Eludamos. Journal for Computer Game Culture
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Design Foundations for Emotional Game Characters
No full textRecent Computer Role Playing Games such as Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Nintendo’s The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, have entranced us with their expansive, complex worlds. However, the Non-Player Characters (NPCs) in these games remain stale and lackluster outside of scripted events. This is, in part, because game engines generally do not simulate emotions in their NPCs while they wander in the world. Wouldn\u27t these games be much more interesting, potentially even more re-playable, if NPCs reacted more appropriately to the situations they find themselves in?To be able to do this, designers need an engine that models emotion, based on inputs available in the game world and from other designer-defined character elements such as personality, goals, and mood. A full-fledged cognitive architecture could fulfill this task, but it would likely be much too inefficient for use in a real-time environment like a game.There are many psychological models of emotion but only a few have been explored for video game applications. A game requires an emotion engine which generates believable results to enhance NPC agency and player engagement. Unlike AI agents and simulations of cognitive psychology theories, an emotion engine for games does not need to be correct or even justifiable. This enables the exploration of a variety of emotion theories that have not been actively considered for games. One such theory is Plutchik\u27s psychoevolutionary synthesis. He proposes a method of organizing emotions into a cone, where the intensity of an emotion increases as one moves up the sides. It also postulates that primary emotions in the model can be arranged in opposing pairs and that other emotions can be composed from the primary emotions and their intensities. This allows for greater flexibility in the number and type of emotions to include, whereas most models that have been used before define a closed set of emotion types—a serious constraint on designer\u27s freedom. A second theory, Lazarus\u27s cognitive appraisal, better describes emotion elicitation and behaviour selection, and appears to integrate well with Plutchik\u27s work.An emotion engine based on simplified versions of psychoevolutionary synthesis and cognitive appraisal is an understudied approach towards emotional NPCs. Together with readily identifiable elements of emotion processing, such as attention and action selection, an engine can be designed and customized to meet the needs of game designers with minimal impact on computational resources.We will present an overview of some existing cognitive architectures and emotion engines followed by a description of key elements in psychoevolutionary synthesis and cognitive appraisal. Next we list some requirements for an emotion engine for NPCs and how our selected emotion theories meet them. Finally, we propose a design and a collection of game-oriented test scenarios to illustrate how our design handles various facets of NPC emotional responses
Alive: A Case Study of the Design of an AI Conversation Simulator
No full textThis article offers a case study of a game designed to encourage its players to reflect on the implications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by considering the impact that advancements in AI might have on them personally or on the world more broadly. Alive is a conversation simulator in the vein of the Lifeline series of games, where the player responds to messages from a newly created AI in a manner simulating the rhythm of a conversation vis phone texts. Player decisions directly influence how the AI develops over time and the values it chooses to adopt. Throughout the narrative, the game explores a variety of topics relevant to the creation of AI, such as the potential differences between how an AI and a human would view the world, the capacity of an AI to evolve or change over time, and the risks inherent in the creation of a self-aware AI. In this article, I describe the development of a working prototype of my game, made freely available to accompany this piece. After first establishing the basic principles of conversation simulators based on an analysis of existing examples, I chronicle the design decisions I made and offer my rationale for them. I also discuss the difficulties I encountered in covering this topic and propose what I see as helpful design takeaways for creating other games in a similar vein. It is my hope that this article provides practical tools to scholars and designers interested in both creating and interrogating complex topics such as AI through games
Understanding the User Experience of AI Through the Lens of Game Studies
No full textIn recent years, video games have arisen as a frontier for Artificial Intelligence (AI), with game developers making extensive use of AI technologies in their games. However, scholars have called for a more user-focused understanding of how AI affects the gaming experience. In this paper, we present a theoretical framework for how the user experience of AI can be understood and analyzed in terms of the affordances that are provided to players. We also present a typology of affordances relevant to AI in games
The Ontology of Incremental Games: Thinking Like the Computer in Frank Lantz’s Universal Paperclips
No full textIncremental games merge the game\u27s system and guise, casting the player in the role of a computer. This paper analyzes incremental games to show how the specific features of the genre cause the player to engage in machinic thinking. It begins with a brief overview of the incremental game genre. Then shifts to an analysis of one game in particular: Frank Lantz’s Universal Paperclips (2017). Universal Paperclips puts the player in the role of an AI tasked with producing paperclips, making it a perfect example to show how the player learns to think like the machine through the overlapping roles of the player and computer, which will be elaborated through a comparison of the ways both incremental games and slot machines encourage what Natasha Dow Schüll’s (2012) calls the “machine zone” in players. The study concludes by complicating these arguments with an examination of the ways in which, despite the machinic thinking that incremental games engender, the player and computer actually withdraw from each other which makes incremental games a critique of human computer interactions and a meta-game about the construction of videogames, instead of purely a speculative ontological representation of computers
Challenging the User-Avatar Dichotomy in Avatar Customization Research
No full textThe work presented here represents an Actor-Network Theory (ANT) approach to the study of self-representation in games. Though the development of a novel analytical framework we aim to challenge the anthropocentric approach that is all too common to identity work in favour of an ANT approach. We argue that self-representation studies must break free of the user-avatar dichotomy in order to reveal how other factors, such as design practices, socioeconomic factors, digital and offline cultures, as well as researchers\u27 own lived experiences and assumptions affect self-representational practices
Playing the (International) Movie: Intermediality and the Appropriation of Symbolic Capital in Final Fight and the Beat ’em up Genre
