I like to detail as much of my creations as possible. I once wrote a story, a pseudo-science book to go with said story, a history of the locations and general world of the story, 2 different religions, 2 unique langauges, and drew up a map. The story was 14 pages long.

I like everything explained in grotesque detail, but that''s just me.

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"Wait, so Bush is pro-life AND pro-death penalty? Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this?

quote: Original post by Iron Chef Carnage
Do you need to define the metaphysical nature of a game world in order to produce one, or can you just "wing it" and make things happen without a universal set of rules and natures?

>I like to include it in the creation, because it gives you reliable doctrines to call upon when thinking about the consistent behaviors of individual objects in all their relationships to the other objects and events in the game world. It makes for a mighty big need for a precise and taxonomic interativity matrix, but that''s part and parcel of the dev process anyway, I would suggest.

It occurs to me that the ultimate metaphysics of any video game is the code that defines its engine, but most games avoid allowing the denizens of the fictional world to become aware of that.

Is it the ultimate metaphysics? Maybe the unlimate physics, the actual laws of nature you choose to define as constants or variables in your particularly designed game world, but metaphysics by definition implies something more than just the physics, allmost the spiritual beyond the physics that may or may not have an influence over the physical laws of the gameworld. Whether it does or doesn''t is a creative choice that is referred to in filmic writing as ''deus a machina'' (sp?) or, ''god in the machine'' a dramaturlogical technique of inserting the influence of the devine in some way, somewhere in your story (for purposes of reference the story and the gameworld will be synomymous in the comparison simply because in either situation the audience/user will be subject to that chosen output by the design) that effects the outcome of the story beyond the ability of the character (or avatar) to do anything (or only a little, and then likely only a token or tribute) about it.

This was humanized (undeified) when dramatists got on to ''the calvary has arrived.''

So, you may code godlike occurances into your physics engine, wher for example you may be lifted by godlike powers to the top of the mountain because you successfully battle your way past thirty seven monsters on the way up the hill, but the player will experience the transcendental aspect of it, you will experience the implementation of it as a function of set conditions being met.

How much actual framework is required?

>The key working phrase here is ''a reasonable extent'' with respect to your framework. I would never start a story or a design without extensive background global environmmental design, and I mean comprehensive environmental, not just the worldscale, weather systems, physics definitions, etc., but the subtler demogrpahics like age, population densities, point of evolutionary progress in legal, medical and technical civilizational developments, social systems as separate and distinct from political systems, etc.

Without this bg, I believe consistence and self organizing systems are in foundative trouble.



Steven Savage, in the world-building essays linked to elsewhere, says that religion is needed. I prefer to use the word "philosophy" for what he calls "religion", but it''s still a good point. If you want a deep, immersive world, you need some kind of deep, immersive thought on the part of its intelligent inhabitants (or thee illusion thereof, of course), and they need something to think about.

I think this will become a more and more important aspect of game development, and might as well get with the program. Users are going to want to match wits and argue with (and sometimes lose) intelligent characters in gameworlds, if this medium goes where is capabilities suggest.

A game like Starcraft doesn''t need one, though, since the gameplay depth comes from the action of playing, but in an RPG, there is a sense of introspective self-discovery that needs revelations and teleological organization.

So, how much of this is needed to make a game good?

Well, darn good question. It will be entirely dependent on what kind of game you are designing. Perhaps a couple of examples. Let''s say you are playing a old west game, and one of the level''s challenges is to beat the local card shark at games of change before he exposits key information as to where ''the old abandoned mineshaft'' is. You may have to be a pretty good card player to get past him just to get to the next part of the level. A card shark in the old west is a pretty intelligent and charismatic character, you just couldn''t have him speaking go here and do that dialogue, that would be out of character and foible the interaction. On the other side of the coin, in a prehistoric world, you might run across simple primitives who only have to point and grunt in order to warn you of the coming raptor, but then when you use the environment to trap it without confronting it, and the primitive kneel before you like a god, then the metaphysic becomes interactive in the mind of the player, and you have a whole new set of consistencies of behavior and belief to preanalyze.

The bottom line here is appropriately good old fashioned architectural design advice, which often foolishly gets relegated to introduction in only architectural matters, but whose impact goes far beyond that discipline: form follows function. Deterministics on the function of the role of the metaphysics in the game world, and the impact that role has, will indicate the degree of detail the form requires.

Just like in screenwriting, this may boil down too sitting around and talking about life in your gameworld (or storyworld) under these constants and variable conditions, and how would a reasonable person react or act, and a reasonable circumstance play out.

In my experience, this kind of development is key to quality proofing and interaction enhancement long before other development activities are undertaken.

IMHO,
Addy

The rules of your world can be whatever the hell you want. You are god. As long as the rules (whether or not the rules are revealed) are consistent and faultless, a story built on those rules has the freedom to fearlessly dip as deep as it likes into any kind of metaphysics you dream up *as long as it holds up to investigation*.

