamesetwatch.com/gdcgame/
• Written by Jim Munroe ("Everybody Dies")
• "Think of it as a round of cards rather than an
  immersive and colourful narrative. If you don't
  like the hand you're dealt, you can always
  reshuffle with a restart."

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Next StepsLearning More

• Playing IF
• Creating IF

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Learning More Playing

• Playing interactive fiction
• To play IF, you need two things
• Story file (platform-independent)
• Interpreter (virtual machine, akin to a movie
  projector)

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Learning More Playing

• Mac
• Zoom (http//www.logicalshift.co.uk/mac/)
• Spatterlight (http//ccxvii.net/spatterlight/)
• Windows
• Gargoyle (http//ccxvii.net/gargoyle/)
• Linux/Unix
• Zoom (http//www.logicalshift.co.uk/unix/zoom/)
• Gargoyle (http//ccxvii.net/gargoyle/)
• iPhone/iPod Touch
• Frotz (iTunes App Store, 0.99)

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Learning More Playing

• Playing online
• Parchment (http//parchment.toolness.com/)
• Finding games
• IFDB (http//ifdb.tads.org/)
• IF Archive (http//www.ifarchive.org/)
• IFWiki How can I download and play IF?
• http//www.ifwiki.org/index.php/FAQHow_can_I_down
  load_and_play_IF.3F

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Acknowledgements

• Emily Short
• Mike Rozak
• Aaron Reed
• J. Robinson Wheeler
• All the many IF Authors and the IF community

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Appendices
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Learning More Creation

• Writing interactive fiction
• Multiple freeware authoring environments
• In general, most games released are created using
  one of the popular systems
• TADS
• Inform

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Creation

• TADS The Text Adventure Development System
• http//www.tads.org
• Programming language (object-oriented, resembles
  C and Java)
• Compiler (produces the portable binary file)
• Libraries (object class definitions, modifiable)
• Interpreter (for many different operating
  systems)

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Creation

• TADS The Text Adventure Development System
• Multimedia capabilities
• Can mix text, static graphics, and sound
• Existing infrastructure
• Save/restore, Undo, Formatting, Bundling
• Portability across operating systems
• Sophisticated command parser
• Detailed world model
• Simple licensing (free)

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Creation

• Inform
• http//www.inform-fiction.org
• First created in 1993, now on version 7
• In place of traditional computer programming, the
  design is built by writing natural
  English-language sentences
• Martha is a woman in the Vineyard.
• The Old Ice House overlooks the Garden.
• The prevailing wind is a direction that varies.

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Creation

• Inform 7
• Results in source text which is not only quick to
  write, but very often works the first time, and
  is exceptionally readable
• Create model worlds, with relations and
  generalizations
• Relations A man called Peter is in the Atrium.
  North of the Atrium is the Hall of Greek Vases.
• Generalizations After putting a loaded weapon
  in something which is watched by a policeman...
• Build puzzles and scenes
• The Collecting Phase ends when the Gate of
  Infinity is open and all of the white cubes are
  in the trunk. The Final Showdown begins when the
  Collecting Phase ends.

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Creation

• Inform 7
• Integrated, cross-platform development
  environment
• Project manager
• Customizable coding environment with syntax
  coloring, spell-checking, and more
• Compiler with explanatory error messages and
  examples
• Interpreter/Player for testing and debugging
• Source code indexing, transcript recording, and
  publishing options including map generation and
  website building

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Creation
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