#05 On Game Worlds (and Assassin's Creed)

So today I want to write about the process of interpretation and why "fictional worlds" exist. In the second part I'm continuing my quest design from last week: an Assassin's Creed quest that uses flags as goal inducers.

Play, Layers of Meaning and Fictional Worlds

Humans, animals and computers are capable of interpreting their inputs. Interpretation means, that the interpreter recognizes a sign that stands for something to him and this "something" is then recognized as the sign's meaning (the field exploring this is that of semiotics).

It is now clear that, with humans, the process of interpretation is very much dependent on the concrete psychological context. A person who doesn't speak English or who learned an unusual meaning for some words won't be able to interpret this post the way others do. Someone who is interested in analysing my blog post might understand it differently, since he approaches it with another mindset, or frame (borrowed from Gregory Bateson: A Theory of Play and Fantasy).

Now this term, "frame", becomes suddenly much more interesting to us if we think about signs with multiple meanings. The elements of a game, for example, usually have at least two meanings: One layer contains meanings if the game were interpreted under a serious perspective/frame, one layer contains meanings interpreted under a play perspective/frame. A great example are the bites exchanged by playful animals: It is only due to their frame that says "we're playing" that these bites are not understood as attack.

Example of two dogs being in the frame of "playing", where their bites do not denote attacks (source).

 The ability to assign a second layer of meanings to things, where this layer is only activated under certain circumstances, is a treasure for authors of all kind: These "certain circumstances" are situations like reading a book, telling jokes or playing a game. In such situations, authors are able to give things a new layer of meaning on which nearly anything is possible, as long as some consistency criteria are satisfied. 

At this point it is clear that fictional worlds like that of Tolkien are nothing else but a collection of meanings belonging to a frame. For example the expressions "the Shire", "ring wraiths" or "the one ring" have certain meanings associated to them in the LOTR-universe, which are different to their everyday meanings (if those exists at all). This LOTR-frame of interpreting is activated, for example, by certain book titles. And, as crossmedia storytelling demonstrates, the frame doesn't even have to be bound to a specific medium. However many fictional worlds are experienced by us through mediums, and since I'm dealing here with games, I shall make an abbreviation for them: Fictional world belonging to a game will I call game world.

Fallout 1's visuals suggest interpreting them as a post-apocalyptic game world (source).

To conclude this part, here are a couple interesting threads which I might continue another time:

• Fictional worlds are never unattached to reality. They are only a second meaning to something real, and this second meaning cannot come out of nothing: It was inspired by something real learned beforehand.
• Fictional worlds can be seen as a new kind of reality, but these realities can be distinguished, I think, by the fact that fictional realities are created on top of our normal reality.
• Computer games often create audio-spatial worlds in which we may project ourselves via the player character.
• Immersion and flow are, among other, dependent on the player embracing the frame that ís needed to see/read/.. the fictional world.
• Computer games use video, audio and player inputs to present us signs (video, audio) or opportunities to generate signs (input). Some of these communication canals might be more suited for some tasks, than others.

Quests, being a part of games here, provide the player with events and goal-inducers. Since both events and goal-inudcers can be meaningful, quest design thus too can use the whole history of meanings that are but a second meaning to their sign in a frame. And this is a lot: Games, stories, jokes, archetypic symbols, paintings, ... 

But it also becomes clear at this point that, if a quest aims to use several of these areas, then it might be useful to distribute tasks at this point. Let's say for example a quest aims to tell a story in an audio-spatial game world with properly animated characters and integrated gameplay. Then already you might want to have at least an animator, gameplay designer, audio designer at your side, maybe more (character, level, dialogue writing might be separated too). These quick thoughts show already the importance of teamwork in quest design: In such a work distribution all participate in the construction of opportunities for interpretation and action, and if these opportunities are not consistent among each other, then the player might not be able to fully appreciate the game world.

So, here we are. I have explained how (I believe that) fictional worlds work, and now we shall re-visit one such world: The alternate history of Assassin's Creed.

