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Life simulation story.

If you played interactive fiction in which you had to control the dayly life of your character, would you prefer if the game spawned children for you, or if you could choose when to have them?

Comments

  • It really depends how you want the player to feel?
  • Depends on how the game works. If it's a pulled-out view of an entire life like a boardgame, it wouldn't be surprising to draw a card that says "This year you had a child!" If the game is *about* specifically life decisions, that might be a thing you'd want in the hands of the player. If the game is going for total realism, and the player were in a relationship, it might happen "by accident". Similarly if the player were trying for a child, there might be random situations where it might not happen.
  • First chapter of the game is choice-driven, with a lot of story.

    Second chapter, it is time driven (depending on the amount of links you click).

    Third chapter event-driven, with some of them being player choices, some random. I'm unsure if it would be better to make children a random thing or letting the player decide over it.
  • Rafe wrote: »
    First chapter of the game is choice-driven, with a lot of story.

    Second chapter, it is time driven (depending on the amount of links you click).

    Third chapter event-driven, with some of them being player choices, some random. I'm unsure if it would be better to make children a random thing or letting the player decide over it.

    Then present the player with both choices in chapter one; have them decide whether or not they want kids presented to them or to make their own at some point.
  • That should probably depend on their previous choices and gender. If they are single, children would turn up through rape, one night stands, adoption (difficult), or a legacy (sister or the kids mother dies and leaves them the kids). If they are in a relationship they could choose whether or not to use birth control - then random chance of kids, a lot lower with birth control (but not 0). Smoking, drinking, drugs and bad food should lower the chance. Sleeping around can get them an STD which can reduce their chances or leave them infertile. Note that the chance should drop off quite rapidly once the female reaches 30 or so. After they reach 40 their best bet is IVF which is expensive and gives no better than a 40% chance on each attempt (and possibly a lot less, depending on just what the problem is). Then there are miscarriages, still births and special needs children - and the chance of all three can be increased by bad behavior during pregnancy. People think healthy children just turn up, but they don't...

    So, a (possibly unwelcome) surprise, something they have to choose to try (and maybe struggle) to obtain or, maybe, something they want but can never have.
  • edited June 2015
    mykael wrote: »

    I assume real children will play my game, so I'm trying to avoid most inapropriate themes, like drugs, std, gender issues, and the like.

    We are not the ones to take power away from parents.

    Other than that, your answer was very good.

    What would be a good chance of randomly having children? 25%? 10%?

  • edited June 2015
    The real problem you have with this idea, is this:
    in complexity theory there exists a thing called combinatorial explosion. The things is, new game designers get there without knowing it.

    You're there.

    This is why @Sharpe 's game challenge was so effective. It was short. Direct.

    This is also why Emily Short suggests making a clear-cut path. Get there first, and get there fast. Then you can create branches.
  • Some numbers here that might be helpful. Monthly trying and not trying, and yearly by age.

  • Sage wrote: »
    combinatorial explosion

    So I should refrain from mixing genres? That is good to know. I just was thinking that playing chapters differently could avoid boredom.

  • Well.... Interestingly enough, it's more like what happens is this:

    A new designer (meaning basically someone that hasn't been burned by this before) says 'hey, and then I can build this... And that's cool... And what if it had a "this" and a "that" as well.... '

    And so far we're good. And then they say.... While I'm at it, let me make it playable as both a BOY and a GIRL! And now you have double the options of everythjng before (or at the very least a variable always checking sex, which sounds easy but requires alternate verbiage for each branch).

    It grows exponentially.

    Take a look at this example from TV Tropes.org

    A game with 100 objects provides almost five thousand (4,950) potential one-on-one object interactions. If the player wants to try using four of those objects together, the number of combinations jumps to nearly four million (3,921,225). And let's not get started on using objects to interact with furniture or scenery, such as "tie the rope to the tree."

    Read more: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CombinatorialExplosion#ixzz3dXnveClS

    Now, yes, branching fiction is NOT pure IF in the parser sense, so you know for the most part what people can do, because YOU wrote it.

    Still though.... Something to think about.
  • edited June 2015
    I'm rewriting that passage to avoid this problem. LEt's not add a lighter and a rope. They could get weird ideas bout it.


    Thanks.
  • @sage That's where OO programming comes in. There may be 500 different weapons, but they all interact with a monster in pretty much the same way ;-)

    More seriously, branching fiction with carefully used variables gives you the ability to produce a much better story than trying to thread a quest through an open world and lets you focus your time on the things that are critical to your story. I also find them a lot less frustrating as a player - nothing more boring that trying to find the 1 phrasing of the 1 solution that actually works.
    > Put the sack over the hole
    You can't do that.
    > Put the cork over the hole
    You can't do that.
    > Put the cork in the hole
    You can't do that.
    > Put the sack in the hole
    You place the sack in the hole. A rabbit scampers up and jumps down the hole.  You now have a rabbit in your sack.
    [b]What???[/b]
    


    @rafe You might want to read up on agency in interactive fiction if you haven't already. It's about giving the player meaningful decisions (not choices, decisions - there's a difference). If it's meaningful, it'll cause a branch at some point - although you are allowed to recombine afterwards. If it's not meaningful it won't - in which case it probably won't affect the boredom level.
  • Decisions can be characterization decisions and be meaningful/give agency without leading to branches.

    An example would be changing how your character does something with some consequences more relevant to others. Like do they kill someone or let them go free, and in the end it has no effect but to change how people greet you. But that can have a large impact on a player's experience if say people spit on them more, even nothing more than that.

    The other example is how such a decision could affect a character's "stats" that only become relevant in the end game. An example is how Mass Effect 3 used its war resources. They were completely meaningless in terms of branching decisions during the game but had a major impact on your ending quality.
  • Good example there. Meaningful change without splitting the story line.
  • Avoid meaningless decisions. I can do that. :)
    Thanks.
  • How can I make skin/hair/eye color matter in a story, both for the main character and love interests?
  • You generally don't unless there is a plot of them needing to disguise themselves. They're superficial traits otherwise.
  • Or if you want to set up a story about parent-child paternity, the traits might identify someone as related to someone else.
  • Diguising or child paternity plots sound like good ideas.
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