Designing sideways : integrating emergence with authorship

O 강연자 프로필
2003-2005 Fable (XBox 2004), Microsoft Game Studios, >2m units sold
2005-2006 Dimitri (XBox 360 unpublished), Lionhead studios
2006-2008 Unannounced title (PS3 unpublished), Eurocom Entertainment
자문위원 Programme Committee, ICE Game Innovation Conference 2009

0 강연경력
- New sources of game funding (panel), Develop Conference 2009
- AI and Designers: Mind the gap (panel), GDC San Francisco 2009

O 강연목차
> Bottom-up vs. Top-down
1. Example set-piece NPC interaction
i. Multiple design approaches
2. The bottom-up or systemic solution
i. Few types of entity
ii. Many repeated instances
iii. General rules
iv. Local control
3. The top-down or scripted solution
i. Lots of types of entity
ii. Few occurrences of each type
iii. Specific rules
iv. Global control
4. The case for bottom-up
i. In favour:
a. Good scalability
b. Supports player creativity
c. Suggests open-endedness
ii. Against:
a. Limited variation in texture
b. Hard to control
5. The case for top-down
i. In favour:
a. Supports narrative
b. Allows cinematic presentation
c. Promotes richness
ii. Against:
a. Poor scalability
b. Limits replayability

> We need to deliver both
1. Market decline of the extremes
i. The failure of purely scripted adventures
ii. The addition of story content to sim games
2. The ''''''''sandbox'''''''' design bandwagon
3. Oxymoronic marketing
i. "Become the hero in a cinematic action adventure"
ii. "Immerse yourself in a fully interactive world"

> Emergent gameplay is no magic bullet
1. Game AI community obsessed with autonomy
i. Models with context-free complexity
a. Planning agents
b. Sensory honesty
c. Dynamic pathfinding
ii. The dream of ''''''''drop it in any level and it''''''''ll work''''''''
2. Combinations with scripted sequences become crude
i. Strong separation
a. Non-interactive cutscenes
b. Linear alternations in game space
- Action-oriented emergent combat arenas
- Story-driven highly choreographed safe zones
ii. The difficulty of persistent NPCs
a. Keep your story NPCs out of the gameplay?
b. Keep your gameplay NPCs out of the story?
c. What if you need them to be in both?

> Sideways design perspectives
1. Reject former ambitions on both sides
i. Give up the dream of autonomous NPCs
ii. Relax our attempts to choreograph the drama
2. Achieve a design synthesis
i. Support seamless scripted/unscripted transitions
ii. Provide ways of authoring richly interactive scenes
iii. Focus on group coordination between multiple NPCs
3. Stop worshipping at the altar of ''''''''strong AI''''''''
i. Academic AI isn''''''''t interested in authored experiences
ii. Cognitive science is too reductive
iii. Look outside the obvious fields
4. Influences from sociology
i. The agency/structure debate
a. Agency = individual exists before society
b. Structure = society determines the individual
ii. Bourdieu''''''''s concept of the ''''''''Habitus''''''''
a. Society provides a system of dispositions
b. Individuals exist within the medium of their Habitus
c. Nevertheless freedom still exists for the individual
- Habitus is a generative framework for free action
5. Influences from psychology
i. The failure of cognitivism
a. Information processing view of the mind
b. Strong division of perception from action
c. Thought as manipulation of internal representations
ii. Enactivism / embodied cognitive science
a. Rejection of internal representations
b. Tight integration of perception with action
c. Single process of sensory-motor coordination

> Current examples of sideways design

1. Contextual animation
i. Verb-adverb approaches
ii. Procedural generation
2. Ecological perception
i. Dynamic terrain analysis
ii. Smart objects and dumb agents
3. Situation layering
i. Managing complexity
a. Adaptive coordination between conflicting situations
b. Disjoint membership of multiple NPC groups
ii. Thinking in terms of concurrency
a. Parallel task managers can help us
b. Designers will need to use constraints not instructions

O 강연 내용 요약
bottom-up 혹은 systemic game design 그리고 전통적인 형태의 top-down 스크립팅 방식에 대해 포괄적으로 이야기하고자 한다. 또한 우리가 bottom-up도 아니고 top-down도 아닌, ''sideways design''이라고 부르는 게임디자인 접근에 대해 탐구해본다.