An "Assassin's Creed" Quest - Context:

 In the last post I wrote down ideas to turn the game's flag collecting into a player guide during small quests distributed over the maps. To start, I have chosen to make a quest located in the map Acre, more specifically in the Poor's District. Here is a map of Acre with its districts and the flags in them:

Source: Link

In order to make a quest in this district, I will explore missions, narrative, level, audio and atmosphere of this district first. I will stick to the world of Altaïr here and not go into the game's meta story around Desmond Miles. My main source will be the Assassin's Creed Wiki.

Altaïr is member of the so called Assassin Brotherhood, an organization that seeks "to ensure the survival of freedom, as it allows for the progression of new ideas and the growth of individuality". Assassins are firm enemies of the so called templars who strive to save humanity by controlling it. The first Assassin's Creed game resolves around Altaïr, who fell in disgrace in his order for acting not according to their creed:

1. "Stay your blade from the flesh of an innocent."
2. "Hide in plain sight, be one with the crowd."
3. "Never compromise the Brotherhood."

Further key thoughts are skepticism ("Nothing is true, everything is permitted") and humanitarianism. The story of the game then is the laborious (he needs to kill nine templars) re-rise of Altaïr to his former status of a high-ranking assassin during which he changes in person and becomes a true assassin. On the way he learns about a plan connecting the templar leaders and is challenged at each templar death with a moral question concerning his creed.

Acre is a city in the so called Holy Land. In the game it is currently under control of the crusaders, who have established a presence and set up a gouvernment. The city has been location of several fights: many deseases and wounded people are shown. The atmosphere is rather dark and grey, it seams like death and war are in the air:

The templar leader in the poor district of Acre is Garnier de Naplouse, a doctor and Grand Master of the Knights Hospitalier, a militant, originally caring order of european knights who came to the holy land during the crusades. De Naplouse has set up a hospital in the district, which reminds of a cliché psychatric clinic in the early 20th century. There are evil-looking priests, crippled people walking around, guarded knights and screams of the mentally tortured to be heard.

Indeed, when Altaïr visits the city to kill him and starts collecting informations via several minor generic missions, it becomes clear that De Naplouse is actually doing experiments with his patients to try out the new cures. In line with the templar's principle "ends justify the means" he does not see any ethical problem in using people - in the opposite, he even "came to believe that the patients were nothing more than lost souls in need of aid and that he had a responsibility to guide them however he saw fit".

The main question of this game section could therfore be summarized as "Why not use the weak to do medical experiments advancing humanity?".

Concerning the level design of the poor district, there is actually rather little to say. It can be noted though, that the district is comprised mainly of flat buildings of which many are partly ruined. Some buildings are special and taller, like a church or the hospital. There are many benches, shops, columns, scaffolds around and all is enclosed by the city wall. Besides the buildings, the poor district is marked by many small long lanes and corners as well as several bigger squares that are markets, meeting places, or view points.

An "Assassin's Creed" Quest - Construction:

But now, finally, to the construction itself. When thinking of a small story for that quest, I considered the themes of the main story and of the specific district.

Sitting on a bench near an exit of the hospital for the purpose of observation, Altaïr notices a wagon rolling inside the hospital, guarded by knights. He wonders what the wagon transports and decides to follow its traces. The trace consists of crying people, knights who deal out threats or fight people and children asking their parents why someone has to go or whether he will return. In the end Altaïr understands that the knights abduct people for their experiments and decides to stop the transport by killing the guards of the wagon and eliminating three knights who are threatening people.

Now while the goals might be well marked by the minimap, the flags can serve as a supporting tool: Maybe it is better to not make them the main goal-inducers, but only help as a non-interface element. In the following graphic I have tried to sketch how the quest might be situated in the game world space: The violet line denotes the trace of the wagon, while the green crosses mark the position of flags.

I have, unfortunately, not been able to really test this idea and design/place concrete events in the environment, but this is how I would have done it:

• Walk the course in-game and mark fitting spots with a good distance between them
• Think of an event for each spot that fits into the environment (Is there enough space? Which character models to use? Where do they stand? Which animations? How to change the environment (e.g. houses)? What are the lines that are spoken?)
• Revise the flag positions, such that each event can be spotted when approaching a certain flag

I shall leave this design for now. Below I will talk about some learned lessons. But first:

Ideas for Feedback

• Did I apply the theory of semiotics correctly? Does it matter for my ideas?
• Was the amount of research I did for my quest design appropriate?
  

