The Verge - Entertainments |
- Nintendo’s new Big Brain Academy turns brainteasers into a party game
- The Apple Watch Series 6 is still available for $100 off at Best Buy
- Fortnite’s new ‘Party Worlds’ put the focus firmly on socializing
- Why Red Notice was able to beat Bird Box as Netflix’s biggest movie debut ever
- Star Trek creator’s signature will live long and prosper in new NFT
- GTA Trilogy’s next big patch fixes spelling errors, rain, and CJ’s face covering the camera
- Netflix’s genre slate for 2022 includes The Sandman and The Witcher: Blood Origin
- Square Enix warns players that servers might struggle with FFXIV’s next big expansion
- Razer’s Qualcomm-powered handheld console leaks
- Procedural storytelling is exploding the possibilities of video game narratives
| Nintendo’s new Big Brain Academy turns brainteasers into a party game Posted: 01 Dec 2021 06:00 AM PST  2021 is shaping up to be the year of party games on the Switch. This year, Nintendo has released new entries in the WarioWare and Mario Party franchises, and now it's completing the party trilogy with Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain. It's the continuation of a series that started with Brain Age on the Nintendo DS, which, alongside the likes of Wii Sports and Wii Fit, helped solidify the company's "blue ocean" strategy of reaching a nontraditional gaming audience. Each "Brain" game is exactly what it sounds like: a collection of digital brainteasers. The twist in the latest is that its focus is almost exclusively on multiplayer play. At its most basic, Big Brain Academy is a mini-game collection where each of the games is divided into five different categories: identify, memorize, analyze, compute, and visualize. The idea is that the games all test different parts of your brain. One mini-game involves popping numbered balloons in the correct order, while another has you choosing the right shapes to complete an image. There's a pretty basic single-player mode where you can practice each of the mini-games, complete a "test" that involves each of the five categories, or compete against the ghosts of either friends or players online. Doing well earns you high scores and new looks for your avatar. It's nothing like, say, a classic Brain Age with a structure that encourages you to come back and keep improving. (Though the game does rate the weight of your brain after tests.) Instead, the single-player feels more like a warmup for the party mode, where up to four players can compete. This mode works well for a few reasons. To start, the games are pretty simple but with a nice progression, so they work well for a timed competition where you're trying to solve problems as quickly as possible. It can get surprisingly intense when all the players in a room are trying to be the first to identify a slowly unraveling photo of a zebra. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23053914/Switch_BBABvB_Reveal_TRL_SCRN_02_bmp_jpgcopy.jpg) The thing that sets Brain vs. Brain apart from the Switch's other party games, aside from its less zany mini-games, is just how adjustable the difficulty is. It's really something you can play with the whole family. When you start up a multiplayer match, each player gets to choose their own difficulty level, making it possible to balance the experience for people of different ages. I spent an afternoon playing with a six- and eight-year-old, and each of us was playing on a completely different difficulty level. When we play Mario Kart, for instance, I'm usually forced to turn the speed down all the way, which is fun for the kids but boring for me. But in Brain vs. Brain, you can fine-tune the experience to each player so that they can both compete against each other and challenge themselves. It's a nice change of pace. I should also note that this is the rare Switch game that I actually prefer playing with a touchscreen. It's just a lot faster in most games to tap the correct answer than move a cursor around. Unfortunately this isn't really possible if you have a bunch of people playing, but there is a single-Switch touchscreen mode that works really well for two players. Brain vs. Brain isn't revolutionary by any stretch, but it does open up the possibilities for who can play together, which is an important change from its contemporaries. It's also not the kind of game I see myself playing solo all that often. Instead, it's more like a board game that I'll stick on the shelf and pull out when everyone gets together. Big Brain Academy: Brain vs. Brain launches December 3rd on the Nintendo Switch. |
