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How Perlin's Law Makes Gaming Credible
simoniker writes "Veteran game designer Ernest Adams has posted a new column on 'Perlin's Law' which suggests that all books, movies, and games have a 'credibility budget'. For games, both the designer and the player decide what happens: '...the story itself can only tolerate a certain amount of improbability before the credibility budget is exhausted, and the story is ruined.' According to this new law, named after Ken Perlin, who gave birth to the concept, games should not be infinitely wide-ranging or allow the player to do anything he wants."
I've always secretly hoped that games would one day evolve to a point of them becoming specific to the user. This "mind game" that Ender played had seemingly limitless possibilities and also seemed to reflect the user's psyche back at them and cause them to make connections they never knew existed.
Maybe the next step for video game engines isn't graphics rendering but instead, stimulus/response rendering? Where by the game reacts to user input using rules, heuristics and a bit of randomness and the game states are loosely defined. Why is Spore so popular? Possibly because of the number of proposed outcomes of the game.
We're no where near this kind of game play yet but it may be possible in the future. Perlin's Law seems kind of like a restriction that I honestly wish game developers and publishers wouldn't try to adhere to. Only when people take chances and think outside of the box will we find true gems in the video games. I'm sick of repackaged games and ideas.
My work here is dung.
What he says makes sense. I was watching my stepson play Thief 2 on Xbox last night and I knew I couldn't play the game. The thief comes across a guard who is directly in front of a burning torch. So, shoot a water arrow (yes a water arrow, there's also a noisemaker and moss arrow- which already strained my credulity) at the torch and put it out. Does the guard even notice that he's now in total darkness? No. Does he try to re-light the torch? Nope. Does he continue walking in the same pattern as if nothing as happened? Yep.
I think part of why I like Halo and WWII shooters is that their internal logic is actually consistent.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
The story might be ruined, but the public will still pay you money for a totally incredible story. Just look at the lasting popularity of X-Files, which drastically changed its plotline every couple of seasons (first greys, then black oil, then super-soldiers), and the current hype about Lost, which appears to be doing the same (first mystery island, then DHARMA, then Widmore, now according to producer podcasts it's soon to be previous inhabitants).
Really, is that any worse defining yourself by your favorite bands or TV shows?
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A voter for George W. Bush.
Take the cheats from just about any game. How often does playing with cheats 'take the fun out of it', and how often does it 'improve the experience'. Given a cheat that lets you go anywhere and do anything in a game, it's been my experience that more likely than not, it ruins the experience (unless the game is obsenely hard, which is relatively rare). That also lends itself to a game balancing issue. The more open-ended you make a game (e.g., Oblivion/Morrowind), the more chances you have for both bugs, and balancing issues. (With enough grinding, it wasn't hard to become a virtual god in Morrowind.)
No matter how much you start out with you must never cross the line and have a character do something that is inconsistent with the world in the story. You cannot have a character from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter leap into the air and fly. You MIGHT be able to get away with that in a Star Trek story.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
Have you seen the demos? I've only seen one outcome no matter what you choose.
Oh, by "number of outcomes" you mean: The exact same thing but now they have three arms and live in round buildings?
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
This seems to conflate two very different ideas, one of which is obvious, the other seems misguided. Clearly, if there are no constraints at all on what players can do, that's going to strain credibility, in and of itself (at least, if complete freedom isn't limited to a special distinct mode designed for editing the environment rather than intended for "playing the game").
But I don't see how an increasing scope is countradindicated, so long as items in the game are designed for credible behavior and reaction. Sure, infinitely wide ranging requires infinite programming to create credible behavior, but its a nonsense limit anyway, since you'd need an infinitely powerful computer to run the game, and infinite media capacity to deliver it, anyhow. "You shouldn't do things that are impossible" isn't really a necessary warning.
. . .how do we balance the player's desire for freedom with the designer's desire to tell a consistent, coherent story. . . .
This tension is an essential element of classical (Freudian) phychology. Substitute the terms Id and Ego for player and designer, respectively. Indeed, in a post-structuralist view (informed by Lacan), any discourse structured as a narrative (that is, nearly all, internal or external), Perlin's Law offers interpretive value. For example, a measure of the bounds of normativity for an internal discourse (whether you consider yourself crazy) is a function of Perlin's Law over the constituent terms of that internal narrative.
Further study: Can we apply the concept to shared narratives like normative social behavior or political formation? Is the concept redundant with the contributions of the Frankfurt School?
Extra credit: Does this idea offer a description of the development of political reaction in response to sharply divergent, even orthogonal, shared narratives (q.v.--the Bush team vs. *the reality-based community*)? Is it persuasive?
Indeed, credibility has been a consistent focus of Rhetoric since the inception of the Western cultural tradition. Perhaps Mr. Perlin's own modesty should prevail over the enthusiasms of the geek community in general and Mr. Adams in particular?
illegitimii non ingravare
I think there is a certain amount of usefulness to this notion, however what I think it needs to clarify is that when the player is what causes the improbable action, it spends far less of the 'credibility budget' then when the game seems to be the impetus.
