Adapting a game to Single player vs. Multiplayer

This point is something I have really struggled to get my head around. I would just love to know how in Left4Dead they account for four people being in a team, all with their own stress levels. I developed a single player game, a battle against an AI. This allowed me to adapt the AI itself, making it smarter or dumber, faster or slower, luckier or unluckier as required. It's easy to see how and what can be adapted in a single player game, but in multiplayer the issues are vast: differing emotional states, differing play motivations, differing skill levels, and differing styles of play. Player motivation determines whether a player wants to rush through a game to get to the boss fights, or the good loot, or whether they are more leisurely in their progress, values exploring the world, reading quest logs, studying loot etc. Skill levels obviously changes how quickly a player gets bored or stressed out of their mind, how do you deal with that in a multiplayer setting? Styles of play is something ahoodedfigure talked about at my GiantBomb blog, whereby players can be very destructive, and all they try to do is break the game, whereas others just play it within the frames of what's intended.

I truly don't know how to account for all these things when attempting to adapt to the player's emotions. Doing an average could nullify the emotional states altogether, keeping nobody happy. Giving one priority over another will make that player happy and the other frustrated with the game. It's also important whether the game is coop or a pvp game. In a coop it's easier as the players should (in theory) all have the same goal, to progress together. But then again, some people are all about the me, me, me, and others are quite the opposite. In a PvP situation you can't adapt the fight one way or the other, as that would make the more skilled player feel hard done by, and the fight would not really be fair.

Man, I find this bit tricky! Any ideas floating about out there?

Should really ask Valve about this... :P

Adaptations and Style of Game

When developing adaptations for a game I think it’s very important to consider the style of the game. After all, it’s not likely that adaptations that are brilliant for Banjo & Kazooe work just as well in Dead Space, right? And I don’t mean specific things like; add another infected zombie thing to the mix. Then again, I’m not being as general as adapt the music. The level I’m thinking can be related to a mixture of adaptations: The player is bored, what happens now? In Dead Space, the atmosphere could be changed by flickering lights which eventually die, loud noises that move whenever you face your avatar to look in the direction of the noise,  adding more enemies of course, making them harder etc. In Banjo & Kazooe though, the player may not be anywhere near a fight, they may in fact be building a vehicle, or talking to a NPC. What then? Changing the atmosphere isn’t going to make any sense. Obviously the adaptations need to be tailored to the game in question, but is there a core difference between the types of adaptations that may be appropriate depending on the style of game?

I started this blog with a determined statement that, yes, there is. Now, I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s just tweaking and tailoring, rather than fundamental differences in what could be appropriate. Clearly it wouldn’t be appropriate to adapt the vehicles in a game without vehicles, but does the style of the game determine the types of adaptations? Hmmm....

YouTube Video of TEDDI (my Game)

Have a look at my game, TEDDI, at youTube!
It should hopefully give you a bit more of an insight into what it is I do.. :)
Enjoy!
(link is the title of this post..)

Pace of game and adaptations

If we want a game to adapt to the player's emotional states, how important is the pace of the game?

I'd say it's very important. Some games may be so slow that it's not appropriate to introduce affective adaptations to begin with, Mah Jong for instance. I suspect most people don't get very emotionally involved playing this game; with the possible exception of the exact moment in time when they realise they have won (or lost). On the opposing side, if the game is very fast (think of the last few levels you ever managed in Tetris) the player is automatically emotionally involved, generally with stress. So if we want to adapt to a wide range of emotions, the game needs to induce a wide range of emotions to be detected, right? So, does that mean that the designers have to specifically aim to induce certain emotions at certain times? What if the player reacts totally differently then, to what the designers wished for?

I think all storylines attempt to induce emotions in the player, but I also suspect that the designers, in general, don't much care if you're feeling happy, sad or angry as long as you're feeling, and enjoying yourself (somewhere below the anger). We can then use this same tactic in adaptive games, attempt to induce emotions, not caring what is being felt, but adapting to the reaction, whatever it may be. How do you induce emotions? Oh, in a variety of ways; music, lighting, textures, ambient noises, character animation, voice acting.. the list goes on and on. But all these methods surely rely on a 'sensible' pacing? You can have peaks and troughs in pace of course, but do they not all rely on time used to induce? But if they are, is the 'sensible' pace the same for everybody, or is this another component which the game needs to adapt for the specific player? What is the 'sensible' pace, what games currently, do you think, are set at a good pace for adaptations to player emotions?

Wow, that is a lot of questions, and I don't think I have the answers to any of them! Just thoughts....

Blogging Strategy, and Storyline in games

I’ve thought about how best to do this, and I’m not sure I’ve come up with a good answer, but at least I have formulated some form of strategy.. We’ll have to see how it pans out! :P My new strategy is based on only making one point per post, which I hope will encourage more of a discussion on that one point at a time, and it should also keep my posts shorter. I appreciate that as little time I have to write these posts, you guys have even less time to read and comment on them!

So without further ado, here’s today’s point:
I’m trying to establish a set of guidelines regarding how to ensure appropriateness of adaptations, based on player emotions, to the game play. Today I’m considering this with respect to the storyline. In some games it may well be not just appropriate but downright exciting to adapt the storyline itself to the emotions of the player. Games such as Fable II and Fallout 3 could benefit from such adaptations, allowing the player to experience a new story every time they played through the game. This would also increase the life span of the games, as the replay value would increase dramatically. Unfortunately, adapting the storyline itself is tremendously difficult, and has yet (to my knowledge) to be done successfully (based on emotions or not).

Do you guys know of any games that does this successfully, or games that do something similar, hack it somehow?
What do you think about the concept of adapting the storyline to player’s emotion? Or adapting any part of the game to the emotions of the player?

Until next time!
Phew   

Adaptation Guidelines - Appropriateness of adaptations

Hi,

This blog will explore the areas of appropriateness and ethics of adaptions in computer games. It is a place where I can vent my ideas, and if anyone has any thoughts on the matter, I'd be thrilled to hear (read) about them in the comments section!
The blog posts can also be found on Giantbomb.com.


The concept behind affective adaptive computer games is very simple; keep the player more entertained, for longer. Should she get bored whilst playing, introduce some new and fun elements to the game to heighten her interest. If she is getting too stressed to enjoy playing the game, make the game calm down a little, allowing her to relax and enjoy the experience.

As part of my PhD project I have already developed such a game. It uses physiology in conjunction with gaming context to determine the player’s changing emotional state, and adapts accordingly. The game I’ve developed is called TEDDI (Transient Emotion Detecting Designed Interface), and is a Minesweeper style game with some role playing game elements introduced. Think PuzzleQuest, but with Minesweeper, and two boards rather than just the one.

That'll do for my intro post!

See you next time!