Conclusion

My faible for thinking, theories and writing them down caught me again: I did not intend to write so many words, but here I am. Nonetheless I'm not sad about it, it seems a rather funny thing to me, since the phenomenon of thinking about but not doing accompanies me for such a long time now. But now, Instead of lingering here, to the matter at hand:

The concept of different meanings seen in the same things is something I find quite intruiging. It opens such a huge possibility space! It is a playground, and you only have to learn how to use it. We are now in range of such things as stories, play, theatre or humor - and when I talk about stories and play, then we will (hopefully) finally find a proper theoretical place for quests to dwell in and deal with some more concrete concepts such as characters, goals, player/machine actions etc.

I am quite content with my Assassin's Creed quest, as far as it got: It felt right when I did the research and wrote how its narrative is constituted, and laying out the quest in the game world's space worked without a resistence. I have the impression that with a bit more work, this could easily be finished to a proper quest design.

Well, I think this is a good time for an ending: Until next time!

#04 On Experienced Games (and Assassin's Creed)

 Today I will try to examine more closely how player experience fits into the framework I have build so far. Consequently we will turn away from looking at how a game exist in our real world towards the subjective experience of a player who is faced with a game. In the second part I'll present a flaggy quest design for the first Assassin's Creed game.

The Experienced Game

 Unplayed games would be pretty boring to examine, if they were never played. In order to be played, we need a player: Someone who is able to do the player actions that I mentioned in the last post. The played game (e.g. the running video game software) has an interface through which certain inputs of the player are recognized and processed.

But describing these dynamics would still not account for the fact, that there is an inner view onto playing a game. Even if we trace information processing and decision making of the player back to the brain, we do not appreciate, what is going on in the inside: Describing what the player feels, thinks, recognizes etc. is (as far as I see it) not sufficiently doable with physical reality as we understand it right now. Another name for these "individual instances of subjective, conscious experience" is qualia. I will us the word experience, since this is the name which many designers use to denote the same (or a similar) phenomenon.

What does this mean for games and quests? It means that we have to differentiate between the played game as a system that is running in reality and the played game as it is perceived and acted upon by the player. 

Neither designer/player image nor computer image are my own.

In this beautiful graphic I tried to visualize some of the terms I introduced. The game "LEGO® The Lord of the Rings™" as object in reality exists in an unplayed variant on a CD (and as installation on my hard disk), but may also also exist in its played variant as a process in my computer's operating system. The informations and action opportunities presented to the player in the played game are one of the two pillars constituting her experience of the game. The other pillar comprises everything the player brings into the game herself - her current mood, her own goals concerning the game, her knowledge, her abilities, previous experiences, how she interprets the actions and informations that happen during play etc.

Let's return to my quest definition:

A quest is a series of connected events and goals, where subsequent event(s)/goal(s) are only revealed, when previous goal(s) have been reached or some event has happened.

It now shows that I defined quests as part of the game object and as part of the experience of someone who reads/plays/designs them: While seriality, some events and goal-inducers may be issued by the running game object, events like player input or a change in mood and goals themselves are created in the player's head.

With these thoughts I proceed to Assassin's Creed.

An "Assassin's Creed" Quest:

The first installment of the Assassin's Creed series famously includes several types of flags which could (optionally) be collected. Besides being needed to archieve full synchronization these flags had no obvious meaning at all for playing the rest of the game. I will try to build a quest around (some of) these flags.

In the game the flags are distributed all over the maps, but every flag type appears only on one map (or even a specific district in it) exclusively. Many of them are placed in special-looking corners or places that aren't usually traversed by the player. According to the Assassin's Creed Wiki, the flags can also be interpreted as symbols of power: The different factions planted their flags in order to express their dominance.

This led me to the idea of local flag-quests: In this conception some districts/areas, which are controlled by certain factions, have a quest associated to them which tell a story of that area while letting the player gather those flags. I want to follow the idea of flags as symbols of power here: Main narrative of each flag-quest shall be the further dismantling of "evil" powers by removing the flags and thus reducing the faction's presence in the area.

