Digital Library Author Archives

Wardrip-Fruin Noah

- 8 articles or papers

 

Requirements analysis and speculative design of support tools for TTRPG game masters

Acharya Devi Mateas Michael Wardrip-Fruin Noah
2022 DiGRA ’22 – Proceedings of the 2022 DiGRA International Conference: Bringing Worlds Together

In running tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs), game masters (GMs) are tasked with helping create and facilitate the building of a shared story between players based on player choices. In this paper, we look at how we can inform the design of computational tools for GMs through the use of qualitative interviews. We interview GMs about their process in preparing for and running a beginner TTRPG module, "Lost Mine of Phandelver", and present to them a prototype of a computational tool built based on this module that has some of the features we believe would be useful in a GMing assistant, such as consolidating information for easier reference, serving as a brainstorming tool for GMs, and helping GMs keep track of what has happened in the game world. From these interviews, we collected insights into how the GMing process works within the context of a specific scenario and found which features GMs liked and what could be improved with our digital prototype. We also compare the results of these interviews to online advice for GMing the module. We use these insights in order to speculate about possible design directions for further development of a GM’s computational assistant.

 

A Framework for Choice Hermeneutics

Focht Cyril Wardrip-Fruin Noah
2022 DiGRA ’22 – Proceedings of the 2022 DiGRA International Conference: Bringing Worlds Together

Choices in storygames do more than create narrative branches, and mean more than cause and effect. The structure of hypertext is similar to choice structures, and the way links add semantic meaning to the text they connect is similar to the way choices add semantic meaning to the events they connect. We apply research from hypertext theory to expand the framework of choice poetics presented by Mawhorter et al. (2014), outlining more detail in the choice structure they propose and reframing their discussion of choice idioms. We demonstrate this analytical framework by applying it to a reading of Sonder (Focht 2019)—a game in which choices are written to emphasize their semantic function—to show how our framework expands the vocabulary around choices to provide more descriptive ability, and in turn more analytical insight, for critics and scholars analyzing games with choice structures.

 

On the Maintenance of Meaning: A Deleuzian View on Proceduralism

Zhou Hongwei Gonzalez Kyle Altice Nathan Wardrip-Fruin Noah Forbes Angus G.
2022 DiGRA ’22 – Proceedings of the 2022 DiGRA International Conference: Bringing Worlds Together

How do games create meaning? In pursuing this question, proceduralists have formulated a range of theories about the communicative potential of rule-based systems. In this paper, we closely examine and critique a specific aspect of proceduralism as described by Mike Treanor in order to provide insights into a broader array of issues about meaning in games. We suggest that the nature of meaning production is both selective and poly-directional: selective because meaning production relies on context and saliency, and poly-directional because meaning itself can influence subsequent interpretations. We make an initial step in formulating a post-structuralist interpretation of proceduralism influenced by the work of Gilles Deleuze. Within this Deleuzian picture, meaning is conceived as fundamentally unstable and requires constant maintenance.

 

GameNet and GameSage: Videogame Discovery as Design Insight

Ryan James Kaltman Eric Hong Timothy Isbister Katherine Mateas Michael Wardrip-Fruin Noah
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

The immense proliferation of videogames over the course of recent decades has yielded a discoverability problem that has largely been unaddressed. Though this problem affects all videogame stakeholders, we limit our concerns herein to the particular context of game designers seeking prior work that could inform their own ideas or works in progress. Specifically, we present a tool suite that solicits text about a user’s idea for a game to generate an explorable listing of the existing games most related to that abstract idea. From a study in which 182 game-design students used these tools to find games related to their own, we observe a demonstrated utility exceeding that of the current state of the art, which is the coordinated usage of assorted web resources. More broadly, this paper provides the first articulation of videogame discovery as an emerging application area.

 

A Lightweight Videogame Dialogue Manager

Ryan James Mateas Michael Wardrip-Fruin Noah
2016 DiGRA/FDG '16 - Proceedings of the First International Joint Conference of DiGRA and FDG

We present a fully procedural alternative to branching dialogue that is influenced by theories from linguistic pragmatics and technical work in the field of dialogue systems. Specifically, this is a dialogue manager that extends the Talk of the Town framework, in which non-player characters (NPCs) develop and propagate subjective knowledge of the gameworld. While previously knowledge exchange in this framework could only be expressed symbolically, such exchanges may now be rendered as naturalistic conversations between characters. The larger conversation engine currently lacks a player interface, so in this paper we demonstrate our dialogue manager through conversations between NPCs. From an evaluation task, we find that our system produces conversations that flow far more naturally than randomly assembled ones. As a design objective, we have endeavored to make this dialogue manager lightweight and agnostic to its particular application in Talk of the Town; it is our hope that interested readers will consider porting its straightforward design to their own game engines.

 

Agency Reconsidered

Wardrip-Fruin Noah Mateas Michael Dow Steven Sali Serdar
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

The concept of “agency” in games and other playable media (also referred to as “intention”) has been discussed as a player experience and a structural property of works. We shift focus, considering agency, instead, as a phenomenon involving both player and game, one that occurs when the actions players desire are among those they can take (and vice versa) as supported by an underlying computational model. This shifts attention away from questions such as whether agency is “free will” (it is not) and toward questions such as how works evoke the desires agency satisfies, employ computational models in the service of player action and ongoing dramatic probability, use interfaces and mediation to encourage appropriate audience expectation, shift from initial audience expectation to an understanding of the computational model, and can be shaped with recognition of the inherently improvisational nature of agency. We focus particularly on agency in relation to the fictional worlds of games and other playable media.

 

Defining Operational Logics

Wardrip-Fruin Noah Mateas Michael
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

Much analysis of games focuses, understandably, on their mechanics and the resulting audience experiences. Similarly, many genres of games are understood at the level of mechanics. But there is also the persistent sense that a deeper level of analysis would be useful, and a number of proposals have been made that attempt to look toward a level that undergirds mechanics. This paper focuses on a particular approach of this sort—operational logics—first proposed by Noah Wardrip-Fruin (2005) and since then discussed by authors such as Michael Mateas (2006) and Ian Bogost (2007). Operational logics connect fundamental abstract operations, which determine the state evolution of a system, with how they are understood at a human level. In this paper we expand on the concept of operational logics, offering a more detailed and rigorous discussion than provided in earlier accounts, setting the stage for more effective future use of logics as an analytical tool. In particular, we clarify that an operational logic defines an authoring (representational) strategy, supported by abstract processes or lower-level logics, for specifying the behaviors a system must exhibit in order to be understood as representing a specified domain to a specified audience. We provide detailed discussion of graphical and resource management logics, as well as explaining problems with certain earlier expansions of the term (e.g., to file handling and interactive fiction’s riddles).

 

Better Game Studies Education the Carcassonne Way

Hullett Kenneth Kurniawan Sri Wardrip-Fruin Noah
2009 DiGRA '09 - Proceedings of the 2009 DiGRA International Conference: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory

As game design programs become more common, educators are faced with challenges in bringing the formal study of games to students. In particular, educators must find ways to help students transition from viewing games purely as entertainment to a field worthy of critical study. One aspect of this transition is to view games on the level of mechanics rather than purely in terms of aesthetics. The study described in this paper was conducted to test the hypothesis that exposing students in an introductory game studies class to German-style board games would lead to improved understanding of game mechanics. The data gathered shows that the students who were exposed to these types of games did exhibit a greater understanding of game mechanics at the end of the course.