I''ve been thinking about this for years, I decided the whole philosophy should boil down to one fundamental idea such as "reality is perception". For the purpose of the story, create some specifics such as "space and time are illusions created by our inability to percieve all possibilities at once, an awareness of this empowers us to choose the reality we live in". You can create as many child ideas as you like as long as they are faithful to the holistic underlying point.

The details should make a complete unambigous model when put together. This perfect "religion" can be turned into a story by obfustication: the world''s interpretation is naturally corrupted so contradictions and misunderstandings arise which give clues to the truth.

Think modern world religions are the same ideas the original prophets claimed? Not even close. The whole deal is a massive game of chinese whispers, you can use this to your advantage. An evolutionary model might be good ie branch religions spin off from a more accurate outmoded parent but each child has a slightly different interpretation and can be studied to guess what the parent was.




If your game story revolves around metaphysics, the ultimate goal would intuituvly be to peel back sucessive layers of mystery and misunderstanding. To take it all the way, what is at the centre of an onion? The penultimate layer is the details ("space and time are illusions..."), the last is The Grand Unified Truth ("reality is perception") and beyond that is... you. The GUT didn''t pop out of nowhere, you created it but you are not one of the layers AS FAR AS THE GAME WORLD IS CONCERNED, which is the final ironic tragedy: the *real* ultimare truth can never be found.




As a goodbye note, I''ll quote as accuratly as I can remember from The Hitch-Hiker''s Guide to the Galaxy:

God says "I''ll never reveal I exist because then there will be no doubt. Without doubt there needs be no faith, and without faith I am nothing."

But man says "Something as incredibly useful as the Babelfish can''t have been created by sheer chance, you must have built it. This proves you exist and so, by your own arguments, you don''t"

And god disappeared in a puff of logic.


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A Problem Worthy of Attack
Proves It''s Worth by Fighting Back

I think stories are more effective when you spend the first act helping the reader learn the rules of your world, and basically what to expect from it.

If you introduce new rules later, it's like the stranger that shows up at the end of the mystery that ends up being guilty, ruining it for the reader that was trying to figure it out.

Try to establish at least some consistency, even if you don't actually explain the rules behind your world (maybe because you're saving that for a deeper storyline at a later time). If the player perceives the consistency even without understanding what the rules are, it gives them a sense of familiarity, which to me is a form of reward.

I suppose there are times when you can introduce a new rule later that shows the player/reader more of where they or the main character are in the scheme of things, a kind of revelation, to deepen what they already understand.


[edited by - Waverider on March 3, 2003 5:06:36 PM]

walkingcarcass has delivered an amazing take on things, and indeed I would feel compelled to use his ideas in my own project, had I not already put so much work into something completely different.

There are basically three ways to treat the metaphysical in your game. The first is to essentially ignore its implications; none of the Final Fantasies bothered to explain what magic was or how it was discovered. It was there, and you used it without question because it formed approximately one-half of your power to defeat the enemy. In my opinion, this is doing your game a great injustice. Something as profound as the power to make and break reality must be justified. In my opinion.

The second is to make that the focal point of your game; the purpose is to uncover what makes the metaphysical tick, or as walkingcarcass put it, to uncover the secrets of reality and bend them to your will. Games of universal discovery can indeed by very interesting, but they must stand against scrutiny from any angle. As soon as someone finds a discrepancy in your philosophy, the whole system breaks down for them, and believability is lost. This leads to disappointment of a degree such that players will not take you seriously as a writer. And that is bad for your reputation.

The third is to employ metaphysics in such a way that it is a fundamental aspect of living -- so fundamental that most people tend to overlook it. This is the angle I''m using at the moment. In my society, sorcery is an accepted and respected practice because it has solved a great many problems: agriculture, medicine, masonry, blacksmithing... all these fields benefit from the power of sorcery. There is a darker side, of course: magic as a destructive force. My world has a vast (and admittedly underdeveloped) history that expounds on the origins and evolution of magic, and the races of the world. I won''t go into that here.

Iron Chef asked whether or not you need to define the metaphysical nature of your world. Depends on how you want to approach it. If your game is about the metaphysics and universal discovery, than metaphysics should be the foremost thing on your mind. If it''s about anything else, then you can generally just wing it. The trick is to avoid pointing to something that might invoke scrutiny from the player that you are not prepared to handle -- in other words, you don''t want players delving any deeper than you did to make the game. Keep the carrot-on-a-stick pointed in the right direction and you should be okay.

In the end, it comes down to whether you''re making a linear game, in which you control every aspect of the plot; a nonlinear game, in which the player can go anywhere, do anything; or a mix of the two. The amount of development you need to do any aspect of the game world depends on how much of it the player can see -- or rather, how much you choose to reveal.

Metaphysics is kind of in-between worldbuilding and theme, right? Because some of it is more objective, like gravity and genetics, and some of it is more based on the writer''s opinions, like poetic justice, teleology as you mention, and the morals you want your story to express. So I would say that you need deep enough metaphysics to support and give context to the themes you want to explore, and enough to make your plot seem to be a natural result of your worldbulding, not a result of authorial fiat.