Characters & agents. 22/10/02Day plan

• The idea of games telling stories

• Characters & agents

• Eliza

• Group progress report

• System

• Work

Theme differences between games and storiesGames

• points

• space

• finding the ultimate solution

• getting better

Stories

• intrigue• meaning• ambiguity

• lack of control

1983 ad from Infocom

Myst

• “Myst is real. And like real life, you don't die every five minutes. In fact you probably won't die at all. [...] The key to Myst is to lose yourself in this fantastic virtual exploration and act and react as if you were really there.”

Janet Murray: Hamlet on the Holodeck• The ultimate dream of

virtual reality.

• Wants to create virtual reality systems resembling the novels of the Bront sisters or Jane Austen.

• Beautiful fictive worlds where you play the title role.

Games and movies

• Games: Rules (dynamic systems)

• Movies: Characters and events.

• A game becomes a specific playing of the game in a movie (one level in Tomb Raider).

• A movie becomes a dynamic system (the death star fight in Star Wars).

Characters

• Flat vs. Round (E.M. Forster)

Linda Seger:• Consistent but unpredictable• Personality• Background story• Lack or surplus• Motivation

Cast

• Protagonist

• Supporting character vs. minor character

• Type character vs. stereotype

• Antagonist vs. bad guy

Eliza (1967)

http://www.jesperjuul.dk/eliza/

Hamlet - the game?

• The focalisation changes; the audience has much information that Hamlet does not have.

• Hard to make the rules - what are they?

• “You play the title role”:You father has been murdered! With much effort, fail to avenge him and die a meaningless death!

Characters in games

• ”Brian is a pig” (real-world) vs. ”Brian is a pig” (game) vs. ”*Brian is a pig” (movie)

• When you ”are” a character, you usually don’t want to see that character hurt.

• Game protagonists tend to be quite blank or undeveloped.

• Detail is often easier to add in backstory.

• Do you find the character you’ve created interesting?

Creating believable characters• Easier to do someone crazy.

• Than someone not crazy!

• Easier to do clichés (where the cliché is part of the fun) or well-defined situations.

• Than general conversation.

• Look up the Turing Test for more...