Player Character in MMOGs
The research theme of player characters
aims at getting a deeper understanding of what happens when a player
possesses a character within a MMORPG. When a player drives an agent
within a persistent virtual world the agent becomes a functional interface
and story container and the player creates an alternative identity.
Based on this understanding this research theme aims to model a semi-autonomous
agent which can mediate deeper and more immersive experiences in gameplay.
Download
initial outline of research theme, August 2002
Currently a component called the Mind Module is under development. The
virtual mind of a player (or non-player) character influences what a
character can and cannot do, affects other characters within intersecting
zones of presence and reception, and provides goals and a prosthetic
psyche for the player within the game world.
The component is described in the paper Player
Character Design Facilitating Emotional Depth in MMORPGs by Mirjam
Eladhari and Craig Lindley which will be presented at the Digital Games
Research Conference 2003, 4-6 November 2003 University of Utrecht, The
Netherlands.
© DiGRA, 2003. This is the author's version of the work. It
is posted here by permission of DiGRA for your personal use. Not for
redistribution. The
definitive version is published in DIGITAL GAMES RESEARCH CONFERENCE
2003 PROCEEDINGS, http://www.gamesconference.org/2003/
and DiGRA Digital Library, http://www.digra.org/
Some illustrations summarizing our
approach are found at the following links:
| Basic Object Oriented Story Construction Knowledge for Fluffies, February 2003 |
This picture illustrates the basic methodology
of Object Oriented Story Construction. The full description is
available here
(thesis in PDF format). |
| The Player Character, february, 2003 | First outline of the mind component. This version referred to the mythos of ancient egypt, later changed to a gotlandic mythos. |
| The Player Character in psycho dynamic terms, february 2003. | A player of a computer role playing game enters into a new body and into a world with different rules than the real one. This picture shows the relationship of the freudian levels to the static and dynamic aspects of characterisation. |
| The Prelude, February 2003 | The prelude is a play session where 5 to 8 characters during aproximately 45 minutes make dramatic choices before they enter into the Massively Multiplayer environment. |
| Possible gameplay in the Prelude, March 2003 | This picture summarises some concepts for and issues concerning a game prelude. |
| When a person in the real world becomes a player entity in a game world, March 2003 |
This picture shows an outline of the mind module with an option for the player to control the mood nodes in the system. |
| Ouroboros motives and manifestations, April 2003 | April 2003. |
| Levels of player control regarding individual output in the form of body language, April 2003 | Levels of player control versus autonomy for the contextual gesture system. |
| A stream of questions, May 2003 | ... providing some background justifiction for the approaches explored. |
| The mind of the Player Character, June 2003 | This picture explains how the affect nodes in the virtual mind are constituted in terms of object dependencies and persistence in time. Each player has a set of nodes of these types which in the mind module creates a prosthetic consiousness for the player to possess. |
|
The
Forrest of Gloom, |
These pictures gives examples of the kind of interrelated scenarios that might be orchestrated by story deamons manipulating game objects. |
| Interconnected node types in the Mind Module, August 2003 | This picture shows the network of interconnected node types in the semantic network of the mind module. It illustrates how affect nodes are related to how the personality is constituted (left side) and the personality's relations to elements which are the basis for story construction in the game (right side). |