| The Apple Watch Series 6 is still available for $100 off at Best Buy Posted: 01 Dec 2021 05:48 AM PST Cyber Monday may be over, but Cyber Week continues. If at any point this past weekend you missed out on an Apple Watch deal you were keeping tabs on, fret not, you can still pick up the 40mm, GPS version of the Apple Watch Series 6 for just $299 at Best Buy. That's a $100 discount on the otherwise $399 wearable, which offers built-in sleep tracking, a blood oxygen sensor, and an always-on display. It's a more affordable alternative to Apple's new Series 7, with features you won't find in the similarly priced Apple Watch SE. For new subscribers, Best Buy's also throwing in six months free of Apple Fitness Plus, an exercise service that integrates nicely with the Apple Watch and offers fitness classes. Note, however, this deal is only available on the watch sporting a blue aluminum case with a deep navy sport band. Read our full review. If you're looking for a good holiday gift for the gamer in your life, the PlayStation Store is currently discounting several PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 digital titles by up to 80 percent as a part of its "End of the Year" sale. PS4 owners can, for example, pick up a digital copy of Mortal Kombat 11 for just $10 ($40 off) or Marvel's Spider-Man: Game of the Year Edition for $20 ($20 off). Both PS4 and PS5 owners can also enjoy 60 percent off of the $80 Deluxe or $100 Gold editions of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which are on sale for $32 and $40, respectively. The sale will last through December 22nd. For gamers who are on the market for Nintendo Switch titles, Best Buy also has a great sale going on. Right now, you can buy two games from a small selection of popular titles and get the third game of equal or lesser value for free. The bundle also applies to some games that are already on sale, which could translate to even greater savings. Current standouts include physical versions of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild ($60), as well as Super Mario Odyssey Standard Edition ($38) and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze ($45). Just hit "Build my package" at the top of the screen to customize the promo to your liking. We saw a lot of great deals on wireless earbuds this past week, though, sadly, many of them have already expired. Thankfully, Woot is selling Samsung's Galaxy Buds 2 — the most recent addition to Samsung's Galaxy Buds lineup — for just $100 in various styles through December 3rd or while supplies last. That matches the lowest price we saw on the earbuds during Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but it's worth noting that these have a 90-day Woot warranty, not the full one-year warranty against manufacturer defects from Samsung. If you'd rather have that longer coverage, Best Buy and Amazon have them for just $10 more, totaling $110. In our review, we noted that these lightweight, entry-level earbuds offer active noise cancellation, wireless charging, and a small, low-profile design. They also showcase good audio quality, making them an easy pick for many Android users. If you managed to score a great deal on an iPad this week, why not make using it even more fun with some great discounted accessories? Apple's Smart Keyboard Folio makes it easier to use your iPad Pro or iPad Air more like a traditional laptop, and right now it's selling for its lowest price to date. Typically $179, the basic accessory is currently going for $99. Note that the case is only compatible with the first, second, and third generations of the 11-inch iPad Pro, as well as the fourth-generation iPad Air. But wait! There's more! Here are some other notable deals happening:
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| Fortnite’s new ‘Party Worlds’ put the focus firmly on socializing Posted: 01 Dec 2021 04:21 AM PST  "Party Worlds" are new spaces coming to Fortnite which are designed to focus on socializing over combat, the game's developer Epic Games has announced. "These are experiences that are designed as places for players to hang out, play fun mini-games, and make new friends," the developer says, adding that Party Worlds cannot be centered on "combat or damage." To kick off the initiative, Epic has collaborated with community members fivewalnut and TreyJTH on a pair of example Party Worlds. One is an amusement park called Walnut World, and the second is called Late Night Lounge and has more of a nightclub vibe. The developer says it's taking submissions for more community-made spaces. Just use the tag "Party World" for an island, and submit it through this submission form. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23055139/fortnite_creative_late_night_lounge_by_treyjth_1920x1080_2fc0f4dd2a28.jpg) Image: Epic Games Party Worlds are Epic's latest attempt to transform Fortnite from a competitive online game into a broader online social space. This has already resulted in numerous features ranging from one-off events like an in-game concert from Travis Scott to the combat-free Party Royale mode. Users can also already create islands to serve as social spaces rather than arenas using the game's Creative mode. But with its latest initiative, Epic appears to be explicitly promoting and encouraging users to make these social-first spaces. Party Worlds also don't link out to other islands, so they're meant as a destination rather than a "discovery tool." And yes, this all ties in to Epic's plans to create a so-called "metaverse," a fully integrated 3D online space for people to exist in. Epic is now far from the only company explicitly targeting this future (see also: Meta), but the maturity of Fortnite's technology, not to mention the game's enduring popularity, mean Epic's ambitions deserve to be taken seriously. |
