I'm working on a technically simple but conceptually far-reaching Inform 7 extension to fundamentally alter the power dynamic between author and player.
The idea is to stop punishing players for not thinking the exact way a given author does. Since IF's open-ended interface gives the illusion of open-ended solutions to problems that almost always have one and exactly one implemented solution, players are invariably let down when their well-reasoned out solutions are not options implemented by the author. (Even assuming the game has no guess-the-verb, hinting, or bug-related problems.)
"Spin" is an experimental extension to address this by introducing a meta-device (on the level of SAVE and UNDO) that lets player and author take turns having ultimate authority over the story. When the author has spin, he can introduce puzzles and prevent the player's forward progress through the narrative. But solving a puzzle, or earnestly interacting with it without hitting on the author's arbitrarily correct solution, transfers the spin to the player. The player can then spend it (returning it to the author) to bypass a puzzle, effectively saying "I'm still interested in your story, just not this part."
The goal is to assist more players in reaching the middles and ends of interactive stories they are genuinely interested in, but frustrated by, without them having to feel they are "cheating" by consulting out-of-game hints or walkthroughs.
Sample transcript follows. I'm very interested in responses or suggestions.
>DOWN
Hall of the Mountain King
You are in the hall of the mountain king, with passages off in all directions.
A huge green fierce snake bars the way!
>WEST
The huge green snake bars the way!
>KILL SNAKE
Attacking the snake both doesn't work and is very dangerous.
>GIVE FOOD TO SNAKE
There's nothing here it wants to eat (except perhaps you).
(You reclaim spin.)
>SPIN
Visible things that can be spun: the snake.
>SPIN SNAKE
You notice the snake reclines under a vicious stalactite. Finding a loose rock from the ground, you heft it, then hurl it with all your strength at the stalactite. It shatters, raining stones down on the snake. The stones and snake disappear into a crevasse, and after a few moments, everything is silent again.
Hall of the Mountain King
You are in the hall of the mountain king, with passages off in all directions.
(Spin goes back to me.)
>
...(later)...
A huge green fierce dragon bars the way!
>SPIN DRAGON
You don't have spin.
>EXAMINE DRAGON
I wouldn't mess with it if I were you.
>KILL DRAGON
With what? Your bare hands?
>YES
Congratulations! You have just vanquished a dragon with your bare hands! (Unbelievable, isn't it?)
(You reclaim spin.)
>EAST
Secret E/w Canyon Above Tight Canyon
A threatening little dwarf comes out of the shadows!
>THROW AXE
You can't see any such thing.
>SPIN DWARF
With a sudden burst of fury, you slam the dwarf against the cave wall and strip away his supply of nasty little knives. As you release him, he slinks away into the shadows, casting a hateful glance back. This one, at least, won't be troubling you again.
Secret E/w Canyon Above Tight Canyon
(Spin goes back to me.)
>
8 comments:
While this does seem to address one aspect of the problem, I fear it might undermine the sense of player control it's intended to convey.
The stated problem is that the player wants to deal with the problem in a different way than the author intended...
So the solution you're pursuing is to just cutscene away the obstacle in the way the author intended?
This lets the player advance the story, true, but it forces them to concede agency -- or the illusion thereof -- to such an extent they just read the story instead of play it.
It's definitely a very intriguing concept, but without a great deal of care, I think it may defeat the 'interactive' portion of IF too soundly.
I suspect we might get better results out of developing better techniques for presenting the problem and solution space to the player more naturally. Of course, I still have no idea how to do that. :)
Interesting point, Amy. I guess I would characterize this not as forcing the player to concede agency, but giving them the option of conceding agency at moments when they don't want it.
When I played Bioshock, for instance, I was interested in the art design and the storytelling, but kept dying on somewhere around the third or fourth level. I would very happily have given up my agency to aim accurately and carefully manage my ammunition and power-ups, at times, if doing so would have allowed me to see more of the level design and story.
I also got a comment by email from Sietse, whose system was not getting along with Blogger comments:
"Speaking as an author (which I'm not), I'm now pondering what would be the correct implementation here: imagine a locked door. The player would discover the key if he'd go through Aunt Janice's notes — and what is more, I-the-author arranged for this because I want him to
read those notes before he goes through that door. Now what do I do if the player, in front of the locked door and far away from Aunt Janice's room, types "SPIN DOOR"? How do I let him pass through while
neither (a) giving him an explicit hint, nor (b) narrating the player wandering to Aunt Janice's room, reading the notes, finding the key, and returning to the door to open it?"
This is an issue I'd also not come up with a solution for. (I was thinking in the context of a puzzle like the brass telescope in Riven, which is almost the first thing you see when you start the game and which you can't solve till the very ending: what if the player tries to spin the telescope as move one?) The easiest solution would be to make some puzzles unspinnable until certain preconditions have been met, perhaps with a message along the lines of "That's too much for you to spin right now." I worry that this defeats the purpose of the extension, though: it puts the player back in the position of being stuck and the author back in the position of forbidding access to the rest of his game. Maybe spinning needs to be more revelatory about the world and story underlying the puzzles, so spinning something with plot-related preconditions reveals hints? I'm not sure. More thought required...
And how do you detect "earnestly interacting with" a puzzle? Would that turn hard puzzles into the meta-puzzle of "how can I get spin?".
My guidelines to authors are basically something like "Whenever you find yourself writing text explaining why something the player has tried does not solve the puzzle, award spin." Hopefully, this will also a) encourage the author to think through reasonable alternative puzzle solutions, and b) reward the player on a more granular level for interacting with the world.
It sounds like your original intention was to provide a means of bypassing puzzles so players can move on with the game/story. But as others have pointed out, many multi-stage or metapuzzles don't lend themselves well to this type of direct approach, and it sounds like what you might end up having to do is to just provide hints of some sort.
With Sietse's example, it would seem that spinning the door would most appropriately lead to a hint guiding them to Aunt Janice's notes (which themselves might then be spun).
But that just leads me to think: why not just go with the typical in-game hint system? I'm interested to know why you think using hints would be perceived as cheating moreso than spinning. The thing I like about well-constructed, staged, in-game hints is that I don't always feel like I'm just being handed the answer.
Update: the extension is now posted on the Inform 7 site for anyone curious in playing around with it.
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