On Thursday (June 26, 2008) CCS had a Games Studio meeting. Damian Hills gave a presentation on Façade (the Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas' interactive story/play/drama/game). Damian brought up a lot of good points while giving a very interesting presentation on this landmark game. Façade hold particular relationship to Damian's research, which is looking at building an experience for up to 4 people to build a collaborative narrative. We also got a glimpse of his early experiments using Director and DirectX, along with a special touch-screen display they have there in the lab. We discussed these initial interfaces - which I found quite interesting following our earlier conversations on his research. the interface sports a globular form that surrounds an inner space, like a gigantic whether balloon. Inside this balloon is the area that will contain dynamically pulled words from a given contextual search. participants can pull from this pool, building up a story that can be connected by others working with their own ballon/ball form. Shared contexts will deform the balloon interfaces so that they branch out and connect with other users. The abstract quality of Damian's work reminds me of some musician interfaces I have seen come out lately, like Tenori-On, John Klima's Glas Bead, and Reactable. But I havn't seen anything in this way of collaborative story telling. 

Meanwhile, we launched Façade on one of the machines in the studio, and I have to say I was disappointed with it. I really like the concept and what Mateas is working towards, but this game/interactive drama isn't achieving it. The characters (horribly drawn) pretty much ignored me, or only gave the most generalized responses. The game starts off by arriving at an apartment door, where a couple, Trip and Grace let you into their home. It doesn't take long for them to start bickering, and pulling you in (you can choose your character name from an expansive list as the program launches). They ferociously maneuver to bring you to their side of the argument. You are free to move around the apartment and to inspect objects on the shelf and pictures on the wall. This is all a 1st person perspective through the aforementioned poor Flash-like vector graphics. Perhaps this was intentional - so that the immersion is directed via the story. Typing at any time includes your dialogue into the space - and supposedly Grace and/or Trip respond intelligently. You can also click on either's arm, shoulder or mouth to console, hug or kiss them. You can take the latter to a ridiculous conclusion if you wish, getting you ejected from the apartment. While I like the intention of this project and their research, it also providing glaring insight into the persistent problems with AI. It just doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and it certainly isn't following Moore's law. Aside from the interactive graphics, I wouldn't have ranked the AI of Façade any higher than when I played Eliza. 

Across the room, Aram fired up Grand Theft Auto IV. I had heard a lot about this game, but never played it. I have to say that it is probably one of the most seductive things I have been exposed to. I liken it to an interactive Soprano's episode. Rockstar games sidestep the AI (as many games do) with really good writing. When the character reaches crucial stages of the game, you lose control of the character as he steps out from game mode, and enters into story mode.  Overall, the game is very multimodal - you can watch TV, any scenes plays like a racing game, you can go to the comedy club and watch a show from a famous comic (we watched Ricky Gervais) which changes each time you go in. While I was entirely impressed on the one hand, I also worry about the game being a harbinger of the future Soma (as in Huxley's happy pill for the masses in Brave New World). Aram brought up how many good (from a game-play viewpoint) aspects of the game can be boiled down to 'its like reality, but sped up'. Indeed, if we are allowed access to a fully immersive environment, replete with lush detail, clarity, plots and goals, and are able to fast forward the boring bits (already sped up compared to life, you can also chose to speed up things in the game, like taking a Taxi across town) - why would anyone return to the Real World? You don't have to be a evolutionary theorist to plot how long that will last before these people succeed in VR'ing their genes from future forms of humanity. OF course, the transhumanists are just wringing their hands in anticipation of these scenarios supported by all sorts of artificial life extensions and propagation methods. But, that is a longer debate.