Ambient role playing games: towards a grammar of endlessness

1. Ambient role playing games:towards a grammar of endlessness Mark Eyles Roger Eglin Advanced Games Research Group Department of Creative Technologies - Faculty of Creative and Cultural Industries

2. If the seminal 1976 ambient music album Music for Airports became a 21st century ambient role playing game, what would it play like?

3. Overview • Games • Computer role playing games • Computer technology • Ambient intelligence • Pervasive games • Ambient music • Ambient games • Ambient Quest • Ambient games future

4. What is a computer game? • An interactive entertainment played against, or with the aid of, computer generated characters or tokens in a computer generated environment. • A single player game has a series of interesting obstacles to overcome in order to gain rewards. • A multiplayer game has a series of interesting obstacles to overcome at the expense and/or with the help of other players to gain rewards.

5. Computer game properties: Commitment to play • Learning curve • Play time • Civilization 2 vs. Tetris vs. Hangman

6. Computer game properties: Location and movement • Fixed (Console, PC, Set top box) • Mobile (Mobile phone, Nintendo DS) • Require movement • In one location (Football, Eye Toy) • In many locations (Alternate Reality Game)

7. Computer game properties: Commitment and movement

8. Pervasive games • Pervasive games are defined as games that extend ‘gaming experiences out into the physical world’ • (Waern, 2006) • I will return to pervasive games later and argue that ambient games are a type of pervasive game

9. Role playing games • To suggest a definition of computer role playing games: • Look at the history of RPGs • Look at the game play in RPGs • These two approaches then inform a definition of role playing games

10. History of role playing games • Pen and paper and computer role playing games formalise the playful role playing of childrens’ make believe worlds by adding a set of rules • This formalisation of role playing allows details to be shared, so that the game can be shared and seen to be played fairly according to an agreed set of rules • A key component of role playing games is stories

11. Story telling • Spoken • Pictures • Cave paintings • Written • Gilgamesh (around 2000 BC) • Moving images • Cinema (from the 1880s) • Interactive • Colossal Cave Adventure (1975ish)

12. Table top war-gaming 1 • Kriegspiel • 19th century • Lieutenant Johann von Reisswitz based on a design of his father Baron von Reisswitz • Players move tokens representing troops around a map, under the guidance of an umpire • Assured Prussian victories

13. Table top war-gaming 2 • Little Wars • A set of table top war-gaming rules • H. G. Wells - 1913. • Commenting on Kriegspiel: • ‘as it is played by the British Army, is a very dull and unsatisfactory exercise, lacking in realism, in stir and the unexpected, obsessed by the umpire at every turn, and of very doubtful value in waking up the imagination, which should be its chief function’. (Wells, 1913)

14. Fantasy literature • J.R.R. Tolkein’s The Hobbit, 1937 • The Lord of the Rings trilogy, 1954 to 1955

15. War-gaming + Fantasy • Chainmail • First table top role playing game,1971 • Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren • Dungeons and Dragons • Tactical Studies Rules (TSR), 1974 • Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson

16. Evolution of computer role playing games • Start with text adventures • ‘Advent’ or ‘Adventure’, written by William Crowther ‘around 1975 give or take a year’ • Expanded by Don Woods to Colossal Cave Adventure in 1976

17. Evolution of computer role playing games • Zork, 1978, released by Infocom 1980

18. Evolution of computer role playing games • Add role playing • Richard Garriott’s 1979 Apple II game Akalabeth

19. Evolution of computer role playing games • Character attributes • Ultima 1, 1980, developed by Richard Garriott, published by Origin Systems Inc.

20. Evolution of computer role playing games • Influence of paper based role playing

21. Evolution of computer role playing games • Control a party of characters • Race and character class mechanisms • Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, 1981, Sir Tech Software

22. Evolution of computer role playing games • Advances in technology… • Improvements in graphics • Increasing sophistication and complexity • Addition of 3D graphics to Multi User Dungeons …but retaining core RPG mechanisms

23. Evolution of computer role playing games • Expansion into other milieu:

24. Role playing gameplay mechanisms • Role playing game mechanisms have remained very similar • Compare Ultima, 1980, with Oblivion, 2006

25. Role playing gameplay mechanisms • Mechanisms commonly found in RPGs:

26. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Race • The race selected affects the abilities and attributes available to the player’s character • For example in Morrowind: Argonian Breton Dark Elf Wood Elf High Elf Imperial Khajiit Redguard Nord Orc

27. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Class • Classes determine which profession the player’s character is able to pursue • For example in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Scout Soldier Scoundrel Jedi Guardian Jedi Consular Jedi Sentinel

28. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Attributes • Attributes give the abilities of a character • These core elements define what the character is capable of

29. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Attributes

30. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Skills • Skills are learned abilities that improve through use in the game • For example in Deus Ex: Computer Electronics Environmental Training Lockpicking Medicine Swimming Weapons: Demolition Weapons: Heavy Weapons: Low-Tech Weapons: Pistol Weapons: Rifle

31. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Experience • Experience is normally measured in experience points that are earned by completing game objectives • When target numbers of experience points are achieved players are able to increase the attributes of their characters (‘Level up’)

32. Role playing gameplay mechanisms – Story and quests • Role playing games normally contain long and involved stories delivered in a series of quests

33. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Combat • Real time ‘twitch’ combat • Deus Ex • Strategic ‘dice roll’ combat • Baldur’s Gate • Or sometimes a combination • Morrowind

34. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Combat • Melee • Range • Traps

35. Role playing gameplay mechanisms – Resource management • Role playing games typically contain many items • During games players make strategic choices about what they are going to need and what they can carry • See example on next slide (Diablo)

36. Role playing gameplay mechanisms – Resource management

37. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Puzzles • Typical purposes of puzzles include: • Unlocking locations • Revealing plot • Gaining items • Defeating enemies • Helping non-player character ‘friends’ • Puzzles frequently involve ‘using’ objects • The word ‘use’ is a catchall for activating or implementing or in some other way applying the particular properties of an object

38. Role playing gameplay mechanisms - Exploration • Players search the game world to discover useful items and clues • Environments may contain hidden objects and characters used to reveal story elements • Exploration also facilitates visual (and auditory) rewards for players

39. Role playing gameplay mechanisms

40. RPG mechanisms in other game genres

41. Core features of RPGs • Choice of player races • Choice of player classes • Player attributes • Player skill development • Experience points and levels

42. Suggested definition of computer role playing games • In computer role-playing games players control one or more characters that gain ‘experience’ through the completion of game objectives. The ‘experience’ is manifested as player moderated changes in player character attributes (‘strength’, ‘intelligence’ and ‘luck’ for example) which allow the player character to evolve over the duration of the game. • Additional player character customization is facilitated through modification of character differentia such as race and class when initiating a player character ready for play and by game-play educed character modification during play, such as development and improvement of a skill by repeated use of that skill, or the spending of ‘skill points’ gained when levelling up. • The player character descriptors (attributes, differentia and game-play educed modifications) affect the in-game interactions between the player character, non-player characters and items in the game environment. The environment, objects, characters and interactions are effected in a virtual environment.

43. Ambient technology • This section starts with some assumptions about ambient games that will be made explicit later: • Ambient games are as ‘ignorable as they are interesting’ (Eno, 1978) • Consequently it should be possible for the player to ignore the game, if they wish, while still playing it • The game should physically surround them • First we will consider the growth of computer technology and its future

44. Growth of computer technology

45. Growth of computer technology • One computer – Many users • Charles Babbage designs a computer 1821 • EDSAC 1 (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator) 1949 the world’s “first complete and fully operational regular electronic digital stored program computer” (Jones, 2001)

46. Growth of computer technology • One computer – One user • 1981 IBM introduced the ‘personal computer’ Digital Rainbow 100 1982 http://pc-museum.com/officewing.htm

47. Growth of computer technology • Many computers – One user • The current state of play

48. Growth of computer technology • Ambient intelligent environments (the future) • Massively many intelligent computers – One user Tom Cruise in Minority Report http://www.visionnet.be/parahologram.html (Everyone is a user, not just Tom Cruise)

49. Ambient intelligence • There are a number of different technologies that are enabling the development of ambient intelligence: • Interconnectivity • Artificial intelligence • The proliferation of computers • These technologies support ambient intelligence, which has: • Ubiquity • Transparency • Intelligence (Aarts et al., 2001)

50. Ambient intelligence - Ubiquity • A massive number of interconnected computers are embedded in the environment • ‘It is invisible, everywhere computing that does not live on a personal device of any sort, but is in the woodwork everywhere.’ (Weiser, 1996)