Romance in the Computer Game Industry March 2004 by Lauren E. Darcey This year at the annual Game Developers Conference in San Jose, California, three top game designers were given a challenge - to architect a game with a love story. While many good points were raised as part of this one hour panel discussion, the games architected were mostly jokes, making fun of the romance industry as a whole. It is important to note that the presenters were all male presenting to a male dominated industry whose primary audience is first-person shooter gamers on game platforms and not familiar with the romantic literature industry. The first presenter, Raph Koster of Sony Online Entertainment, punted with a humorous Romance Novel Generator, called Passion's Tender Embrace. Although his research and design were delivered with a heavy amount of sarcasm, he pointed out that romantic plots are generally predictable in nature, with characters that fall into the standard archetypes - making them quite formulaic and programmable by nature. Each player in his multiplayer game is given a character flaw and a predetermined final outcome (married, dies of consumption, dies in a duel) which is then passed to the game engine, which chooses a story to fit the player characters. The characters are then placed in an initial situation, and they are allowed some choices, but always the outcome is predetermined. Each player cannot deviate from their story arc, but they do get some multiple choice questions so the player feels like they have some control. In short, the character paths vary to some extent, but the outcome is always the same. Koster recognized the mass marketing potential of romantic games, suggesting that content be written by the likes of Daniel Steele, with new plots and subplots available over time. He expressed a lot of skepticism about the feasibility of a love story game, and claimed he'd never be able to show his face again in gaming if he tried it. Are you looking for romance?  When you're hunting for love, the internet is a good place to begin. By using singles forums, you'll be able to get advice about dating as well as find personals. Maxis founder and game designer Will Wright, known for SimCity and The Sims, took quite a different approach, incorporating a love theme into an already existing game, Battlefield 1942. He incorporated chatting and matchmaking technologies into the already well-defined game world, and giving users playing civilians some diverse social situations and goals. This allowed the players to engage in some of the love-related emotions and actions such as pride, loyalty and sacrifice. Wright has likely hit on the immediate future of gaming - having alternative character profiles other than warriors, and giving them other goals and motivations. Ultima producer Warren Spector struggled to come up with a love story game premise that did not involve giving the characters a gun. After a lot of research on the nature and physiology of love, he came to the conclusion that a true love story was impossible to develop. He suggested that love-related gaming should focus on the pursuit and lessons of love - not the senses of love - as the gaming industry relies only on two of the five senses. Facial expression ability is one of the hottest issues at GDC 2004, and he feels the industry has only scratched the surface here and also needs to improve communication technologies like chatting. Lastly, Spector expressed concern over the potential issues arising from developing games that cause the gamer to experience these types of emotions over or with their computer. No one in the room seemed to take the possibility of romantic entertainment on the devices seriously as a way to reach an entirely different type of user. Romantic love was the only kind of love discussed. Perhaps the best way for the gaming industry to incorporate any heavy emotion into a plot is to harness some of the emotions that have been possible - like pride, loyalty, greed and competition which also tend to exist in your average love story. If you take Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet as an example of a love story, you have all sorts of elements with gaming potential - duels, brotherly love of your fellows, and family rivalry - all which drive the outcome of the story. All presenters may have taken on too much of a challenge by making the user an active participant in the romantic love aspect of their games. Some of the most interesting characters in love stories are the villains and the well developed secondary characters like Romeo's friend Mercutio. Movies have a distinct advantage here in that the viewer need not fall in love, but just believe that the people on screen are in love. Frankly, this has a lot to do with well written dialogue, which you cannot really depend on the user to come up with on their own. Virtual reality is still primarily a violent place, and is likely to stay that way for quite some time. For more information, see the Game Developer's Conference website.

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