Reid Kimball’s thoughts on using using the montage in games made me think of a character generation system for an RPG that takes the form of a series of mini-games, Wario Ware style, starting with the character at a very young age (choose a favourite toy) and gradually becoming older and making more meaningful decisions (choose from three different shirts to wear on the first day of school, choosing a hairstyle from a hairdresser’s catalog, a series of quick problems based on different subjects taught in school, a sports-flavored minigame).
After the montage is finished, a short summary can be given of the effects of each minigame on the character’s skills and stats, or they can be left hidden for the player to discover themselves. It would be more fun than rerolling random numbers over and over. Ideally, since the player must make their choice within a small time frame (5-10 seconds for each minigame), they would be encouraged to choose quickly, based on gut instinct, rather than overthinking each decision. The minigames in the montage could then be used as a form of light psychological profiling that would tailor the character to the player’s choices, and perhaps present the player with situations throughout the game based on these split-second choices.
The minigame montage could take the form of a series of decisions that create a branching tree-like structure with more decisions based on the choices made. Or it could be more like a personality test, with the results dictating the character’s affinities and possible romantic interests or dilemmas throughout the game.
It could start with a the character’s parents shopping at a baby goods store. They would be considering whether to buy the blue onesies or the pink ones (or the green or yellow ones!). Depending on the colour chosen, the character is male, or female (or randomly chosen but with something different in the case of green and yellow. Perhaps the green onesie decides the character’s gender randomly, but they tend to be a nurturing, growth-oriented person. The yellow one also requires random generation of gender, but the character is a more analytical, mental type of person). Depending on color chosen, the next minigame would show the character as a baby of the appropriate gender, and would show them in a playpen with an assortment of different toys, or crawling around under a christmas tree with a number of distinctly shaped gifts under it. The goal of this minigame is to choose a favourite toy. There would be some shaped very concretely (a dinosaur or other animal, a toy sword, a doll) and maybe one or two with very generic (cubic box shape) which would be the surprise toy. Perhaps this minigame could show different relatives holding each present, and the choice of present also increases the character’s affection towards that relative and vice versa.
The main issue with an interactive montage would be to create context while at the same time maintaining the dynamism of the montage as a storytelling device. The player would need to be able to infer meaning from each ‘vignette’ presented in the montage and know what input is required from them in each case withing a relatively short window of opportunity. That is why the first thought that came into my head was Wario Ware, with it’s microgames and vivid imagery and single word instructions on how to play.
That’s just my take on it, though. It definitely seems like it would be a better way to deal with long periods of elapsed time with few major occurrences than just a black screen with “…10 years later…” on it. The other major advantage of a montage like this is that isolated major events occurring within the timeframe condensed into the montage could actually be played out as (slightly or greatly) more intricate interactive sequences, either within the montage itself or separated by individual montages.
The montage would go on, with each new minigame posing a different situation that the player must resolve by making a choice within a small window of time. The game would keep tabs on all choices made, and present new situations based on previous choices. At the end of the montage, the player would end up with a pretty well defined character (within certain parameters of varying meaningfulness within the game) with an established history that the player is familiar with in broad strokes, ready to embark on their adventure.
May 3, 2009 at 11:00 am
I’m glad you expanded on your thoughts with this. The char creation has a lot of potential, but several problems arise that need to be ironed out.
Take choosing colors of clothes for gender. Some players might be color blind. Perhaps the clothes have distinctive “male” and “female design patterns on them. For baby clothes, the blue one has clouds and fighter jets for the boy. The yellow ones have flowers on them for the girl.
I also noticed a difference in that my take on the interactive montage is used for simple action moments in games. Like traveling from one location to another, combat training, jumping platforms in a platformer game. All of these make them reflex based.
But your ideas are more decision based. I wonder if that might conflict with the typical fast paced nature of montages as players want to deliberate over their choice.
I’m not saying it won’t work, just a difference I noticed.
May 3, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Good points. I definitely agree that the baby clothes should require something to identify them as male or female beyond the colors, but you’ve also given me an idea: the patterns themselves could also have a significance to the character.
Following your example, you could have sports paraphernalia on the blue baby clothes (indicating a boy with stereotypical male interests, perhaps even a ‘jock’ type of personality), while flowers on the pink one would represent a ‘girlie girl’. The green onesies could have animals (which are also gender neutral, but would represent an interest in nature and animals in general), while the yellow ones might have mathematical equations on them (again representing logical thought). This would be indicative of whether the player wants to play a specific gender, or is less concerned with the gender of their character, and more in representing a specific outlook on life. Perhaps it would be too vague for players to realise what the choices mean in a 5-10 second window.
I also agree that the types of microgames included are important. The ones I mention here are, as you say, all decision-based, the idea being that, ideally, the player would see symbollic icons that represent something they can understand, and choose one they believe would represent the character they would want to play.
The aim of this system is to make character generation quick, fun, and meaningful. The elements of the montage would have to be tailored to the type of game being made. If we were going with a combat-heavy JRPG where character personalities are set in stone, then the microgame elements would be focused towards defining the character’s stats, class, skills, etc. If it was a more character-driven, open ended type of game, then the montage would serve as a form of visual personality test, designed to present the player with choices that resonate at the subconscious level, in an attempt to create a ‘psychological profile’ of the player, and mapping it onto the character they are going to be playing.
As to whether it would work, I don’t think something like this has been done before, so it would probably be a matter of prototyping and iterating until it either worked or didn’t.
