Newell Talks "Procedural Narrative" In Left 4 Dead
In a piece for Edge Online, Valve's Gabe Newell talks a bit about his company's newest game, Left 4 Dead, and how the AI Director they built for the game changes the rules of a narrative experience.
We set out to create a first-person four-player game in which the action changes each time it's played. We wanted to use procedural narrative to simulate stories because, in a multiplayer environment like this, we felt a more linear, scripted approach would not deliver in the same way. ...To achieve a sense of story you need there to be some notion of intentionality on your opponents' part. This is entirely different from a difficulty level which just ramps up to a constant level.
In terms of the signal that you're giving the player, a difficulty level is like a flat line response as opposed to a wave. We tend to think of it almost in terms of signal processing. A difficulty level just says 'go up to this level and remain constant' in terms of the experience that it's giving to people. That isn't really the most entertaining experience that you can give people. They want peaks and valleys and really big reactions to the choices that they make.
The game accomplishes this by reading the actions of the players and responding. He also says that the lessons they've learned from Left 4 Dead will help them in their single player games in the future, so expect upcoming Half Life games to employ a similar technique of player interaction.
I'm all for the technology if it keeps the games fresh and interesting, although I admit the idea of an omnipotent artificial intelligence watching and reaction to me does seem a little creepy. Hopefully Valve will continue to use their powers for good, not Terminator-style evil.
Gabe Newell Writes For Edge [Edge]
Dawdle
Posted to Video Games on 22 November 2008
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Other stuff like this: artificial intelligence, ea, gabe newell, horror, left 4 dead, pc, technology, valve, xbox 360
"Intentionality".
I despair of Americans.