| Why Red Notice was able to beat Bird Box as Netflix’s biggest movie debut ever Posted: 30 Nov 2021 12:50 PM PST  Netflix's heist drama Red Notice has officially overthrown Bird Box as the streaming service's biggest movie debut to date, with over 328 million total hours viewed as of today. That beats out Bird Box's prior record — 282 million hours in its first 28 days — by a good margin, and Red Notice still has ample time to expand its debut-month record. That might seem like great news for Netflix: a movie it wanted to be a huge hit was in fact a huge hit. It commanded views up against an eight-hour Beatles documentary as well as big theatrical releases like a Ghostbusters spinoff and multiple titles from Disney. But the film's success isn't quite as remarkable as the numbers make it appear. Sure, the hours viewed figure indicates that subscribers are actually watching Red Notice. But it's also the kind of numbers Netflix should be netting right now and should probably be seeing more of. As far as celebrity appeal goes, Red Notice checks a lot of boxes — it stars Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot), Deadpool (Ryan Reynolds), and The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), all of whom more or less play themselves — and had a huge $200 million budget to back it all up. But the film hasn't achieved anywhere near the cultural cachet of Bird Box or Netflix's more recent success Squid Game, which remains its most popular TV series debut to date. To say that Red Notice lacked the substance of either of the aforementioned titles would frankly be generous. Red Notice has some big-boom action fun, but that's about as far as it gets. So how on earth did a movie that by many accounts is just, well, fine eclipse Bird Box for Netflix's most-viewed film to date? One answer might be subscribers. The problem with comparing two films that debuted on Netflix roughly three years apart — aside from their markedly different tones and inverse genres — is that Netflix has grown substantially in that time. When Netflix shared its fourth-quarter earnings in January 2019, a month after Bird Box's premiere, the company reported having around 139 million subscriptions. As of its most recently reported subscription figures, it now has around 214 million active accounts — and that's after the service twice raised its prices and axed its free trial. Netflix is now reaching more people globally than at any other time in its history, and it custom-tailors its product to its various markets across the world. (As of this week's data, Red Notice remained in the top 10 films in 94 countries.) That means that any film that the streamer puts on its service now is better positioned to do well over titles that premiered when it had some 75 million fewer active accounts, fewer features, and the world wasn't living through an ongoing global health crisis that sees many of us turning to streaming services to keep us preoccupied. It's likely that Red Notice will continue to topple records during its first 28 days on the service, the window for which Netflix reports the total viewing hours of its most popular titles. It's almost assured, in fact. But streaming data doesn't and arguably can't give a full picture of success because of how rapidly the space is evolving, for several reasons. Netflix is among the most transparent streaming services, offering a publicly accessible and frequently updated dedicated hub for tracking its hits, but even that can be tricky when its past successes are measured against newer ones as the service continues to grow. (Its newer public-facing metric, hours viewed, is to Netflix's credit far easier to interpret than its former maligned two-minute viewing metric.) But even more to that point, without data shared by other services, we're still left in the dark about how Netflix's successes compare to those of, for example, HBO Max or Prime Video. In an ideal scenario, all of these services would adopt greater transparency and convene around one single way of gauging success. Those numbers should then account for the debut of the title against the growth of the service over time. (This week, for example, the Halle Berry-starring drama Bruised — which also premiered this month — came in second for English-language films with 47.7 million hours viewed to Red Notice's 50.6 million during the same weeklong period. That context is helpful for understanding Red Notice's success.) Immediately, those asks seem like a tall order from companies that have been intentionally obtuse about accurately representing their data in the past. We're getting this data from Netflix and in a way that most people can reasonably understand — and that's great. But because of the rapidly evolving nature of the streaming wars, these numbers are harder to interpret than, say, box office sales. And without everyone playing by the same rules, the data is pretty meaningless for giving us any comparative understanding of how Netflix stacks up against the competition — and what truly makes a hit. |
