Character Driven Game Design

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Character-Driven Game Design
of social interaction that the large scale social network. Finding such
patterns, which could be said to belong to our previous study on individual
NPCs, are normal since changing the frame of references can
highlight characteristics of a design that under previous circumstances
have been so. Notably, the conflict in Façade [36] requires many patterns
that relates to believability of NPCs to make gameplay possible and the
player’s choices understandable—or patterns give means to players to
predict NPCs reactions to their actions based on their previous (everyday)
experiences.
Designing Social Networks
As for all design patterns, the patterns presented here should be seen
as tools; their use does not suit to every design, as each game has their
own gameplay goals. However, the patterns identified highlight some
game structures and possible design solution that can be used in games
in which the design goal has focus on social conflicts or social structures
have an important role. Why these kinds of game structures have
not been used more, or made into the core gameplay mechanics, is of
course impossible to say with certainty, but a hypothesis is that focusing
on social relations seems incompatible with simulations. Those focusing
on depicting a developing social relation within a game may
shun away from creating a simulation that carries the development
of relations as this can cause unexpected, or simply boring, outcomes.
Likewise, those focusing on simulation may shun away from social relations
as they may seem simplistic or mechanistic compared to those
describe through theme.
Looking at the gameplay structure underlying the examined games,
most of the examples have models similar to those described in the
SNA than those described in the ANT. This may be due to the ANT descriptions
requiring a greater focus on the dynamics of social networks
than the SNA, but this implies that an ANT-based approach could be
more suitable for introducing more simulation into the social networks
of NPCs.
Future Work
The gameplay design patterns identified above are not presented in
such a detail as in the original collection [9]. This remains as a future
work mainly for two reasons: 1) a desire to include more case studies
in the paper required to reduce the details, and 2) more comprehensive
studies of each individual pattern, including design experiments, is
needed to describe aspects such as “implications of using a pattern” in
detail. In addition, many more case studies should be added, with the
Sims [35] or Japanese dating sim games as possible candidates.
Massively multiplayer games were excluded as player relations
typically have more impact on the game experience of those games