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Romeo and Juliet Game Post-Mortem

Posted by Zonk on from the points-for-creativity,-to-be-sure dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Gamasutra is running a post-mortem on an interactive love story that was written by students. They were attempting a solution to the game designer's challenge from the GDC 2004. From the article: Interaction with video games is currently done at an almost entirely rational level. The player may react to a game emotionally, but the game will never know about it, and thus, never respond to it. We wanted to change this, and have the player interact with the game solely through his own emotions."

10 of 37 comments (clear)

  1. Intriguing Concept by stpitner · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This game has a very intriguing concept. I don't know if by my selecting of colors it would appropriately pick the emotions I'd want to convey. It definitely has originality in the idea, I'll give them that.

    What's the color for wanting to throw your controller down in disgust because Juliet killed herself? :)

  2. How does painting on the screen by the_skywise · · Score: 2, Interesting

    translate to "interacting with emotions?"

    That's like saying using Graffiti on my Palm Pilot allows me to interact with it on an emotional level...

    I'm not trying to flame down the idea. It's a novel approach and a much more "oragnic" interface than a keyboard ("I love you.", "I LOVE YOU!", "I LOVE YOU :)") But it seems to me that the player still has to "think" the emotion to paint to get the desired response.

    1. Re:How does painting on the screen by stpitner · · Score: 2, Interesting

      What if we take the concept of reading emotions one step forward? Hook the game up with a connection to your webcam and read your facial expressions for the emotions. How would Abraham really react at the beginning if you played the character of Sampson and you literally bit your thumb? Or perhaps they could add a few other gestures to convey your emotion (raised eyebrow, wink). It's like the eye toy, only not. I mean, what color would you give if you feel confused? camoflauge? I have no clue.

  3. Half Baked + Rushed Schedule = DOA by DingerX · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So they set out with a vague idea of what the game was, basically an "emotional interface", no idea of how to work out the game itself; no run-throughs of what the concept was. They had limited artistic assets, which were essential for an impressionist game, and these were squandered by the shifting scope and requirements of the game. In other words, they didn't have a clear idea at the start, nor a clear execution.

    I guess that's why it's a learning experience. "great ideas" are very simple ones, backed up by a bunch of tedious execution.

  4. Romance Games and Iron Chef by Miaomiao · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This sounds kind of like those interactive love sim games that are really popular over in japan, and in certain crowds like the really geeky otaku type people

    It's a little sad that the person that won sounds like the better action like plot. Isn't it weird that pretty much all of them had trouble thinking of "things without guns in them" and two were multiplayer.

    We'll probably see more things like this here locally (romance type games), as an actual game, but the idea is kind of fun.

    As for the game designers challenge... I'd love to see an iron chef style show based on that... but instead of pitching a slideshow, they'd have to make a rough version of the game (maybe with paper or whatever they can think of), but I'm a total fan of iron chef, so I get a little biased.

  5. I have to give them credit for originality. by daviddennis · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Personally, I hate video games because nearly all of them are all about people killing each other. People kill each other enough in Watts without adding an artificial Watts for us to kill each other. This seems like a concept that could attract my interest, with a positive goal of maintaining a romance, instead of the tiresome negative goal of not being killed, which you always fail at in the end.

    I have a feeling the result was pretty dreadful, because otherwise it would have been released in some fashion, as a free thing to try if nothing else. At the same time, it would have definitely been interesting to try, and perhaps another group could pick up similar ideas and make something worthwhile out if it.

    D

  6. The declaration/types issue by fm6 · · Score: 2, Informative
    As a matter of fact, variables don't have type, only the value that they contain does. This has its advantages. For instance, you can do things like assigning the name of a function to a variable, and then executing it by adding parentheses, for instance. It also has major disadvantages, making a typo in a variable name will create a new variable, and on top of that, Lua will not throw an error. This isn't such a big deal with a small codebase, or when the domain of Lua's use in a game is limited, but when a large portion of the game is written in Lua's, it can became a hassle. Often times, a member of the team would make a seemingly simple change, only to be greeted by Romeo and Juliet standing still on the stage, doing nothing, with naught a peep from Lua.
    This is the same issue I have with with Python and (to a lesser extent) Perl. Neither language enforces any kind of type checking. Python objects don't even have types as such -- you just add or remove members as you need them. And Python doesn't provide a way to declare variables, so you have to be a very careful typist.

    Some very successful applications have been writen in Perl and Python, so obviously there are good programmers who like self-discipline better than languages with anti-Murphy features. But a lot of us are not like that. Something to remember when you chose a language for a project.

  7. Game has a web site by fm6 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here.. No downloads yet.

  8. Reality is not the point by fm6 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    Your love life is obviously more successful than mine.

    Seriously though, people (well, mostly women) love romantic fantasies. Check out the romance section of your bookstore some time. There's an obvious market for romance-based games.

    Violent stories are the junk food of gaming and other forms of entertainment. They're intellectually and emotionally unnutritious, but they're relatively easy to program (or write or film) and they have a large guaranteed audience. And just as junk food dominates the food diet of too many people, violence dominates the entertainment diet of too many people.

    I enjoy a Jumbo Jack and a round of GTA3 now and then. But, like many people, I refuse to consume them until both my pancreas and my brain rot.

  9. The interface has me fascinated.. by Myself · · Score: 2, Insightful

    More so than just the idea of painting, is the fact that it's essentially a gesture interpretation system. If the game is decent at figuring out what you're thinking based on the way you move the mouse, maybe it'd be able to interpret other body motion too, if given the appropriate input devices.

    I'm thinking specifically of the motion trackers used in the CAVE system. It's one thing for a virtual character to mimic your movements without understanding them, which has been done for years. It'd be a big step for the character to make inferences about your emotions based on how you stand or move.

    The obvious pitfall here is that, after interacting with such a game for a long time, people might forget how to use the expressions that the game doesn't understand or react properly to. It's easy to keep a mental separation when the interface is very different from regular human interaction, like a keyboard. I like to think that most of us don't vocalize "lol" on a daily basis. But as the interfaces get closer to regular life, will the line blur enough to throw us off?