| Star Trek creator’s signature will live long and prosper in new NFT Posted: 30 Nov 2021 12:09 PM PST Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's signature on the show's first contract with Lucille Ball's Desilu Productions is now an NFT. Roddenberry Entertainment is calling it the first "Living Eco-NFT," which seems straight out of science fiction itself. The NFT's creators implanted the signature, signed in 1965, into a living bacteria cell in the form of DNA code. As the cell duplicates, it creates new copies of the NFT — over a billion in one night. Even though there could quickly be billions of replicas, the NFT is called "El Primero," which means "the first" in Spanish. Right now, though, the bacteria cells are dormant. Scientists working on the project freeze-dried the cells after 10 hours. They can be re-animated in the future, and then the zombie-bacteria can begin replicating themselves once again. In the meantime, the desiccated bacteria will be exhibited at the Art Basel Miami Beach art fair that kicks off on December 2nd. They fit inside a vial that's encased in a glass cube. DNA is nature's way of storing data. But instead of encoding that data as zeros and ones as computers do, the basic building blocks for DNA are the nucleotides adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine — A, T, C, and G for short. Different combinations of those nucleotides are essentially genetic instructions for characteristics like hair and eye color. That code can also be used to store digital information — like say, an NFT. There are significant climate controversies swirling around NFTs and digital data more broadly. Data centers, where digital data is stored on hard disk drives, are notorious for guzzling up water and burning through electricity to keep servers cool. And NFTs tied to blockchains like Ethereum operate on an outstandingly energy inefficient security mechanism called "Proof of Work." This method prompts miners to solve complex puzzles using energy-hungry machines to verify transactions and earn tokens, protecting the blockchain's record of transactions by making it too expensive to mess with the ledger. El Primero manages to avoid some of the climate drama of traditional data storage and NFTs. For starters, early research has shown that synthetic DNA can potentially save energy and avoid greenhouse gas emissions compared with current commercial data storage by storing way more data in a much smaller, denser package. Second, the NFT won't be bought and sold on the most energy-hungry blockchains. Roddenberry Entertainment partnered with Solana Labs, whose blockchain operates on a mechanism called "Proof of Stake" that uses significantly less energy in comparison to the blockchain Ethereum of which most other NFTS are part. Proof of Stake nixes puzzles, instead requiring users to lock up some of their existing tokens as a security measure to "prove" they have a "stake" in keeping the ledger accurate. Getting rid of those puzzles drastically cuts energy usage and associated emissions. A single transaction on Ethereum uses about as much electricity as the average US household over 6.81 days, by one estimate. Solana says a single transaction is equivalent to about two Google Searches. Minting one NFT on Solana uses about the same amount of energy as about eight Google searches, according to Solana head of communications Austin Federa. Trevor Roth, COO of Roddenberry Entertainment, said in a statement that like Star Trek itself, the new NFT "speaks to the world around us, acknowledging today's constant convergence of life and technology." For a franchise that's been imagining bizarre new uses of genetic engineering technology for more than thirty years, it feels appropriate. Update November 30th 6:08PM: This story has been updated with more information about Solana's energy use and plans to exhibit the desiccated bacteria at Art Basel Miami Beach. Related: |
| GTA Trilogy’s next big patch fixes spelling errors, rain, and CJ’s face covering the camera Posted: 30 Nov 2021 09:37 AM PST  Rockstar's next Title Update for Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition looks to address a huge list of issues with the buggy remasters. The game has had a rough launch, and many of the fixes appear to clean up some of the more meme-worthy problems with the games. A lot of the fixes are about rain. Many spelling errors have apparently been fixed. I spotted two fixes for "a hole in the game world" in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – The Definitive Edition. There are also two fixes for CJ's face obscuring the camera in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition, which (sadly) may address the absolutely incredible bug shown in this video:
The patch also brings "stability improvements," fixes some textures, and adds a cinematic camera mode. You can read the full list of fixes for Title Update 1.03 on Rockstar's website. Rockstar says the update is now available on PS4, PS5, Xbox Series X / S, Xbox One, and PC and that it will be available for the Nintendo Switch "in the coming days." Rockstar apologized for the rocky launch a little over a week after the game's November 11th release date. "The updated versions of these classic games did not launch in a state that meets our own standards of quality, or the standards our fans have come to expect," the company said. "We have ongoing plans to address the technical issues and to improve each game going forward."
