Games with Intellectual Content

[kandrathe]

I agree that work is required to develop a "mature" commentary delivery platform...

I've always been partial to non-linear software, and open environments (e.g. Todd Howard's work). From my old D&D days, I prefer "alignment" to be sensed rather than chosen, although, it is often difficult for software to determine player intent. I think linear games biggest detractor is that they generate less interest in replay (now I'll try that all over with a Brute rather than a Wizard). In RPG's, if you are playing a pre-defined character (e.g. Gordon Freeman) then the attitudes expressed can be scripted (although, it would be best to make them somewhat non-controversial to appeal to the largest audience). If you are allowed to develop the character, then the game designer should provide story paths for multiple directions of character development.

Now, granted I last worked on this kind of software back in the 80's, but the problem I always ran into while developing software simulations was the available clock cycles for computing the various actors behaviors. You start by thinking about display frequency, and the time it takes to render the environment and project it to a 2D image (screen, from the eye POV). Then, each actor in the environment has a set of behaviors, and based on values, thresholds, and what it senses in its local environment, it reacts and exhibits a behavior. As you can see, the more sophisticated you make each actor, and the size of the environment can quickly exponentially overwhelm the largest processors. You can program around some of it by only calculating in real time those actors within a certain range of the protagonist, and for all the others out of range, add them to a less frequently processed queue. But, then sometimes things like fast travel can throw a wrench into the works, and you need to develop different rules for when the protagonist is mounted and moving quickly.

What I see in modern games, like Diablo III, or Fable II is not any huge strides forward in the game's intelligence or simulation complexity, but more effort spent in rendering a more realistic and pretty environment. I think the most interesting new genre I've seen lately have been in the "stealth" type games (e.g. Ghost Recon, Thief) where the objective is not so much hack & slash, or magic blast, but to figure out how to move through the environment to accomplish a goal without being sensed. The other problem I've seen is the adaptation of physics engines, or adding pseudo physics to the game environment (e.g. I find Guild Wars, or Dungeon Siege frustrating in that my character seems to be in 3D, but still bound to the 2D surface).

On my short list of games to tryout are; Left 4 Dead, and Fallout 3, and The Last Remnant.