Good point. I guess the game’s labeling system shouldn’t deceive you like that, but it would need to have characters that promote non-functioning technology, after some warning that e.g. not everyone is reliable, that these people aren’t the tutorial.
Best I think would be if the warning came implicitly as part of the game, and a little ways into it.
For example: The player sees one NPC Alex warn another NPC Joe that failing to drink the Potion of Feather Fall will mean he’s at risk of falling off a ledge and dying. Joe accepts the advice and drinks it. Soon after, Joe accidentally falls off a ledge and dies. Alex attempts to rationalize this result away, and (as subtly as possible) shrugs off any attempts by the player to follow conversational paths that would encourage testing the potion.
Player hopefully then goes “Huh. I guess maybe I can’t trust what NPCs say about potions” without feeling like the game has shoved the answer at them, or that the NPCs are unrealistically bad at figuring stuff out.
Exactly—that’s the kind of thing I had in mind: the player has to navigate through rationalizations and be able to throw out unreliable claims against bold attempts to protect it from being proven wrong.
So is this game idea something feasible and which meets your criteria?
I think so, actually. When I start implementation, I’ll probably use an Interactive Fiction engine as another person on this thread suggested, because (a) it makes implementation a lot easier and (b) I’ve enjoyed a lot of IF but I haven’t ever made one of my own. That would imply removing a fair amount of the RPG-ness in your original suggestion, but the basic ideas would still stand. I’m also considering changing the setting to make it an alien world which just happens to be very much like 17th century England except filled with humorous Rubber Forehead Aliens; maybe the game could be called Standing On The Eyestalks Of Giants.
On the particular criteria:
Interesting: I think the setting and the (hopefully generated) buzz would build enough initial interest to carry the player through the first frustrating parts where things don’t seem to work as they are used to. Once they get the idea that they’re playing as something like an alien Newton, that ought to push up the interest curve again a fair amount.
Not (too) allegorical: Everybody loves making fun of alchemists. Now that I think of it, though, maybe I want to make sure the game is still allegorical enough to modern-day issues so that it doesn’t encourage hindsight bias.
Dramatic/Surprising: IF has some advantages here in that there’s an expectation already in place that effects will be described with sentences instead of raw HP numbers and the like. It should be possible to hit the balance where being rational and figuring things out gets the player significant benefits (Dramatic) , but the broken theories being used by the alien alchemists and astrologists are convincing enough to fool the player at first into thinking certain issues are non-puzzles (Surprising).
Not rigged: Assuming the interface for modelling the game world’s physics and doing experiments is sophisticated enough, this should prevent the feeling that the player can win by just finding the button marked “I Am Rational” and hitting it. However, I think this is the trickiest part programming-wise.
I’m going to look into IF programming a bit to figure out how implementable some of this stuff is. I won’t and can’t make promises regarding timescale or even completability, however: I have several other projects going right now which have to take priority.
Thanks, I’m glad I was able to give you the kind of idea you were looking for, and that someone is going to try to implement this idea.
I’m also considering changing the setting to make it an alien world which just happens to be very much like 17th century England
Good—that’s what I was trying to get at. For example, you would want a completely different night sky; you don’t want the gamer to be able to spot the Big Dipper (or Southern Cross for our Aussie friends) and then be able to use existing ephemeris (ephemeral?) data. The planet should have a different tilt, or perhaps be the moon of another planet, so the player can’t just say, “LOL, I know the heliocentric model, my planet is orbiting the sun, problem solved!”
Different magnetic field too, so they can’t just say, “lol, make a compass, it points north”.
I’m skeptical, though, about how well text-based IF can accomplish this—the text-only interface is really constraining, and would have to tell the user all of the salient elements explicitly. I would be glad to help on the project in any way I can, though I’m still learning complex programming myself.
Also, something to motivate the storyline would be like: You need to come up with better cannonballs for the navy (i.e. have to identify what increases a metal’s yield energy). Or come up with a way of detecting counterfeit coins.