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| Netflix’s genre slate for 2022 includes The Sandman and The Witcher: Blood Origin Posted: 30 Nov 2021 09:30 AM PST  Netflix still has some big releases in store this year — including Don't Look Up and the second season of The Witcher — but the streaming service is also looking forward to its 2022 lineup. Today, the company released its slate for genre shows and movies coming next year, and while we knew some of them (last month, Netflix revealed that Stranger Things 4 would be coming out next summer), there were also some new confirmations. Most notably, both the live-action adaptation of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman and The Witcher spinoff Blood Origin will debut on the streaming service in 2022. Outside of those heavy hitters, there are also plenty of shows returning — Alice in Borderland's season 2, Locke & Key season 3, The Umbrella Academy season 3 — along with gaming adaptations, including The Cuphead Show, a live-action Resident Evil series, an animated Magic: The Gathering show, and Cyberpunk: Edgerunners from the acclaimed Studio Trigger. Rounding out the selection are some horror titles, including vampire hunting romance First Kill and The Midnight Club, the latest series from Midnight Mass and Haunting of Bly Manor creator Mike Flanagan. Most of the releases don't have specific dates attached to them yet, but here's the full list of genre stories coming to Netflix in 2022.
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| Square Enix warns players that servers might struggle with FFXIV’s next big expansion Posted: 30 Nov 2021 09:22 AM PST  With Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker launching in early access this week and officially on December 7th, Square Enix is warning players that they might face the longest log-in queues and wait times the game has ever seen. In a blog post, Square Enix stated that while it has optimized servers in anticipation of heavy traffic, the global chip shortage has prevented the addition of new servers that would help alleviate congestion problems. As such, players can expect to wait longer than normal to log into game servers, visit new Endwalker specific areas, and experience instanced content-like duties. Square Enix also offered tips that players can use to ensure their Endwalker experience is the best it can be. If players are experiencing higher log-in queues for their home server, they can choose to temporarily play on another, less-crowded server within their data center. Also, since new character creation is disabled for congested worlds, Square Enix suggested players interested in making new characters create them now before the Endwalker rush or during off-hours post-launch. Interest in Final Fantasy XIV reached an all-time high this summer, aided by an exodus of dissatisfied World of Warcraft players, popular streamers giving the MMO airtime, and a clever meme extolling the virtues of FFXIV's free trial. Even with Square Enix beefing up their existing servers and delaying the game by two weeks to ensure stability, Endwalker is shaping up to be the biggest launch in Final Fantasy XIV history. |
| Razer’s Qualcomm-powered handheld console leaks Posted: 30 Nov 2021 08:12 AM PST  Qualcomm appears to be collaborating with Razer on a new gaming handheld developer kit built around its upcoming Snapdragon G3X processor. Leaked slides published by VideoCardz call the device a "Snapdragon G3X Handheld Developer Kit," suggesting it will primarily be aimed at software developers and manufacturers to help them build their own software and hardware powered by Qualcomm's mobile gaming technology. Alongside it, VideoCardz has also obtained slides detailing Qualcomm's next flagship smartphone processor, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1. The name shows off Qualcomm's new branding for its mobile chips announced last month. The processor will reportedly be manufactured using a 4nm process, with a CPU that's 20 percent faster and 30 percent more power efficient, and a GPU that's 30 percent faster and 25 percent more power efficient than previous generation models.
Other specs for the handheld gaming device include a USB-C port for XR accessories, support for DisplayPort over USB-C, a 6,000mAh battery, 1080p webcam, and "incredible ergonomics and haptics." The screen is reportedly an OLED panel, with a 120Hz refresh rate and support for HDR. Wireless connectivity includes 5G mmWave, Wi-Fi 6E, and Bluetooth 5.2, and VideoCardz notes that the device could be capable of streaming games from services like xCloud. Qualcomm is no stranger to putting out this kind of hardware, which is designed to encourage development on the company's platforms. A Windows on Arm PC released earlier this year, for example, was aimed at giving software developers a cheaper piece of hardware to use to develop Arm apps for Snapdragon-based PCs. The company has also put out VR headsets equipped with its processors. This latest developer kit comes in the wake of the announcement of Valve's Steam Deck, a Linux-based handheld PC running on an AMD processor. But Valve is far from the only company that's working on the form factor, with others like Lenovo and Alienware having shown off prototypes of their own (albeit with no plans for commercial releases). Qualcomm appears to be betting on other companies also being interested in similar devices and is marketing its processors as the best thing to power them. There aren't any details yet on when the developer kit may be officially announced, but with Qualcomm's annual Snapdragon Tech Summit currently taking place in Hawaii, it's unlikely that we'll have too much longer to wait. |