No full textFinal Fight (Capcom 1989) is a famous example of a video game genre generally known as “beat ’em up” or “brawler,” a type of action game where the player character must fight a large number of enemies in unarmed combat or with melee weapons. The side-scrolling beat ’em up genre reached the peak of its global popularity in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a period sometimes referred to as the genre’s “golden age.” Set in a contemporary, urban setting, Final Fight has a storyline that revolves around three playable heroes who attempt to rescue a young woman from the clutches of a criminal gang. Although likely the most influential and among the best games in this genre, Final Fight did not found the beat ’em up genre by itself: it was produced within the context of a specific, albeit recent, textual tradition and canon. This canon consisted of texts produced within the same medium (i.e. other video games, mostly of Japanese production) but also drew from an intermedial corpus. In its design and narrative tropes, Final Fight inherited and incorporated a number of elements from Hollywood action cinema that had been translated into the newer digital medium of video game. To trace a history of the beat ’em up genre from its origins to Final Fight, I address in this paper questions on three levels. On the intertextual level, what are the textual antecedents of Final Fight? What were the formal and stylistic conditions of possibility for this game within the history of the genre and the medium? What are the game’s intermedial connections, especially with films? To answer these questions, I trace a tentative genealogy, focusing on the narrative and representational elements of the game. Specifically, I examine storylines, characters and settings and their relationship with the structural properties of beat ’em up gameplay. On the “(v)ideological” (Gottschalk 1995) level, what value systems are put into play in a classic beat ’em up game? In what ways are the player’s choices axiologised? What conduct is rewarded or sanctioned? Which actions can the player’s avatar perform, and for which purposes? In what contemporary discursive formations did Final Fight participate as a textual device for the actualisation of ideologically non-neutral fictional conduct? I attempt to map the value system inscribed in this video game genre that, in turn, articulates it as a game (i.e. as a system of stakes, rules, sanctions, and rewards). On the historical level, what were the industrial and commercial conditions entailed in the production of a game such as Final Fight? To the (actual or virtual) satisfaction of what demands, both material and symbolic, was it designed? Answering these questions calls for an analysis of the so-called “context,” which I consider to be a historical and social meta-narrative. In this respect, my research mostly focuses geographically and historically on the Japanese video game market of the 1980s and its transnational connections. Starting with the (mainly cinematic) dissemination of transnational imaginaries of “street violence” and “vigilantism” against the background of large, modern American cities during the 1970s and 1980s, I attempt to show that Final Fight is an instance of the incorporation of these imaginaries into video games. More generally, I argue that, with various degrees of success, the classic beat ’em up games produced in Japan carried out a function of symbolic appropriation and redistribution at a local level as they remediated a cinematic textual canon (which was, for a significant part, of foreign origin) into the video game medium. As video games, these texts shifted the focus of this appropriation from spectatorship to the forms of active agency prescribed in gameplay. The player thus appropriated control not only on a character in a game but also of an entire cinematic canon which, in the Japanese context, appeared rich in symbolic capital and marked by “American-ness.” The movies that inspired the classic beat ’em up came from Hollywood, one of the “Greenwich Meridians” (Casanova 2004) in the global cultural industry during the 1970s and 1980s, likely the last decades of what some scholars have called “the era of high Americanization” (Iwabuchi 2002). Video games were, in other words, the means by which a portion of the Japanese cultural industry could so successfully appropriate the symbolic capital of Hollywood products that these Japanese games transcended the borders of the Japanese national market and became big hits in the “West.
Mobile Gaming Behaviors: An Exploratory Study of Mobile Game Players\u27 Agency in Space and Time
No full textMobile gaming’s prevalence requires understanding how mobile devices dictate the gaming experience in a variety of spatial and temporal contexts. Through interviews with mobile game players, this article reveals elements of corporeal agency that break traditional, or stereotypical, notions of gaming spaces and times. This article argues that mobile game players demonstrate a fluid relationship to time, space, and physicality. The analysis consists of sections dedicated to the three primary elements of mobile gaming’s corporeal agency: physicality, temporality, and spatiality
On the Brink of Virtual Extinction: Hunting and Killing Animals in Open World Video Games
No full textThe article focuses on the underlying structures evaluating acts of violence against different bodies in games. Taking the hunting mechanics of open-world games as its point of discussion, it looks at how game design manifests procedural arguments on the ideological aspects of animal violence. Whereas there are instances of explicit violence in these games, the article argues that the explicitness of such depictions serves to emphasize the “messiness” of producing animal goods, thus impeding the “carnist” ideological view of meat as pure commodity. By considering how games distinguish humans from animals, it looks at what violent acts are rendered acceptable or unacceptable, and notes distinctions between what bodies are protected by, or exempt from, moral and legal rights.Finally, the article considers how the algorithmic nature of spawning makes digital animals immune to extinction. Interestingly enough, the article nevertheless notices how a game may intentionally diverge from this logic in order to defamiliarize its established logic.Among the games discussed are Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption (2010), and Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed III (2012) and Far Cry 3 (2012)
"No Going Back": The Telltale Model as Thought Experiment
No full textSince the release of The Walking Dead in 2012, the "Telltale Model" of interactive narrative has attracted a lot of criticism for providing choices that \u27don\u27t matter\u27. This paper is a response to this discussion taking place both in academia and popular games culture. While Telltale\u27s choices indeed \u27don\u27t matter\u27 this overlooks the ways in which they actually function. The Telltale Model works in a way that is analogous to the philosophical thought experiment. It presents a sequential series of moral dilemmas that all communicate a common theme. The penultimate choice in The Walking Dead Season 2 Episode 5: No Going Back (2013) performs as a final lesson - testing the player to see if they have properly internalised the themes of the series. It then responds not to the accumulated memory of their choices, but to how they respond to the final \u27test\u27 that bookends the series’ many ethical dilemmas. Telltale\u27s choices may not have any long-term consequences, but they do serve an informative pedagogical function - just don\u27t expect Kenny to ever "remember that".