When I drive off a ramp, flip over and cause a 15 car explosion in GTA, it doesn't really affect my notion of the game as a vaguely believable caricature of America. However, if that happened all around me constantly it would bust that and I'd feel like I were in crazy stunt world or something.
I think that the difference in credibility effect between player impetus and game impetus is so great that the mere suggestion that player freedom is a bad thing is almost entirely busted.
It certainly makes it more difficult for the -game- to respond to the player in credible ways, but it isn't directly what the player did that hurts that credibility.
I'd say that arbitrarily limiting a player's freedom has a credibility damaging effect as well, since you feel like you are in an invisible straight jacket whenever there exists a mind numbingly obvious solution to a problem that can only be dealt with in the circuitous manner decided by the game developer.
Meh, it depends on the game, and the gamer. I'll just take GTA for example. I did not find the missions to be particuarly fun. Some of them were, but some of them(particularly the ones with time limits) were very boring to me. So I stopped doing them. But I still had many hours of enjoyment of the game, just through exploring the huge city they had created.
The cheat codes really made that aspect of the game more fun for me. I got to enjoy parts of the game that never would have become available to me otherwise, because I wasn't willing to grind the missions. But I made my own fun, and the cheat codes were just another tool for that.
And another less extreme example. Contra, back on the NES. The 30 man code took what was otherwise a very frustrating experience and made it much more managable and fun. Could I have practiced enough and become so skilled that I could get through that game with only three lives? Possibly, but that's not really how I wanted to spend my time. Instead I'd play the game, trying not to die, but also not worrying about it too much.
Cheat codes just add another option to the game, and often open up new possibilities. If you don't want to use them, there's noone forcing you to. And if you just can't help yourself, despite wanting to play it normally, then you've got some self control problems, and how they affect your gaming is probalby going to be the least of your worries.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Many, many games don't even have a plot.
"games should not be infinitely wide-ranging or allow the player to do anything he wants."
Because we said so. And it's a law now so you have to follow it. pfhhhh.
I'm gonna go play some Grand Theft Auto and Spiderman 2 now...
I think you're being unfair- this article poses several tangible extensions to the "suspension of disbelief" concept:
1. Credibility can be treated as a quantifiable substance that can be codeified in a game
2. In interactive fiction, both the developer and player draw from a common pool of credibility, making it unique from other fiction
3. Players can destroy their own enjoyment of the game by using playing strategies that lead to wins but hurt the story telling element- Telling a story and beating a game are two separate ideas and interactive games struggle to accomplish both.
4. The developer can minimize this problem by stratifying the cost of player actions based on the storytelling arc, based on the rules of the law.
I think this is an incredibly interesting new idea!
Call it the Samuel Taylor Coleridge Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspension_of_disbeli ef. He wrote about it first in 1817.
I really hope you're joking. If not, this is one of the worst abuses of scientific rhetoric that I've ever seen.
Le français vous intéresse?
Let's be honest about it. With books, movies, and games that involve a fictional setting such as sci-fi or fantasy, you have a "reasonable suspension of disbelief" factor. Once you cross that line, things start to bog down. The problem is, that line is different based on people's education on the areas around the disbelief portion.
I have a fairly good knowledge of medical areas, from my time working in a pharmacy and studying to be a paramedic. I can already tell that the new TNT network show "Saved" is going to be a major flop with paramedics everywhere. On one of their commercials, they show one paramedic telling the other one "If you shock her one more time, you may kill her." Um, guys? If you are shocking someone, they already have a heart rhythm incompatable with life. (Pacing is not considered shocking, and you don't use the paddles to do it, but pads that adhere to the chest.) This is a reverse from what you got with E.R., which tried to be factually accurate about medical details, and thus had credibility, making a reasonable suspension of disbelief not necessary.
How does this apply to games as well as books and movies? Well, once you go past that point, the viewer/reader starts to mentally question everything else the author/producer is telling us. It becomes a distraction from the entertainment factor. The more distractions, the less you are entertained, until you are staying "enough is enough" and stop participating.
I've played a few games where they try to mix up the laws of physics, or have magic and technology both flourish. It depends on the setting and how it is used. City of Heroes/Villians had both magic, genetic mutations, science, and natural abilities all working easily together, because it was about comic book heroes/villians. We've been given forever to accept that this is a fantasy world, so we can fit in things that don't make a great deal of practical sense and enjoy the game.
As for games that didn't work for me, they have been so immemorable that I don't recall their names. I think the rule of thumb applies more to books and video, since they have a more controlled storyline. For games, it is more often a case of stupid mechanics or dumb ideas.
'...the story itself can only tolerate a certain amount of improbability before the credibility budget is exhausted, and the story is ruined.'
Because I, for one, don't like there to be any improbability whatsoever in my games. They should be exactly like real life, diverging in no way whatsoever. Escapism indeed! Gaming should be sheer drudgery and nothing more or you won't truly appreciate it.
