Between plot and sandbox there is interaction heaven, and programming hell.

[Paul Debrion]

Interaction is the greatest strength of video games as an art form, and yet it can be the most difficult thing to put into a game. In most games, control of a game generally either stays with the developer as players follow a story that the developer has already written, or it is given to the player as a set of tools to play and experiment with.
Pre-scripting everything can create a plot, but such a story can often be static, unchanging, and leave little room for player influence. Giving control the players in the form of a sandbox allows for the player to influence the game, but lacks direction and leaves little for the players to influence in the first place.

Unfortunately, while the middle ground perhaps allows for the greatest level of interaction between the player and the game, it has also always been a very weak point in developing video games. Most developers avoid it or only make small steps into it and for good reason, as venturing further into it can easily make a game extremely difficult to program.

A greater level of interaction that allows for the players actions to affect the game as much as possible and allow the game to respond as well as possible requires that the events of the game not be completely laid out beforehand by the developers nor completely controlled by the players. Such a level of interaction would require that a game be able to respond to a wide variety of actions from the player on its own, with minimal babysitting from the developer. Such a level of interaction would in many ways require a strong emphasis on versatile systems over scripting. Such systems have to be made well enough to work in a wide variety of possible scenarios. To allow for more interaction such a game would need many such systems, all capable of influencing each other and that is where the difficulty lies.

Most games nowadays may have such systems, but like to tuck them away in relative safety where they can do little harm if they go wrong. Some games have randomized maps, but they?re usually paired with tiles made by the developer beforehand or are controlled by the players in a sandbox environment. Some games try to give the players choices to influence the story, but these are often limited to those written by the developer. In most cases, the damage is limited if the system fails, because either the developer or the player is in control on either side.

If the degree of interaction in video games is to be significantly improved, such relative safety may have to left behind. Systems have to be allowed to interact with other systems and the systems themselves will have to become more complex. To allow for a greater level of interaction, a game will to be intelligent enough to act on its own as much as possible to provide the best possible environment for the player to interact with, even when neither the developer nor the player can be in a position to come to its rescue.

Unfortunately, for a developer such a game could be the most difficult game to program. It would present a nightmare of interdependent systems as well as all manner of possible unexpected results and feedback. So you?ve made system for generating a map automatically, but now it has to work with systems for AI tactics and pathfinding. You can figure out a way to generate in-game dialogue, but it also has to be balanced and fine tuned to work with a system for handling the actions of the player as well as dealing with various relevant events, which becomes even more problematic if those events are emergent as well. As systems interact with other systems, you create an increasingly chaotic environment, where even the smallest change or event can send ever larger ripples through everything. As you add systems to a game, the task of getting them all to work together effectively becomes exponentially more difficult.

It?s like having to let your child out into the cruel world, and just hoping that you?ve taught him/her enough to succeed. A difficult task to be sure, but one that would allow for further growth and development.

[WHMZakeri]

This topic title game me serious 'nam flashbacks of PCB Phantasm.

As a fan of all of Paul's topics and debates here, I'm at odd with this post, since there's really nothing there to argue with. Pretty much everything here is true, and follows from the originating logic. In the interest of starting a debate and getting the topic rolling, I'll go ahead and attempt an extreme opinion on the situation, and hope for a devil's advocate if nothing else.

Personally, I think game developers are being too lazy in terms of creating these systems above. I'd even go so far as to say they're being too lazy with the systems that are already put into place. I can understand that there are risks, and large amounts of programming involved to develop systems that Paul is speaking of, but even ignoring advanced programming of open ended scenarios with enriched directions and overarching plot there are still problems of breaking the player's immersion though simple things like gameplay and story segregation.

Under Aversions of the linked page, there is an example from Final Fantasy V, a game on the SNES, where a character who is killed off for real has the entire party attempt to case healing spells and potions on the character, including the "Raise" or "Life" spell. In a later game of the series, on a later system, in a game with a deeper storyline, They pull a similar thing with Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, except the rest of the party do not even attempt to use healing items or spells. This puts into perspective the overall laziness when it comes to providing players with the sort of immersion that these games should be striving to achieve. Even the very act of something happening in the game having some co-relation with the way the game is played is put onto a pedestal, when it really should be a common happenstance.

hopefully, there are some games working to overcome the initial problem of having one side or the other control everything that happens. I know Nippon Ichi has been attempting this, and it's apparent in their games. Starting with Disgaea as a reference point, I have to bring up the Item World. Item world was randomly generated to the point where there would be occasions where it was impossible to get to the next level because the exit warp and the starting panel were on completely different islands that don't face each other on a vertical or horizontal platform.  It's easy enough to laud this as a failure, but there is no such thing as failure in experiments. This is the kind of step forward needed, and Nippon Ichi has since developed games that try to progress into this territory. Cladun: This is an RPG attempts to give the player control over his/her characters, giving them the ability to paint over the face, and change their personality, dialog, and even the character's personal final boss. Then there's Zettai Hero Project, which promises to give the player customization over everything in the game, including the MC's body, base of operations, and event scenes. We'll have to wait to see just how it holds up in this respect though.

It's arguable that the games above don't exactly break out into the area between player control and director control that Paul is talking about, but there are precious few games that are willing to give the player this much control over everything while still attempt to integrate the player's ideas into the rest of the game, rather than it just being a pretty face and a blank area in the voice acting where the character's default name should have been.