Good point. I guess the game’s labeling system shouldn’t deceive you like that, but it would need to have characters that promote non-functioning technology, after some warning that e.g. not everyone is reliable, that these people aren’t the tutorial.
Best I think would be if the warning came implicitly as part of the game, and a little ways into it.
For example: The player sees one NPC Alex warn another NPC Joe that failing to drink the Potion of Feather Fall will mean he’s at risk of falling off a ledge and dying. Joe accepts the advice and drinks it. Soon after, Joe accidentally falls off a ledge and dies. Alex attempts to rationalize this result away, and (as subtly as possible) shrugs off any attempts by the player to follow conversational paths that would encourage testing the potion.
Player hopefully then goes “Huh. I guess maybe I can’t trust what NPCs say about potions” without feeling like the game has shoved the answer at them, or that the NPCs are unrealistically bad at figuring stuff out.
Exactly—that’s the kind of thing I had in mind: the player has to navigate through rationalizations and be able to throw out unreliable claims against bold attempts to protect it from being proven wrong.
So is this game idea something feasible and which meets your criteria?
I think so, actually. When I start implementation, I’ll probably use an Interactive Fiction engine as another person on this thread suggested, because (a) it makes implementation a lot easier and (b) I’ve enjoyed a lot of IF but I haven’t ever made one of my own. That would imply removing a fair amount of the RPG-ness in your original suggestion, but the basic ideas would still stand. I’m also considering changing the setting to make it an alien world which just happens to be very much like 17th century England except filled with humorous Rubber Forehead Aliens; maybe the game could be called Standing On The Eyestalks Of Giants.
On the particular criteria:
Interesting: I think the setting and the (hopefully generated) buzz would build enough initial interest to carry the player through the first frustrating parts where things don’t seem to work as they are used to. Once they get the idea that they’re playing as something like an alien Newton, that ought to push up the interest curve again a fair amount.
Not (too) allegorical: Everybody loves making fun of alchemists. Now that I think of it, though, maybe I want to make sure the game is still allegorical enough to modern-day issues so that it doesn’t encourage hindsight bias.
Dramatic/Surprising: IF has some advantages here in that there’s an expectation already in place that effects will be described with sentences instead of raw HP numbers and the like. It should be possible to hit the balance where being rational and figuring things out gets the player significant benefits (Dramatic) , but the broken theories being used by the alien alchemists and astrologists are convincing enough to fool the player at first into thinking certain issues are non-puzzles (Surprising).
Not rigged: Assuming the interface for modelling the game world’s physics and doing experiments is sophisticated enough, this should prevent the feeling that the player can win by just finding the button marked “I Am Rational” and hitting it. However, I think this is the trickiest part programming-wise.
I’m going to look into IF programming a bit to figure out how implementable some of this stuff is. I won’t and can’t make promises regarding timescale or even completability, however: I have several other projects going right now which have to take priority.
Thanks, I’m glad I was able to give you the kind of idea you were looking for, and that someone is going to try to implement this idea.
Good—that’s what I was trying to get at. For example, you would want a completely different night sky; you don’t want the gamer to be able to spot the Big Dipper (or Southern Cross for our Aussie friends) and then be able to use existing ephemeris (ephemeral?) data. The planet should have a different tilt, or perhaps be the moon of another planet, so the player can’t just say, “LOL, I know the heliocentric model, my planet is orbiting the sun, problem solved!”
Different magnetic field too, so they can’t just say, “lol, make a compass, it points north”.
I’m skeptical, though, about how well text-based IF can accomplish this—the text-only interface is really constraining, and would have to tell the user all of the salient elements explicitly. I would be glad to help on the project in any way I can, though I’m still learning complex programming myself.
Also, something to motivate the storyline would be like: You need to come up with better cannonballs for the navy (i.e. have to identify what increases a metal’s yield energy). Or come up with a way of detecting counterfeit coins.
Let me know if you would like help with the writing, either in terms of brainstorming, mapping the flow, or even just copyediting.