May 4, 2009 at 10:23 am
It seems like a very interesting idea to me, kind of similar to fable or swarm, but still different with its own pros and cons.
Have you considered what sort of options a player would have if they wanted to play a specific type of character however? It seems like they’d be making educated guesses in order to get what they wanted, which could be a bit frustrating if they weren’t getting their choices ‘right’. It could particularly become a problem if they’re being given a subconcious personality test like you mentioned in your last reply, since often people are wanting to ‘turn off reality’ to do something they’d never do irl.
Don’t get me wrong though, I’d love to see how successful it’d be, as you said, it’s a lot more interactive and fun than clicking the button to reroll your character’s stats until you get the best ones. It would almost certainly also give a sense of responsibility/ownership for the character as well, which can never hurt when trying to engage players.
I also wanted to mention a point that Reid brought up with action vs decision based montages. Personally, I think you’ve gone with the right choice here. I can’t think of many better ways to alienate players than to say “You can’t play X class because you aren’t good enough at doing Y”.
I hope you keep us posted on any further developments of this idea.
May 5, 2009 at 5:56 am
When I wrote swarm, I meant Spore by Maxis. My mistake.
May 4, 2009 at 10:45 am
Do note that being colorblind doesn’t mean colors can’t be seen. It means certain shades of color can’t be seen. As well, different cultures will have different connotations as to different colors – pink, in some cultures, is a masculine color.
Perhaps instead of one game per ‘trait’, use a combination of games to represent one trait. This would also avoid random outliers that a player may not understand being the reason for weirdness in their character. A number of different games spaced out among the test similar to the personality tests used in psychology (which are designed not just to generate an idea of personality but also have questions inserted to see whether someone is lying in some way about previous or future responses on certain questions).
May 7, 2009 at 10:13 pm
@Stephen: I agree that the decisions being made should be presented in as universal a language as possible. Perhaps rather than choosing onesies to determine the character’s gender, that particular minigame could instead be an unfertilised human egg (a circle) and a number of different spermatozoa, each with either the male or female gender sign. The player would then choose whichever spermatozoa caught their eye, and drag it into the egg. Part of me wants to give each little spermatozoa bars for each stat, but that probably defeats the purpose of character generation through a montage.
The onesie minigame could then be used to represent the parent’s aspirations or expectations for the player, or the values they want to teach, or what particular interests they might encourage in their child. This could then be tied in with the choices of presents under the christmas tree (I keep referring to that particular image, but I’m wondering if that again is too culture-specific, or if it’s prevalent enough that even non-christmas-celebrating people can understand the metaphor. Is it too religiously exclusive?).
As regards to your second point, yes, if I were to implement this in a game, I would most definitely spend a good amount of time studying how personality tests are created, and follow a similar pattern, each answer not necessarily blocking out others, but rather adding and subtracting weight to different aspects of the character (which is, I believe, how most personality tests work?).
@Patto1999: The issue of the player’s choices resulting in a character they don’t want to play has crossed my mind, but that is, more than anything, a matter of making the minigames/decisions as transparent as possible. If the game offers you a choice between the library or the football grounds, which would you choose, if you wanted to play a mage?
Where I think a system like this could really shine would be in a game where the player’s past actions have a meaningful effect in-game. If, during the minigames, the player consistently chooses to go to the library to study, then we can establish that they know people who go to the library often. It allows us to create a ‘fake history’, thereby avoiding the ’stranger in a strange land’ and ‘amnesiac protagonist’ stereotypes that so often apply to in-game characters (Persona 3 and 4, for example). If only briefly, the player and their character have existed in the game. Another good example could be a minigame that shows the character outside, on a street, on the left side of the screen. In the middle right we see an old man in a jacket and hat, hunched over as they walk towards the right edge of the screen, leaning on a walking stick. At the right edge of the screen we see a bus stop sign. After a couple of steps, the man drops his wallet. The player has a few seconds to move over to the right, pick up the wallet, and catch up to the man to give it back.When the man reaches the bus stop, he stands there for a short while. Eventually the bus arrives, the man gets on, and the bus leaves, ending the minigame. A number of possible outcomes are possible here:
1) Player does nothing.
2) Player picks up the wallet, but doesn’t give it to the man.
3) Player picks up the wallet and gives it to the man.
We can then have certain things occur in-game depending on the outcome chosen by the player. If they chose to do nothing, then the game has no effect. If they chose to keep the wallet, they start off with the wallet, which is an key item in the game, and some amount of extra money (that they wouldn’t have if they chose 1). If they choose 3), they don’t have the wallet or the money, but the man is now friendly with them, and rather than be a nameless NPC is actually a friend the player can call on during the game, or something. We could then also put in a caveat, that if the player chose 2) and they meet the NPC during the course of the game, if they have enough money they can put it back in the wallet and give it back to the NPC, who then might or might not thank them for the wallet, even though he already got a new one and had to go through the hassle of renewing his driver’s license and ID, cancelling his credit cards, and all other stuff associated with losing one’s wallet. Whether this has any value or not is debatable, but it helps to create a feeling of ‘history’ within the game.
Thanks for the feedback. I definitely look forward to using this in a game some day.
June 7, 2009 at 5:37 pm
[...] repetitive gameplay and speeds up the narrative. I wanted to highlight a couple of the responses. Kumar wrote a blog post, expanding on the idea and thought of a character generation system for an RPG using a series of [...]