[hyorinryu]

This topic title game me serious 'nam flashbacks of PCB Phantasm.

As a fan of all of Paul's topics and debates here, I'm at odd with this post, since there's really nothing there to argue with. Pretty much everything here is true, and follows from the originating logic. In the interest of starting a debate and getting the topic rolling, I'll go ahead and attempt an extreme opinion on the situation, and hope for a devil's advocate if nothing else.

Personally, I think game developers are being too lazy in terms of creating these systems above. I'd even go so far as to say they're being too lazy with the systems that are already put into place. I can understand that there are risks, and large amounts of programming involved to develop systems that Paul is speaking of, but even ignoring advanced programming of open ended scenarios with enriched directions and overarching plot there are still problems of breaking the player's immersion though simple things like gameplay and story segregation.

Under Aversions of the linked page, there is an example from Final Fantasy V, a game on the SNES, where a character who is killed off for real has the entire party attempt to case healing spells and potions on the character, including the "Raise" or "Life" spell. In a later game of the series, on a later system, in a game with a deeper storyline, They pull a similar thing with Aeris in Final Fantasy VII, except the rest of the party do not even attempt to use healing items or spells. This puts into perspective the overall laziness when it comes to providing players with the sort of immersion that these games should be striving to achieve. Even the very act of something happening in the game having some co-relation with the way the game is played is put onto a pedestal, when it really should be a common happenstance.

hopefully, there are some games working to overcome the initial problem of having one side or the other control everything that happens. I know Nippon Ichi has been attempting this, and it's apparent in their games. Starting with Disgaea as a reference point, I have to bring up the Item World. Item world was randomly generated to the point where there would be occasions where it was impossible to get to the next level because the exit warp and the starting panel were on completely different islands that don't face each other on a vertical or horizontal platform.  It's easy enough to laud this as a failure, but there is no such thing as failure in experiments. This is the kind of step forward needed, and Nippon Ichi has since developed games that try to progress into this territory. Cladun: This is an RPG attempts to give the player control over his/her characters, giving them the ability to paint over the face, and change their personality, dialog, and even the character's personal final boss. Then there's Zettai Hero Project, which promises to give the player customization over everything in the game, including the MC's body, base of operations, and event scenes. We'll have to wait to see just how it holds up in this respect though.

It's arguable that the games above don't exactly break out into the area between player control and director control that Paul is talking about, but there are precious few games that are willing to give the player this much control over everything while still attempt to integrate the player's ideas into the rest of the game, rather than it just being a pretty face and a blank area in the voice acting where the character's default name should have been.

I wouldn't say they're too lazy, but perhaps too scared. Stuff like the stuff you guys are talking about probably takes $$$ and they can't afford it, limiting the amount of people who can so this sort of thing.

Times an issue too. Many companies have had to rush or delay their games and they weren't nearly as ambitious as this. If Nintendo has had to rush things like TP and WW, what chance do smaller companies have?

They also may have different priorities too. Most gamers aren't interested and/or are content with what they have now. The company may figure that if everything is okay , why should they take a risk fixing something that wasn't broken to get a relatively smaller audience at the expense of the larger one?

If I had to guess who would pioneer this sort of thing, I would guess may be Microsoft, Sony, Valve, or some other company I don't know about.

I say Microsoft because they have the $$$ and programming is right up their ally. I don't know much about Sony, but my reasons for them are similar.
I put Valve as a canidate because they seem to be more adventurous with their games and are always updating them. If they tried something like this and screwed up, it wouldn't be too bad because they could fix it with an update.
There's also the fact they have made games on both sides of the spectrum. You have games like Half Life, where the game stays with the developer and sandbox stuff like Garry's Mod.

I should probably elaborate, but I don't really have the time too.

[Paul Debrion]

I believe that nowadays its a more a matter of priorities than it is of time and money.

The technology already exists, and has existed for quite some time. It's the techniques and practices required that have yet to be worked out.

Larger game companies are often less likely to try such things because what they're doing already works. This isn't a matter of laziness on their part as much as it is that they have different priorities. It makes sense that if they're already achieving success that they not as likely to try to fix something which really isn't broken from their perspective.

Two games I think do relatively well in this area are Dwarf Fortress and Love. Neither have particularly large budgets, but they are made with priorities that differ from that of mainstream video games.

Love for example pretty much aims to do what I've described and runs into a lot of the problems I describe as a result. It definitely shows whenever the developer breaks something, because even the smallest changes have had huge effects on the game by affecting multiple systems. This thread was partly inspired by a recent blog post by the developer of Love talking about issues related to maintaining a game with so many interdependent systems.

While Dwarf Fortress leans a bit more towards the sandbox side of things, it attempts features a lot of events that are more game controlled than player controlled in order to provide something for the player to interact with. It tries to achieve a sort of semi-controlled chaos that allows for things to happen on their own but isn't quite completely random, and that's what really makes the game for a lot of people.

[Esifex]

I don't have much to contribute on this point, because I have no programming experience, and I only play very specific games - usually MMORPGs or the occasional FPS - but I just wanted to kip in here and say, I really like the way this debate is unfolding. Very intelligent, very mature, and it almost looks like something that would be cited for a college dissertation on gaming.