| Procedural storytelling is exploding the possibilities of video game narratives Posted: 30 Nov 2021 07:00 AM PST  Authorship takes on an all-new meaning in games where the plot is yet to be written Procedural stories in video games often induce a specific kind of delight. You'll know when it hits — a realization that the code and algorithms of the game seem to be generating a coherent narrative from your own impulsive, seemingly chaotic actions. It's what 2020's viral sensation Blaseball and this year's breakout indie hit, Wildermyth, share in common — two strikingly different games whose reactive stories are nevertheless cut from the very same cloth. Players have grown accustomed to procedural generation in a spatial sense. Just look at the endless variations of levels that define games such as Hades in the ever-popular rogue-like genre and the infinite planets that populate the virtual universe of 2016's No Man's Sky. But procedural narratives are a different beast. (Distinct, it should be noted, from pre-written branching stories). They're slippery, simulation-driven configurations of plot, setting, conflict, resolution, and people. Drama, as video games continue to prove, is harder to convince players of than space itself, which makes procedural successes all the more eye-catching — from mainstream hits such as The Sims to cult classics like Rimworld. Now it feels like this sandbox approach to storytelling is starting to bear even greater narrative fruit. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23049847/Volcano_Fort.png) If you ask game makers about the origins of procedural narratives, you'll get nothing resembling a consensus. For some, it started with randomly generated dungeons of 1980's Rogue; for others, choose-your-own-adventure books. Nate Austin, designer and programmer of tactical role-playing game Wildermyth, sees procedural storytelling as stemming from tabletop board games like Dungeon and Dragons — experiences that provide rules and a structure from which a vast number of narratives can spawn. In his view, and those of more than a few others, 2006's Dwarf Fortress, a management game about dwarves seeking to colonize an austere, text-based world, is the inheritor to this particular genus of narrative design. For newcomers, Dwarf Fortress can be intimidating. Beneath its mass of inscrutable ASCII icons lies a fiendishly complex simulation. On a basic level, its world is filled with flora, fauna, foes, and resources, plus, of course, your dwarves, all of whom have unique personalities. Your job is to ensure their happiness by building a colony that can satisfy their various needs and, thus, ensure the survival of the group. You might ace colonization itself, but then, suddenly, a gigantic monster kills half your group, which means you fail to bring in the harvest. Just like that, the colony is no more. "It sort of naturally creates these stories," says Austin over Zoom. "And because you're invested in the personalities all along, the drama happens in your head." With Dwarf Fortress and 2016's RimWorld (which self-consciously builds on the former's legacy), Austin suggests this is the closest video games have come to the freedom of tabletop experiences — "theater of the mind," as he calls it. The designer has fond memories of such experiences, having played and dungeon-mastered Dungeons and Dragons sessions as a kid alongside his siblings Douglas Austin and Katie Austin (both are writers on the game). This narrative possibility is precisely what Austin sought to capture with Wildermyth, albeit in a more accessible style than either of those two games. Wildermyth begins, as you might expect, with randomly generated characters. At first, they're humble homesteaders but eventually grow into battle-hardened protectors of the realm. Events happen along the way: love, rivalries, children, and death. The most remarkable aspect of the game is that neither the precise order of these events nor their exact form is preordained. Wildermyth cooks up its story on the fly, and so while narratives follow a broad structure, they never quite land the same. Crucially, these characters are yours, so you care for them in a way that would perhaps surprise even the most curmudgeonly player. The game's magic, explains Austin, is in its "alternating layers of handcrafted and procedural content." There's the grand central narrative with a clearly defined beginning, middle, and end — procedural events that stem from the combat and personalities of your characters; then there's the comic strips (dubbed "Library of Plays") that bookend each event. Crucially, these "plays," of which there are well over 100, are written in such a way that the code is able to seamlessly incorporate your heroes into them. The game succeeds both on a momentary basis — by turns charming, funny, suspenseful — and as a larger work of fiction, ebbing and flowing like a classic fantasy epic. Wildermyth's magic also stems from its approach to time. Campaigns typically last a century of in-game time, which means you not only see your characters age but the enemy advance ominously across the world map. Procedural RPG Unexplored 2 (currently in early access) works similarly. Every time your character dies, time and the game's foes march forwards, and in this moment, you see the game's whirring systems most clearly. "With procedural