However, looking at the current flag types and their numbers, some changes need to be made.

Source: Assassin's Creed Wiki

First of all, since we're playing an assassin, removing assassin flags doesn't seem very sensible. Maybe an alternative narrative could be constructed around that, but this shall not be the concern here. Secondly, most of these numbers seem way to high for a small story-quest to fit around them. So either these numbers (and the associated areas) need to be split up, or the number itself is reduced. For a game that is centered on its run and climb mechanics, 10 to 30 flags seem to be reasonable. Lastly the "Kingdom" is a bit of a problem for my concept: It consists of many different loosely connected areas. Maybe here, too, smaller areas with local rulers may be constructed but dealing with this shan't be of importance here either.

Now how could these flags be a more interesting gameplay mechanic instead of just being something to collect? Idea: Since the Assassin's Creed maps are essentially open worlds, quests would have the problem of guiding the player in the right places. One could place the flags of each flag-quest in such a way that they give the player an easy spottable hint of where the quest proceeds next.

I will stop here, and continue next time with building a concrete narrative in a concrete location using this basic idea.

Ideas for Feedback

• In what points might my analysis of the place of quests in relation to (un)played game and player be not valid or imprecise?
• Are flags suffiecient as a means to guide a player through an open world quest?
  

Conclusion

When I talked about player experience, I added the last piece of my understanding of how design, play, game and player relate to another on a bigger scale. These relations are, as I realized today, inspired by Jesse Schell's The Art of Game Design and Don Norman's Design of Everyday Things.

I also tried to make flag collection more interesting in Assassin's Creed and the approach of using it as goal-inducers with light narrative connotation seems promising so far. We (or I) will see next time, whether a concrete quest can be constructed to that in a sensible way.

Until then, have a good time!

#03 On Played Games (and Stardew Valley)

 Here comes another post. I've been doing rather much theory for now, so I figured this time actual design should be more of a topic. But I do want to write at least something theoretical.

The played game

Last time I used the term "unplayed game" to distinguish between the physical game object existing in our physical world, and the "play" that is happening when a player (or several) start interacting with the game.

In this active process of play, actions are happening, originating from both the player and the game. Alexander Galloway calls them player and machine actions, which I find very sensible. Besides actions, there are signs which are presented by the machine to the player, who interprets them.

Play is something timely, it shows itself not only in a moment, but also in a series of moments, linked by the causality of our real world. Play takes space: There are physical objects that are needed to play the game.

Some signs and actions are perceived and maybe interpreted by the player and cause him to experience a game. By doing certain actions in a certain order the player can play some games or parts thereof (e.g. quests!) through.

Here, as in the last posts, I'm restricting myself mostly to describing the game as it (probably) appears in the so-called (I call it like that) objective reality. This due to the fact that the player's internal experience with the game is a very broad topic on which I intend to write several separate posts.

A "Stardew Valley" Quest: A Beautiful Garden

I'm returning here to refine my idea. First, let it be noted that Stardew Valley has basically two types of quests (see the entry in its wiki): There are "Help Wanted Quests"/"Special Orders" and "Story Quests".

Help Wanted Quests and Special Orders are simple tasks like collecting a certain amount of leek for someone; these are usually time-bound. Story Quests are usually not time-bound, contain more often dialogue and cutscenes and some of them are part of a larger quest chain. Some tutorial Story Quests start automatically to help the player get to know some mechanics, but for the most part they are started by reading a letter.

The quest idea I had is a Story Quest. There is no intended time-limit and it contains dialogue and a cutscene. Moreover it's purpose is not that of an order, it is much rather thought to be self-sustained.

Inspired by the description of Story Quests I thought it might be a nice idea, if the quest is given to you by your best friend in form of a letter - such that the beginning is more conform to Stardew Valley Quests and is also more meaningful. The best friend is simply the villager to which the player has the highest friendship score.