I've had nothing but the worst experiences of my life killing Hitler armed with twin gatling guns, wiping out every Nazi in WWII Germany, turning the tides of major battles, stealing cars and eating ghosts whilst looking like a pizza with a slice missing. When I play a war game I want to sit there numb with fear then die as soon as the ramp goes down on the landing craft with absolutely no possibility to have a real effect on the massive landings, let alone "restart". When I steal a car in a game, I want the police to chase me, catch me, then throw me in a jail that locks my console with absolutely no possibility of playing a computer game for another three years (unless I behave well in which case it might unlock in two years instead). Now that's entertainment. Mmm. Credibility.
Oh, and those hookers in GTA3? I want them to take one look at me from head to toe and say, "I'm going to have to charge you double." Sure it crushes my ego but it's all about the credible reality!
Damn, I just broke my sarcasm switch.
All interesting behavior happens at the fringes of systems.
In this particular case, I believe the author is incorrectly connecting two different factors;
1. Giving the player consistent purpose
2. Deciding how or whether they move towards that purpose
Elder Scrolls has been a fine example, although a little short and unclear on criteria #1 (furthermore, earlier ES's lacked a a form of internal consistency such that the player could, in effect, get trapped outside of plot due to stupid bugs). The player truly is free to do just about anything, there is no real expected path for them to walk, thus no potential for loss of credibility. Credibility loss would consist of stepping outside game mechanics, aka bugs.
If anything, most games lack credibility because they try to prevent the player from doing imporbable things. The real credibility loss comes from having the characters trapped in such small snow globes, so to speak. The world is false & artificial. Half life 2 is a blast, but its still obviously false because its totally linear in nature.
Towards the end though, the author makes it clear. Really what he's talking about is Mage: The Ascension.
Description/Aside: M:TA is a Pencil and paper RPG where you can bend reality to your will, although reality objects with increasing viciousness the the more flagrant your violation, often to painful ends. Basically you loose credibility with reality for ignoring it too often.
I fail to see how the credibility rating would apply to a game. Thats the thing, lucky or abberant behavior, un-credible actions do not carry real consequences with them in real life. Thats the definition of luck, of probability; its just one roll of the dice. Cold table effects be damned.
Personally, I think its game developers jobs to create environments where players can fool around on the fringe of possibility, to expand the horizon of possibility as far as possible. Only when our worlds are credible enough can we start going back and trying to limit the plots within our worlds to more credible boundaries.
The perfect story here is Halo, what it was planned as and what it became. The original goal was to allow you to wage an adhoc gureilla war against Covenant. But Bungie realized taht would mean building a complete world, a credible dynamic world. They chose what hte author chose; limit the world to build credibility. The ultimate goal though, the interesting goal, is the opposite: to build a credible world, and then help the player chisel a plot out of it.
myren
Depends what the cheats are, and what you call destroying gameplay. Some people play Oblivion like Nethack, restarting completely when they die. Some people eschew the fast-travel system, preferring to visit every piece of virtual landscape directly.
I on the other hand don't have the ability to concentrate closely enough on every dungeon wall and have been killed a few times by traps (I play with deadlier traps - oncoming spiked logs should HURT) and have merely reloaded. Is it a cheat, or much more fun? I use fast-travel extensively, from one side of a city to another, because I've played a lot of these games and don't need to hear the same two chat lines repeated endlessly as I walk around the city for the umpteenth time.
I find my gaming experience VASTLY improved by "cheats". In games that don't allow these features, I enable themselves myself with console commands, simply to avoid "play" (I use the term lightly) that involves running over the same map from end to end. Did you ever play Heretic or Hexen? If so, you know the blecherousness of which I speak.
Imho, a bad game ruins a game. Cheats just let people skip all the crap until they realize they don't actually like much of it. Doom on the other hand, kept us going for years because its cheats let us play exactly what we wanted to, and it was always fun.
It is interesting to consider video games as a form of art ; dynamic art to be more precise, a lot like movies. Then we can refer to aestetics, which is a branch of philosophy that has been studied for centuries. Tryings to determine formally what is good and bad, in any art form, has always failed. There will always be a counterexample. And if there is not, interestingly, a counterexample can arise from the analyse of "what's bad", which will likely be original and really good. Breaking such laws in some realization can often be what's best, as long as the author knows what he is doing. There are much higher levels of analysis to arts aesthetics than saying "this movie/game is good because its degree of realism is well balanced". Most repertoire movie litterates will have so many more criterias for judging movies, that realism becomes just one among others, and does not matter anymore. Even shifts of realism within a movie could become interesting. And I don't see any reason why it should be different for video games. Think about Tarantino's "From Dusk Till Dawn".
I have used the term for decades without knowing it's history. Thanks again.
We have always been at war with Eurasia!
I'm sure Nick Davison would be perfectly content for games to continue to stagnate in their infancy until they become a pathetic form of self-parody, as comic books did between the mid-50s and the mid-80s. Others of us see the potential of the medium and seek to realize it, perhaps to reach as-yet unserved markets for whom stealing cars and shagging prositutes is not the summit of human felicity.
To each his own.
To me there's a huge difference between cheats and a lower difficulty level. If you really are having problem playing a game, nowadays there's almost always some way of 'lowering' the difficulty level with most decent quality games. I think this is a much better approach than just using cheat codes to whiz through the game.