storytelling," says Joris Dormans, director of Unexplored 2, "there's the suggestion of a machine beneath the hood. You're interacting directly with that, and in a way, you're collaborating [with it] to create the story. I think that's so powerful." /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23049855/screenshot1920_combat1_ThrixlCave.png) Both Wildermyth and Unexplored 2 are products of what's become a cottage industry of procedural storytellers across Europe and North America. Montreal's Kitfox Games is both a developer of games like the wonderfully gloomy cult simulator, The Shrouded Isle, as well as a publisher. It's set to release a visually updated version of Dwarf Fortress on Steam, part of an ongoing collaboration between co-founder Tanya Short and Dwarf Fortress designer Tarn Adams. (The two co-edited 2019's Procedural Storytelling in Game Design — what amounts to a bible for aspiring writers and designers in the field.) Across the Atlantic, Emily Short (no relation to Kitfox's Tanya) recently joined Failbetter Games as creative director, bringing a wealth of interactive fiction experience to the studio developing the romance-murder game Mask of the Rose. Short's CV includes both interactive fiction classics (2000's Galatea asks you to have a conversation with a sculpture), as well as tools like Versu (axed in 2014 by its proprietor, Linden Labs, the studio behind Second Life). Like Dormans, whose work in video games stems from his PhD on emergent game design at the University of Amsterdam, Short has one foot in commercial game development and another in academia. She's not alone — there's a big crossover between the two worlds because studios are reluctant to fund costly research and development when there's no guarantee of successful outcomes. Game makers often spend a few years cutting their teeth in the industry, moving into academia for research, before returning to commercial game development armed with a fresh set of narrative tools. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23049872/Blaseball_Short_Circuits___The_Discipline_Era.png) The major hub of this academic study is University of California, Santa Cruz, home to students and professors that cluster around its Expressive Intelligence Studio. Formed in 2006 by Michael Mateas, maker of the ambitious 2005 conversation simulator Façade, the work that emanates from the lab continually pushes the boundaries of AI and storytelling. Academics such as Max Kreminski are focusing their efforts on what they call emergent narrative, another name for the same kind of simulation-driven plots of Wildermyth and Dwarf Fortress. Over an audio call, they describe it as a "bottom-up" approach to narrative design — their job is to "find and bubble up" the interesting stories that fall out of the player's interactions. One way Kreminski is attempting this is through what they call "story sifting," an approach that could give even greater shape, structure, and meaning to these procedural narratives. Think of it as the computer scanning (or sifting) in-game events to find interesting micro-stories — perhaps a lovers' tryst or an escalating tale of revenge. These are surfaced to the player and then woven back into the game. The greatest challenge, explains Kreminski, is not in identifying these stories (they feed the computer examples of what to look for) but matching events that have already happened with those that are in the process of emerging. If they can do this, these stories can be stitched together in such a way that they become a cohesive whole, a kind of plot-combo that stretches both in front of, and behind, the player. Kreminski points to a few titles that have utilized something close to story sifting in the past. 2004's The Sims 2 features "story trees," which recognize sequences of events and nudge the player towards completing them. Social simulation Prom Week (which emerged from the Expressive Intelligence Studio in 2012) features characters that look at the history of its high-school world to influence next actions. But perhaps the most in-depth implementation of story sifting is in 2020's ongoing absurdist baseball simulator, Blaseball. Players bet on matches involving bizarre fictional teams (like the Baltimore Crabs) whose roster includes even weirder procedurally-generated characters (their traits can range from Shakespearian to anti-capitalist). The sifting happens in a few different ways, explains Cat Manning, narrative and design consultant on the game. At first, it was simply oral storytelling — players would have to see an event happen in real-time and then relay that to the community. But then, because the game spits out an eye-watering amount of data, players were having trouble keeping track — which is where the Society for Internet Blaseball Research stepped in. The fan community essentially developed a tool to let players watch replays of past games using data available on the site, what Manning calls a "backward story sifting." Blaseball now features its own "feed" on the site that surfaces important storylines to players, but a great deal of the story sifting still happens organically in the Discord chat. While most procedural stories occur within single-player games, Blaseball is a rare example of what happens when the scope is blown up to incorporate tens of thousands of players — almost like a mass hallucination. The deluge of fan art and even music is a testament to not just the stories its spreadsheet-like simulation generates but the way we as players are able to imagine color and detail into its world, just as readers do with literature. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23049874/ss_68697a274ce491c11d94c0cc94a213177945919c.jpg) You might be wondering why major studios, usually so quick to incorporate such innovations into their glossy blockbusters, haven't yet jumped on procedural storytelling. The simple answer is that the variables involved become infinitely more complex and expensive at such scale. Still, there are a few exceptions: 2014's action-adventure Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor tracks your showdowns with the game's Uruk mini-bosses through its Nemesis System. In turn, the game creates rivalry-focused mini-narratives inarguably more enjoyable than the main story itself. There's also the State of Decay series, which features a cast of algorithmically generated zombie survivalists, the first a great deal more successfully than the second. By far, the most ambitious blockbuster attempt at procedural storytelling is 2020's Watch Dogs: Legion. Its hook, the "Play As Anyone" system, lets you recruit non-playable characters to a crack squad of hacker-activists seeking to liberate a grim, dystopian London. Every single non-playable character has a unique background — occupation, hobbies, relationships, felonies, special abilities — all of which are generated by the game's "Census" system. The beauty of the game lies in assembling this squad according to your own specific preferences. While the "Play As Anyone" system is easy to understand, its implementation was anything but, says Liz England, team lead game designer, over Zoom. She describes it as like picking up a rock only to discover there's an entire civilization attached below. Because of its procedurality, whole aspects of production had to be relearned — animation, lip-synching, in-game lighting. "There's already so many spinning plates shipping a game like Watch Dogs: Legion," says England, "and then you say to everyone, 'This tech you've been using, we're gonna throw it out. This pipeline, we need to invent it from scratch.' To make a game with a difficult concept to wrap your head around from a developer's side and then to scale that to hundreds of people across multiple studios around the world — it's very different to if you're making an indie game." England, who recently joined a new studio headed up by State of Decay's Jeff Strain, says there are other aspects of indie procedural storytelling that big-budget games can't hope to match — at least not yet. Take medieval power simulator Crusader Kings 3, which generates text boxes with information specific to your playthrough. That becomes much harder when it's something somebody actually has to say out loud. "The whole audio pipeline is just very expensive," continues England. "It needs to be done early on because it has to be recorded with actors in other languages." On a broader level, procedurality, especially within narratives, involves a relinquishing of control over the player's experience. Making sure it's one that can meet the expectations of famously exacting video game players — well, that's tough. /cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/23049882/14_Unexplored_2_Early_Access.png) As it stands, the indie world will continue to innovate, both in terms of games themselves and the tools used to create them. Emily Short, creative director of Failbetter Games, is excited about "socially and culturally democratizing" the space. "Having knowledge and tools be accessible, and having new people come in who want to experiment — this is part of the reason I write so much on my blog," she says. "Even if specific innovations that I'm working on go nowhere, at least I'm equipping other people. It feels to me like there's a huge space of unknown possibilities." Others echo Short's sentiment. Because of the high level of technical expertise required to make these stories work, studios tend to have their own in-house software solutions. At the moment, says Tanya Short of Kitfox Games, it's a case of "everyone building their own weird engine." But she knows of one developer who's about to start looking for private funding to develop their own tool (inspired, she says, by Versu). "There's a need for it," continues Short, "because there's an emerging vocabulary set, but it's basically industry jargon. Without words to describe [procedural storytelling], it's very hard to discuss." Alongside such tools, the Kitfox co-founder predicts machine-learning will buff up the audio and visual aspects of procedural storytelling, from voice-acting to art, so you'll have "much higher production values on all indie games but especially those with procedurally-generated content." What's clear is that procedural storytelling won't wholesale replace straightforwardly human-authored plots anytime soon. For those worried about such a possibility, Short offers a thoughtful rebuttal. "That feels like it's mistaking the pleasures of one thing for the pleasures of a different thing," she says. Instead, players will continue to enjoy the sharply focused, linear narratives of titles such as those in the Uncharted franchise while being able to play games that convey the unmistakable, thrilling sensation of co-authoring a story with a machine. While the likes of Wildermyth are part of a long procedural storytelling tradition, the field as a whole still feels as if it's only on act one — the potential is as vast and varied as stories themselves. |
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