Mon 20 Mar 2006
It’s Design a Day Theme Week: Asymmetrical Representation.
You’re saying: “That’s so amazingly exciting that I will be here with bells on!”
I know!
This is one of those ideas that’s so blindingly obvious that I’m surprised it hasn’t been much explored. I think the germ of this idea came from this slide in Raph Koster’s 2005 GDC presentation “A Grammar of Gameplay .” But the real inspiration is semanticist Alford Korzybski’s insight, “The map is not the territory.”
Let’s start with the low hanging fruit. I’ve played a number of first person shooters. In that time I’ve played super spies of both sexes, futuristic gladiators, well-armed research scientists and the lone survivor of several catastrophes The words may change, but the song remains the same. I’ve even played a few soldiers, he segued.
Axis and Allies
What follows is a proof of concept. I’m not necessarily suggesting that this is a feature players are clamoring for, though I can see one useful application, which I’ll talk about later.
Imagine, and I know this will be hard, a World War II game. Imagine the game is played online. At any given time there are two teams, Axis and Allies.
In current models, one team chooses Allies, one team chooses Axis, and they fight each other.
But the map is not the territory. We’re just creating a visually pleasing interface to a complex but finite state-machine that is the game, he oversimplified. Now imagine that everyone who played was automatically assigned to one of two Allied teams, teams A and B. But who plays the Nazis?
Pick a team. Let’s say Team B. I join Team B. I call my character America Joe, give him a I-heart-Mom tattoo, and jump into the game, where I start playing against Team A with the rest of my Allied team.
But when someone from Team A encounters me, he doesn’t see America Joe, he sees a German foot-soldier who immediately tries to kill him. And Team B sees all of Team A as Axis.
The deception continues. Each team spawns in what appears to them to be a Allied command post. Of course to the other team, it appears as a German headquarters. Now quite literally, the map is not the territory.
The downside is that teams abilities have to be congruent, such that the switching of them does not cause unequal results. If the Germans have a flamethrower, the Americans must have one too. This can be mitigated by clever level design. Both sides might have Tanks and Bombers, but on a given map, one side may only have access to tanks, and the other to bombers, to keep the game-play from being to homogenous.
Furthermore, making several specialized classes available (Marine, Engineer, Medic, Special Ops), means a less homogenous experience, especially if the maps force each team to select from different sets of classes.
It also means that in any meaningful way that a character can interact with the environment, the Allied and Axis HQs need also be congruent.
One possible use for this is previewing content. In a fantasy game, you could preview a new race that appears as a time only as enemies, but eventually is unlocked as playable. The players are still acting as the AI for the preview race, but are not experiencing the new representation. When the race is unlocked, new and non-congruent abilities can be added.
-game over-
Tomorrow: Asymmetrical Representation Theme Week continues with Starcraft meets Fantastic Voyage .
Thanks for reading another action-packed installment of Design a Day. For background on the Design A Day challenge, take a peek here and here.
March 20th, 2006 at 5:39 pm |
Awesome. I registered for a disc, but they never sent it. Perhaps I don’t love America enough.
The role-playing question is interesting. I can see where it would be very difficult from a LAN perspective, when you are playing with friends.
It makes the post-game man-did-you-see-that-crazy-thing-I-did problematic, since, no, that’s not what I saw. Even if you did.
I think the more anonymous the opponent, the better this approach works.
Or is it just the knowledge that you appear as someone else to the enemy that breaks the feel?
The rest of Asymmetrical Representation week focuses on ways that I think play more to the strength of AR.
Except tomorrow’s post…that one’s just a little crazy.
March 20th, 2006 at 5:09 pm |
Yes, America’s Army quite successfully covered this approach. So successfully in fact, I’m surprised we haven’t seen it used in any other games since.
I remember when AA first launched, the majority of negative feedback came in the form of players not liking the fact that they appeared as filthy terrorists to the other team, when in fact they wished to be represented as ‘a good guy’. I don’t know how much that died down as the game proved its worth, since I left the community shortly after launch, but it was a worthy complaint. Knowing that all is not what it seems to be in the world takes you out of it a bit. It ruins the roleplaying experience.
March 20th, 2006 at 4:21 pm |
Howdy.
One of the draws of America’s Army, the goverment run super-spy on kids and adults, recruiting, training, and terrorist finding, free game is that no matter what you are always a good old american soldier. The maps, weapons, and classes are all symetrical, your team always apears as a God Fearing US trooper, and the other team…some Godless Oppressor types. It was a nice feature…unless of course..you dont want to be a US soldier…but who wouldn’t these days.
Andrew