ETC Applied Research Team
Final Presentation
December 15, 2003
The Team
Ben Smith
Eben Myers
David Jimison
Shanna Tellerman
Brenda Harger, Faculty Advisor
Original High Level Goal
To research character and emotion in online
games from a fresh perspective (Art &
Drama) and to write a research paper that
provides practical applications to game
design.
Emergent Stories in Massively
Multiplayer Online Games:
Using Improvisational Techniques to
Design for Emotional Impact
Distinct Medium of MMOGs
Defining Characteristic
• Hundreds or thousands of players
simultaneously inhabit the same persistent
game world.
Unique Features of MMOGs
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Play together
Real-time
Unscripted
Potentially never-ending
Design Challenges
• Unpredictable player behavior
• 1,000 heroes
• Multiple play styles and skill levels
Stories
• Stories are important to human beings
• Satisfying stories have an identified
structure
Stories and Games
• Linear stories tend to be used in linear games.
• Multi-linear stories are also used in games.
Emergent Stories
• Authored on the fly.
Improv
Storytelling on the fly
• Real-time
• Unscripted
CROW
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Character
Relationship
Objective
Where (setting)
Character
• External and internal characteristics
– Physical body
– Status
– Given circumstances
– Personality traits
– Inner needs
Relationship
• Three types
– Biological
– Professional
– Social
Objective
• Objective is a goal
– Physical
– Psychological
– Combination
• Objective should be
expressed as a verb
Where (setting)
• Time period and
location for the story
CROW Web
• CROW elements are dynamic and
interrelated
• Action should cause change in one or
more elements of CROW
• Change in an element of CROW can affect
other elements of CROW
Moments of Truth
• “...we rely on works of fiction, in any
medium, to help us understand the world
and what it means to be human ... we lose
consciousness of the medium and see
neither print nor film but only the power of
the story itself (and) think about what truth
it has told us about our lives.” (Janet
Murray, Hamlet on the Holodeck)
Moments of Truth
• An empathic connection to a universal
feeling through a specific incident in a
story
Moments of Truth don’t
have to be profound.
Important Points
• MMOGs are a distinct medium
• Emergent stories can help meet the
challenges of this medium
• Improv techniques (CROW and CROW
web) create a foundation towards
moments of truth
Challenges
• We’re not gamers
• We are 5 people writing together
• The scope of our topic and our ideas is
huge
We’re not Gamers:
Playing Games
• Together
• Individually
• Always discussed
from a critical and
analytical angle
Aliens vs. Predator: Extinction *
Animal Crossing * Def Jam:
Vendetta * Earth & Beyond *
Final Fantasy X * Grand Theft
Auto III * Grand Theft Auto: Vice
City * Halo * Ico * Jak & Daxter:
The Precursor Legacy * The
Legend of Zelda: The
Windwaker * Max Payne * Metal
Gear Solid: Substance *
Metroid: Prime * No One Lives
Forever 2 * Silent Hill 2 * The
Sims * The Sims Online *
Splinter Cell * Star Wars
Galaxies: An Empire Divided *
Star Wars: Knights of the Old
Republic * Super Mario
Sunshine * Toontown Online
Point of View and Camera
Linearity
Reward Structures
We’re not Gamers:
Talking to Gamers
• Surveyed ETC students
• One-on-one conversations
We’re not Gamers:
Research
• Gamespot, Gamespy, IGN, Mobygames,
and many others…
• Talked to designers at EA
We’re not Gamers:
It’s a Strength
Ultimately, being non-gamers meant we
could bring an outside (artistic/dramatic)
perspective to the topic.
We are 5 people writing together:
Managing time together and apart
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Meetings/discussions
Outlines
Divided up writing
Group editing
We are 5 people writing together:
Communication
We are 5 people writing together:
Greater than the sum of our parts
Huge Scope:
Expanding the Scope First
• All games not just online games
• Breadth first study of video games
Huge Scope:
Narrowing Down
• Looked for topic areas that were new and
different.
Sparks
Deliverables: Written Words
• Paper
• Documentation of our thoughts/process
Deliverables: EA Workshop
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January 9th
Held at Maxis
Open to all of the EA community
Our objective:
– Present our ideas in the form of practical applications
that game designers can employ
Future Publications?
We will take ideas from our paper and write
them into different published forms.
• Conferences (ACE ‘04, ICEC ’04, GDC ’05)
• Magazines/Journals (Game Developer,
Journal of Game Studies)
• Online (Gamasutra)
Special Thanks
The Sims Online
• Jeff Lind - Dev. Dir./Team Lead
• Andrew Boyd - Designer
• Jessica Lewis - Associate Producer
Earth & Beyond
• Chris Klug - Creative Director
• Sean Dugan – Writer
The Sims 2.0
• Lucy Bradshaw - VP Production/Dev.
• Lisa Dennis - HR
• Bob King - Animator
• Billy Hsu - Console Development
LotR: Return of the King
• Eric Leive - Artist
• Jane Ng – Artist
ETC Students/Alumni
• Jon-Paul Dumont
• Richard Colvin
• Jon Parise
• Nate Jones
• Ira Fey
• Ted Hung
…Questions?