GDC11 - Game Design in the Coffe. Loveable Game Design by SWERY

Hidetaka "Swery" Suehiro (AccessGames Inc)

Deadly Premonition 
Wildly off beast storytelling.
Deadly Premonition, absurdly weird game:




 Deadly Points
1. Make games think about your game when not playing it.
- eg. York smokes in the game, players smoke in front of the TV. Gamers who smoke say it makes the player wants to smoke more too.  Cause and effect.
- Eating, sleeping and shaving in the game reminds player outside of the game. Reminders in life go into a special part of your brain that remembers and links to the game.
- Daily needs and physological desires are added with playful elements, such as 'fortune telling coffee' and 'conversations about old movies'. These are fun and help make players remember the game.
- These little moments linger in your mind, so it helps with the lingering effect after oyu finish the game.


2. Being forced to play through a tightly bound storyline is a chore.
- how to make gamers actively WANT to play thorugh a meticulously scripted story?
- Pre existing methods exist to create a sense of freedom.
   - multiple endings (players intend expressed with story branches)
   - side quests (players intent expressed with 'side trips'

- Deadly promotion used a 3rd method
  - Freedom of timing - Allow for a 'change of heart'. This was experimental. It created illusion of freedom. Standard quest flow has a start, a challenge and then a judgement. The DP's quest flow was a bit different. it had a start, then the challenge, but then you had the option to have a change of heart and veer off to free play.  If you follow storyline, get judgement and fail, a hint structure will allow you to have a change of heard, then go into freeplay. 

- this allowed players to feel better about taking a break from the game, made them more comfortable and then willing to cooperate with the story. This mitigates the sense of being forced to do something against your will.  When you do go into freeplay, the character will agree with you. In some other games, the character will be saying 'oh the mission has been compromised!" or question your choice.

- speed is not important. Timing is what is important. Timing. Story then follows up and confirms this, then the player's desire is fullfilled.

- Earn the players cooperation wit the story and suspension of disbelief.
 - allow for a retry at any time, support the player's actions 100%, then modify story to allow for it too.
 - not being forced feels like you have freedom, allow and approve player's actions, and player feels empowered due to the decisions of simply being allowed. This relaxes the players mind to ease into the story and get them immersed into the world you created, and suspend their disbelief.  Once this is done, player is more likely to cooperate with the story you want them to follow.


3. Obscure and vague characters, universe and environments won't find a home in anyone's heart.
- Create a storyline for a free raoming open world game
- single path storyline usually follows a synopsis, plot, character list, script. DP's storyline will follow:
Synopsis, then map, detailed map.
Or Synopsis, character details, character 24 hour action gable.
Then follows through to plot and script.
- the environment, universe nad characters are just as important as the storyline for a free roaming open world game.

4. Any game that prioritizes getting player to finish the game over getting the player to want to learn more of the story is already dead. 
- prevent players from quititing game at the result screen
- Normally game storylines do this - challenge, hint, clear, reward, result, then desire to quit/ finish.
- For DP, they did this - challenge, hint, clear, then reward or next challenge, then result. Then desire to continue, going back to hint. They intentionally divulge bits of the next challenge before the result screen and generates the desire to find out what happens next.


5. If you can't remember any of the names of the characters, then you have a crappy game.
Tips for making appealing characters:
- memo everything about the character and generate a resume. (mind map). Spend a lot of time making deep characters.