Essay: A future I would want to live in

[EternalAmbiguity]

@JoeStrout

This is a really interesting point. It almost certainly is true that certain kinds of activities are easier/better to portray in some mediums than others. If games are particularly good at combat, then that drives games towards stories with lots of combat… which, if we’re talking about the future, might naturally mean a more dystopian futures rather than utopian ones.

However, I still stand by the Parable of The Sims, and suspect there are other forms of play that video games would be really good at, that we simply haven’t thought of yet… and oh yeah, to make that point on topic, we can hope that these new forms of play will let us portray optimistic futures that inspire kids to create a great future, rather than resign themselves to a bleak one.

Indeed. And, although I still feel that combat tackles these fundamental gameplay building blocks better than most other things basically by design…

@Teila

Combat is the easiest.

…I don’t disagree with this (my initial reply to this comment was mainly to everything after this).

I’m trying (I say trying, but it’s sadly been months since I was able to work on the project…oh well, when this thesis is written…) to build a dynamic conversation system (using TonyLi’s fantastic Dialogue System for Unity) where the NPC will basically keep talking without player input, though pausing at appropriate moments (such as when asking a question) and reacting in an expected manner if the player doesn’t respond (“Cat got your tongue?”). At any time the player can interject with relevant comments, and sometimes no-longer-relevant ones, with appropriate NPC responses (confusion at topics being brought up which were addressed several minutes ago for example) through a system where the dialog options appear for a time and then disappear. Kind-of sort-of like FireWatch or Alpha Protocol, though not just the inclusion of a timer at a dialog choice (like those games have) as opposed to the standard of waiting while characters stare awkwardly at one another.

The goal is also to have this occur in real time, so while the player is walking to a location they’ll interact with the NPC.

Anyway. I said all that to say: it is hard. Never mind the creation of varied player comments with varied responses (I’m also working on an RPG (one for which, I will say (as related to the topic of this thread), I’m currently wracking my brain to find valid gameplay alternatives to combat because I don’t want that in the game) which has a standard “stop and wait” dialogue system and the opening conversation has at least 30 nodes (probably more, but it’s been a while since I checked)). The need to account for player non-responses, accounting for player responses not at the appropriate time, deciding when player responses appear and disappear (and how they’ll access them while moving in the game), all while managing to steer the conversation a little bit in a certain plot-relevant direction.

And I’m planning to talk about philosophy in this game (conversation with the NPC is the main element, or core gameplay, of this game). Politics. Economics. Think about the amount of content needed, the amount of “cross-linking” I’ll have to account for. It’s overwhelming.

The simple reality is that, even ignoring any supposed benefit of combat in the gameplay department, this is vastly more challenging, both in content creation and in the tweaking of the gameplay element.

However. If we get developers who put in the effort to make these kinds of of systems which (start to) rival the strengths of combat, I suspect we’ll get a pretty decent player response.