Comments on: A Brief Chat With Eskil Steenberg

By: littlewilly91

littlewilly91 — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:42:12 +0000

sorry if i sound like peter molyneux by the way (vomit vomit vomit). I just got this overactive mind see. gna be a vid game designer see. shutup. I know; alligators in GTA… it just example though. now i go let mind rest

By: littlewilly91

littlewilly91 — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 02:36:54 +0000

Very cool. Seems to be some confusion over what defines a “story though”. All video games are kind of procedural- every bit of interaction in theory puts you in a new position for the game to roll out in, so in a dungeon crawler you can run closer to either wall etc. When they talk about procedural content and emergent gameplay, It’s really refering to those games when you can sort out your own personal little memory. In GTA when you choose to go on a timed rampage against your mate seeing who can kill the most people by taking their cars and running them over with ‘em… just made up by yourself. And if your being hunted by the police and you get up onto a roof, you could do it to get any kind of vantage point, the police could be in any position… It’s a “i got right down this road, onto that rood then the swat team from the helicopter got me” sort of, active, environment that starts to matter. And developers feel like they are on the eve of making games that are going to jump emergent gameplay to a whole other level… I’d add car keys to GTA and make it so you can steal them, throw them and the owners will have to go and get them, but they don’t know you’ve left an alligator in that bush too- think of the possibilities!- And have proper systems like a post office, that you can intefere with, and track people down like in the Bourne stories. – the game of which was an utter travesty. They should have had emergent gameplay and simulated large areas of city. Should have got the Far Cry or Chronicles of Riddick people on it.

To surmise, it’s not the rules of Blackjack that matter, it’s the action that emerges. And in videogames, it’s not the assets that matter, it’s the emerging action again.

Partly anyway- videogames can be a way of taking us through a linear story and be culturally important in the same way movies are.- But it’s the interactive part I am referring too.

By: jayvee f.

jayvee f. — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 04:17:52 +0000

clever! this guy obviously has the vision, plus being a one man team beats all the creative red tape.

By: Michaël Samyn

Michaël Samyn — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:11:38 +0000

I'm surprised nobody mentioned Façade when talking about an "AI Director". Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern did a lot of sophisticated work on story generation with their "Drama Manager" system.

By: Andrew Doull

Andrew Doull — Thu, 01 May 2008 13:21:33 +0000

Feet: You can read this to sate yourself in the mean time.

By: rektide

rektide — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 02:33:29 +0000

less game, more proceedural content.

By: essell

essell — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 16:36:44 +0000

Jim, I’d be really keen to see you try and get hold of Chris Crawford for an interview about his ongoing efforts with Interactive Storytelling and Storytron.

By: jph wacheski

jph wacheski — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:39:56 +0000

The more I hear about LOVE the more i want to play it,. How about a tinny demo ver. or an open beta ? much of this sounds interesting,.I just want to get a look at those sketchy graphics in motion,. stills are often deceptive,.

“compelling Story” is a loosely defined concept,. and likely quite different to different people. I suppose some events will hold little compeling to some, while others will be find them interesting,. the people in the game will still be ‘generating’ much of the story by playing with each other,. building stuff and destroying other peoples stuff,. .

By: Nallen

Nallen — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 08:30:38 +0000

It’s a pretty huge leap from a string of compelling events to a compelling story, for instance what about the ‘I am your father’ moments?

Even if it can generate ‘twists’ how does it know when is the right time or place, how do you make that relevant to multiple players and not just your player?

Will be fascinating to see how this develops.

By: Joonas

Joonas — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 06:28:55 +0000

I’ve been waiting for something like this to emerge for so long now. I’m really looking forward to Steenberg’s game.

I’ve tried MMORPGs, but find the static world and endlessly repeating events far too off-putting. Steenberg’s approach sounds like just the cure.

It doesn’t really matter how successful Love will be. If the core ideas work, I suspect they’ll find their way to mainstream gaming as well.

By: Lars Balker Rasmussen

Lars Balker Rasmussen — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 23:56:18 +0000

The 80s Blade Runner game wasn’t based on the movie, and clearly didn’t use the voxel-graphics of the mid 90s. They claim it was based on the Vangelis soundtrack, because they couldn’t get the movie rights. It was a right stinker too…

(Like everything else I know, I got this from Zzap!64)

By: Morte

Morte — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 22:25:50 +0000

Ah, that was it. I remember four discs right, but it was CDs.

I am not completely mad then, just 75%…