Ryan ([info]qwantz) wrote,
@ 2009-01-30 14:10:00
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Anyone who wants to produce this play as a three-person show should please feel free.
The past little while I've been playing with a game called Façade. It's free, and I recommend it! It came out years ago though so this may be OLD NEWS to you.



I came across it in a discussion on adding more emotions to games and making NPCs have more depth. It's pretty interesting! In the game you show up to a party of two old friends, and they're squabbling with each other. You can type whatever you want (text adventure style!) and you've can walk around and interact with the people and the environment some with the mouse. PRETTY STANDARD SO FAR, RIGHT?

What's interesting is that the whole game is exploring and managing the relationships between the two hosts, and between each of them and yourself. That's where the focus is. Looking at the code of the game WordNet is used to figure out what words are related to sense groupings, which helps, and which shows the effort that's gone into understanding your conversation. There's bugs in the game, of course and the parser isn't foolproof, but it's good enough to be immersive and to feel like you're having an effect on things, even if you're not ALWAYS listened too. What makes the game work well is that there's no preset conversational options (so you feel like you have a lot of freedom) and when you finish, you can see your entire run as a screenplay, which works surprisingly well and can also be hilarious.

The first time I played it, I played it like a game, running into the house, exploring the room as much as possible, and then kissing the wife over and over so that she'd leave her husband for me. The husband, Trip, got angrier and angrier until he kicked me out. GAME OVER. Okay, so these people respond like real people. The next time I played it I tried to behave like a human being. I only kissed Grace ONCE. I was understanding and I tried to keep everyone calm. It didn't work too well, but I did keep things together long enough for Grace to admit she'd cheated on her husband, and then she left and the husband was left stunned, and the game faded to black. GAME OVER.

I figured I knew their problem now, and could take a shortcut to success. Here's how my run after than one went, screenplay style! The dialogue at the beginning I overheard while outside their apartment:

RYAN SOLVES THE RELATIONSHIP ISSUES OF THE PEOPLE INSIDE HIS COMPUTER: THE PLAY

GRACE
Trip, when are you going to get rid of this?

TRIP
What, Grace... this?

GRACE
Yes, you know how I feel about it --

TRIP
I know I know I'll do it right now, alright?!

GRACE
You know I've had to ask you about this several --

TRIP
Get off my back! I'll get rid of it in just a minute!

RYAN
hello?

GRACE
Fine, Trip... fine...

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

TRIP
Oh, he's here!

GRACE
What?! You said he's coming an hour from now!

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

TRIP
No, he's right on time!

GRACE
Trip...!

(Trip opens the front door.)

TRIP
Ryan!!

RYAN
you guys should get a divorce

TRIP
Hey! God it's been so long since we've seen you! -- (interrupted)

(Trip closes the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(RYAN knocks on the front door.)

(30 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]dontsayroscoe
2009-01-30 07:24 pm UTC (link)
...I'm gonna try that approach with ALL of my married friends.

(Reply to this)


[info]slodwick
2009-01-30 07:32 pm UTC (link)
Clearly, the key to a successful marriage is to never invite people over.

(Reply to this)


[info]finkenstein
2009-01-30 07:33 pm UTC (link)
hahahahaa!
Eric played this for a while I think it's alternative title should be: "AWKWARD: THE GAME"

He has some pretty hilarious transcripts where he just busts in and acts like a different character every time. I highly enjoy it!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]qwantz
2009-01-30 07:58 pm UTC (link)
I am looking forward to trying this!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]bionic_sheep
2009-01-30 07:35 pm UTC (link)
my friend once wired his laptop up to his TV and a bunch of us spent a few happy hours drunkenly messing around with this game, usually with hilarious consequences.

things to try:
- get through to the end only saying "yes" or "no"
- same as above, but only saying "i love grace" or "i hate trip"
- see how much you can swear without getting kicked out
- pick the name "Gonzalo" and fall about laughing whenever Trip says it
- pokemon mode: only say your own name
- hit on grace

facade is kind of broken as a game, because it's genuinely difficult to play seriously (at least as far as i've found), but it's broken in hilarious and wonderful ways, so i can't help but love it.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]qwantz
2009-01-30 07:58 pm UTC (link)
I feel like all of these could never possibly go wrong!!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]thatoneguy297
2009-02-01 02:42 am UTC (link)
...i pretty much need to re-download this game specifically for these "game modes"

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]disclaimerwill
2009-01-30 07:37 pm UTC (link)
I'd never heard of this game, but quickly came upon this YouTube video of someone playing it that made me laugh until I cried. Here at my desk. At work.