The letter by your friend could read like this:

Dear Player,

Over the last days I've been thinking of you and you're farm. What a wonderful thing it is that you joined us! But it came to my mind that far too seldom I have visited you and adored your flowers (of which the whole town is full of rumour, I assure you!) Maybe someday, when you finished your doings, we will find the time to enjoy your garden together.

Your NPC

I thought on how the goals proposed to the player could be improved and I found room for improvement especially in goal 1.

Goal 1: Have a bench directed westwards, 20 adjacent flowers, 20 adjacent vegetables, two fruit trees and water in your garden.

By requesting water I thought of a well - this should better be stated explicitely in the quest description. Also, in order to prepare for a nice cutscene, one might request the flowers etc. to be placed in front of the bench. This could be implemented by checking whether all elements are in a 10x10 square right to any westward-looking bench in the player's level. Furthermore I dropped the word "adjacent", so the player can place more freely.

Goal 1: Have a bench directed westwards and in front of it (beautifully arranged!): at least 20 flowers, 20 vegetables, two fruit trees and a well.

Time is rare, the days are short, thus my considerations shall end here already.

Ideas for Feedback

• Do my categories cover all happenings in a played game?
• How else could a quest in Stardew Valley be layed out to set up a feeling of "creating and enjoying a beautiful garden" for the player?

Conclusion

In a two-fold way my last post was continued and ended. I went into played games as a continuation of the discussion of unplayed games: While the latter are what game designers create, the first is, what they actually want to design (which is the whole tragedy). I briefly mentioned the player, who, as an experiencing subject of reality, has a perspective on the game. Describing games not only as a component of objective reality but also as a part of the player's subjective experience is very important to me, because some things cannot be explained by simply looking on them from the outside (at least in my opinion) and the player is obviously very important when dealing with games. But as I said, more on that later.

Until then, have a good time!

#02 On Unplayed Games (and Stardew Valley)

The following has been decided by the high council of decision-makers (me): We shall examine the difference between the computer game as (almost) unchanging object and its running form, where it is played by a player. The investigation is continued in order to see how quests are related to this matter.

In the second part, behold! a quest design for Stardew Valley will be created. A wonderful thing to start with in 2021, I think.

But first, a little discussion of feedback.

Feedback and its Implications

Three short notes were given to me. The first was concerned with gameplay: Seeing post #00, they were concerned that I might forget the rule-mechanisms when designing quests/theorizing about them. Another point was on NPCs and how they have the potential to take on an important role in a quest.

In the last post I stated that computer game quests have two core elements (events/goals), which are defined based on the game world and possible player actions. So gameplay and NPCs will definitely have a place in my constructions.

The last note was a hint for doing game world design: To think about three differences between your game world and everyday life. I will keep this note in mind and pick it up in a future post on game worlds.

Unplayed Games

We are now discussing the difference of an unplayed game in opposition to a game as it appears in the process we call "play".

The unplayed game is an object in physical reality. An unplayed board game usually is a collections of atoms: a box with a board, pieces and a booklet consisting of written words within. An unplayed computer game might be a specific configuration of an electrical circuit in a computer's hard drive: There usually are several sections of programming code, maybe some textures and audio files. An unplayed child's game might consist of neural representations in the child's head (I don't know enough here) and other objects in reality: The rules are known by the kid and maybe a ball and other children are also a part.

Several (more or less interesting) remarks can be made:

1. An unplayed game does not have a player.
   Even though there might be a person that interprets or knows it, an unplayed game is not played.

2. An unplayed game is interpretable as a game.
   In particular, it has to be possible to obtain knowledge of the context and rules which are needed to play the game.

3. In order to be played, next to an unplayed game and a willing player further physical set-up might be needed.

4. An unplayed game is carried by a physical medium.

5. An unplayed game is usually authored by the game designer.
   Whether the played game and the corresponding player experience is also (in parts) authored by the game designer - on that I will write another time. 

An unplayed game is made of instructions and data. I am not yet entirely sure how to describe both properly, but I'll just give it a try here anyway. Procedures are series of instructions, where each instruction determines what should happen when it is executed. Data is the plural of datum, which can be seen as a sign that is interpretable to human, animal or computer.

