Characters & agents. 22/10/02

1. Characters & agents. 22/10/02 Day plan • The idea of games telling stories • Characters & agents • Eliza • Group progress report • System • Work

2. Theme differences between games and stories Games • points • space • finding the ultimate solution • getting better Stories • intrigue • meaning • ambiguity • lack of control

3. 1983 ad from Infocom

4. 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.”

5. 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.

6. 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).

7. Characters • Flat vs. Round (E.M. Forster) Linda Seger: • Consistent but unpredictable • Personality • Background story • Lack or surplus • Motivation

8. Cast • Protagonist • Supporting character vs. minor character • Type character vs. stereotype • Antagonist vs. bad guy

9. Eliza (1967) http://www.jesperjuul.dk/eliza/

10. 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!

11. 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?

12. 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...