Luckily, the sight of me crying at my desk is not an unusual one for my coworkers.

(Reply to this)


[info]drhastings
2009-01-30 07:45 pm UTC (link)
Ahahahah oh I laughed hard at that. Alone.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]whirringblender
2009-01-30 09:44 pm UTC (link)
I was laughin witchoo in mah heart, baybee

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]thechiefcommie
2009-01-30 07:46 pm UTC (link)
I'm a grad student in Michael Mateas' lab at UC Santa Cruz (though I think he was in Georgia when he made this), so we play it quite a bit. It's kind of a running joke that every object in the apartment is a phallic symbol (think about it!).

Anyway, it's a pretty neat advance in combining ludology and narrative with AI techniques, and if you are interested in reading a paper on it </a>here one is!</a>

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]thechiefcommie
2009-01-30 07:48 pm UTC (link)
or maybe here!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]qwantz
2009-01-30 07:57 pm UTC (link)
Neat! Thank you!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]penrynsdreams
2009-01-31 06:28 am UTC (link)
*g* I'm an undergrad at UCSC. I took 80K last year and he did a guest lecture. Pretty interesting stuff!

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]thechiefcommie
2009-01-31 08:13 am UTC (link)
ah cool! I'm in his 148/248 class right now (which you'll probably take if you're a game design major, which you probably are if you took 80k).

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]ferrouswheel
2009-01-30 08:54 pm UTC (link)
Thank you so much. This is awesome.

(Also I work on AI using http://www.opencog.org - we're making use of Wordnet and the CMU link-grammar parser for doing NLP. Making a game like this would be a good demo for how awesome we are.)

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]qwantz
2009-01-30 08:56 pm UTC (link)
I suggest you do it because I like playing games!

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]say_it_with_pie
2009-01-30 09:30 pm UTC (link)
This was all totally hilarious. And I haven't even played it yet.

(Reply to this)


[info]whirringblender
2009-01-30 09:37 pm UTC (link)
Oh my God I have to play this noooooooww

(Reply to this)


[info]chezmax
2009-01-30 11:27 pm UTC (link)
I played that a couple years ago. hilarious.

(Reply to this)


[info]nickmurdoch
2009-01-30 11:57 pm UTC (link)
Bah, it won't run on OS X 10.5, needs hardware acceleration so I can't use my Windows VM, and Wine on Linux won't even launch the installer :(

(Reply to this)


[info]dragonvyxn
2009-01-31 02:33 am UTC (link)
hilarious! i'd never heard of it before, but you can tell that they should get divorced from the trailer... looks like i'll have to wait for a windows machine to get home before i can try it out. oh well...

(Reply to this)


[info]mrmxy
2009-01-31 06:55 pm UTC (link)
What if your player has the shits and constantly asks to use the bathroom?

(Reply to this)


[info]novodantis
2009-02-01 04:51 pm UTC (link)
Interesting stuff, I always thought it was about time games started pushing the open-ended limits of conversation AI. This definitely seems worth a look.

Taking inspiration from nedroidcomics, I'm gonna see how far I can get with the "your face" response.

(Reply to this)


[info]kogith
2009-02-01 08:27 pm UTC (link)
I killed the AI :(
but I guess that means their relationship is saved :D

(Reply to this)


[info]colonel_froggie
2009-02-01 11:12 pm UTC (link)
I found this game to be very...awkward.
Maybe I should be kissing more?

(Reply to this)


[info]drendiloon
2009-02-02 04:29 am UTC (link)
Try this: Knock on the front door. Enter without saying anything, and start throwing their decorative possessions around their apartment. Then at first opportunity, run to the balcony and leap to your death. It's good to leave an impression.

(Reply to this)

façade adaptations
[info]callanhead
2009-02-15 11:55 pm UTC (link)
it took me a while to get around to playing this but when i did it impressed me, especially to know they are going to make a bigger game called "the party". anyway, i played as a character and turned it into a comic.

here if you want to see what i mean.

(Reply to this)


[info]ravenworks
2009-02-19 05:53 pm UTC (link)
So apparently the Facade guy is turning his AI shenanigans towards a social networking virtual pet game for the iPhone...

http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2009/02/qa_facades_stern_reveals_touch.php

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[info]qwantz
2009-02-19 05:56 pm UTC (link)
Neat!

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