Funnily enough, every procedure can be data, since all procedures may be input for another procedure. However in many procedural languages, not all data is a procedure: There is no way for the number 42 to be interpreted as an instruction in, say, the C programming language.

Now, how do quests relate to this?

Quests in Unplayed Computer Games

In the last post (#01) I defined quests as collection of interdependent goals and events. As this writing evolves, I notice that the word connected should be added. Otherwise we could take random interdependent events/goals from different interdependent quests and call this new collection a "quest". By requiring a connection I thus mean that the quest is interpretable as a connected series.

If a quest is part of a computer game, how then are its goals/events and their dependencies and connections represented by procedures and data?

Goals. Since goals are only in a player's head, they aren't actually part of the unplayed game. Instead, a game has things of interest to the player in it and sometimes even concrete proposals, which the player adapts as goal. These "things of interest" I call goal-inducers.They are mostly data constructed by procedures (e.g. a marker played on a map).

Events. With events I mean anything player-perceivable that happens on the side of the game while it is played. Events, like goal-inducers are data constructed by procedures: If a NPC enters a room, then this is a complex construction of visual data by procedures.

Dependencies. The dependencies between various goals and events are essentially encoded as data in some way: One might imagine a data structure in which the changes made in the game world are listed in a linear order.

Connections. How do events/goals feel connected? I think this is mainly due due to spatial/temporal/logical closeness. Whereas spatiality and temporality are created by the execution of the game's procedures, logical connections are based on the semantics of the created game objects.

I come to the conclusion that quests are in large parts defined by the manner in which the game's procedures construct game objects.

A "Stardew Valley" Quest: A Beautiful Garden

Now to a good game: Stardew Valley. I had the following in my mind: A small quest, which is more than one of the many collect and deliver missions. Thinking of the game's peaceful atmosphere and remembering a quest very dear to me (Be it ever so humble...) I wanted to devise an mid-end-game quest that is about creating a wonderful garden and inviting someone there.

In accordance with The game's rather simple missions, I had just a few goals and events in mind:

1. After some play-time in the same world (maybe 150h?) and after the completion of some beginning quest chains the quest simply appears in your journal. (To symbolize a time of resting after many years of hard work.)
2. Goal 1: Have a bench directed westwards, 20 adjacent flowers, 20 adjacent vegetables, two fruit trees and water in your garden.
3. Goal 2: Invite someone dear to you into your garden. (NPCs with a good relationship to the player can be asked.)
4. If invited, player and NPC are teleported to the player's home with the NPC walking to the bench and sitting on it. Time of day is set to afternoon.
   
5. Goal 3: Sit on your bench and watch the setting sun.
6. If done, the camera switches into a view where the bench is seen from behind, with the sunset in the center. Avatar and NPC talk about the happenings so far and fall silent. A gentle music is played and while the sun vanishes, the image fades out.
7. It is close to midnight, the NPC is gone. There is no further quest reward.
   

I wanted to create a gentle atmoshpere, in which resting and creation of beauty is possible. Since I do not have enough time, further exploration of this idea shall be delegated into the future.

Ideas for Feedback

• Does my concept of an "unplayed game" make sense to you? Where could it be improved?
  
• Should I maybe not teleport player/NPC in my quest design?
  

Conclusion

Exploring what "unplayed games" are in relation to their played counterpart was indeed interesting to me. I think it is an important concept if one intends to understand at which exact point the various stakeholders have influence on the play experience.

My attempt to place quests in the unplayed game showed that my definition of quests approaches the term from a playing perspective: The words "event", "goal" and "connected" all describe things the player perceives. It furthermore showed, that just having the unplayed game in front of you usually won't help much when you want to understand its quests: While the ordering of events/goals might be found somewhere as a data structure, the goals and events themselves are deeply rooted in the game world, which is typically generated by procedures and thus not easily readable when just looking at the unplayed game.

I am very fond of my quest idea for Stardew Valley - I always felt a lack of more cohesive, connected quests in the game. However I clearly spent to much time on the theory part of the blog, which is why my quest design did not get the care it needed. I aim to change that - after all this is mainly about designing quests, not building theories!

With these words I shall end this post.

I wish you a pleasant day and hope to see you another time!