« Kokoromi announces GAMMA 01 : Audio Feed! | Main | Concept de jeu organique sur Assassin's Creed »

Organic Game Design on the Assassin's Creed

Written by Niketh Pareek

It started with a simple question: "What would happen if we used the same rules that we have in our world and applied them to the 3rd person action game?"

For the 200 or more people who came to this month's IGDA meeting at SAT, the evening began with this idea. The presentation from Ubisoft, on their next generation game, Assassin's Creed, while currently in development, left many people feeling they had caught a glimpse of the future for how the 3rd person action game genre is fundamentally changing. And in addition, the way people will start to perceive their world forever.

"I thought the presentation was interactive, interesting and thought provoking. It made me think about the evolution of the gaming industry and how far are we going to go to make games more realistic," Marie-Joe Leroux commented, a producer at A2M.

Making action games more realistic was the brainchild of Patrice Désilets, Creative Director of Assassin's Creed. He and Jade Raymond, the Producer on Assassin's Creed, presented his vision of organic design that drove the game's concept. During this hour, the audience got a look at the innovative tools Raymond's team needed to develop in order to make an action game that could resemble reality.

Désilets explained that by suspending reality, action games suffer from four drawbacks. The first is that they fail to create an environment the player can immerse themselves within. To illustrate his point, he played video clips contrasting how humans climb and jump over obstacles versus how video game characters perform these moves. The audience quickly understood his point. In video games, characters can only climb pre-defined grids but jump distances that are humanly impossible. "This type of gameplay doesn't make any sense to first-time users; they shouldn't have to ask themselves 'Am I fast enough? Am I precise enough in order to achieve my objective?' They can never feel like they're the hero because it's not real."

A second drawback of action games is that they are designed to be linear. The player can only proceed through a game in the manner that the game designer wished them to. Désilets believes users want to explore a game map in the manner that pleases them. Users should be able to apply their ingenuity and cunningness to overcome obstacles, making the game experience more intuitive and accessible.

The third drawback Désilets explained is the method of how non-player characters (NPCs) are programmed. In action games, NPCs are walking targets that can be preyed upon at best. They have little in the way of intelligence and fail to react to the environment. What's more, no human has a fixed set of hit points they deplete if they're mortally wounded. One simply dies. In his game, NPCs follow protagonists, they react when another person is being attacked and interact with eachother. In addition, Désilets, a self-described man of peace, deplores the senseless violence designers allow gamers to inflict on NPCs. "It's easy to create a program that allows you to only kill. Programs are just strings of ones and zeros. Creating behavioural rules for emotions, or animating collisions is far more difficult."

Finally, first time users often struggle to learn the correct combinations on their controllers. To simplify the gaming experience, Désilets wanted actions to either be automated or be programmed into the controller. "In every game I've made, I've always wanted to make games fun," Désilets said, "but action games aren't fun for first-time users because they have to learn new rules and new skills just to do things that are intuitive."

When Désilets presented his vision to Raymond and the rest of the development team, they knew they were being asked to develop a game that would not only push the boundaries of the action game genre, but were going to redefine it. "I've worked in the business for ten years now, so when I was given the opportunity to make Patrice's vision come true, it was both overwhelming and exciting," Raymond told the IGDA later in the evening.

When Yannis Mallat, CEO of Ubisoft Montreal learned of the project, he didn't hesitate to give his support to Désilets. "My reaction was excitement. Here was an idea so revolutionary I knew we had to go with it. Being a developer myself I knew we'd face many challenges to achieve Patrice's vision, but I knew the team could do it, so I supported the idea."

During the presentation, the audience watched with keen interest how Raymond's team needed to re-design all of the tools they traditionally used in action games. They modelled human jumping, climbing, and running, while creating rules for emotional behaviour. Following which, they animated those actions and behaviours in a manner that resembled actual human behaviour. The audience was able to see characters acting the way humans do. Characters were moving to avoid bumping into each other by politely tapping each other on the shoulder. Further to this, docile NPCs changed moods when attacked and were chasing the protagonist over walls.

A 15 minute QA session followed the presentation. The audience was quite interested in learning more about Désilets' vision of organic gaming. One IGDA member wondered if, in the future, there could be a distinction between simulators and games. After door prizes were awarded, IGDA members and non-members socialized for the rest of the evening and discussed their thoughts on the presentation.

John Parlea, director of brand strategies and integration at Palm Arnold Communications described the presentation as fascinating. "I'm not a gamer myself, but to see what developers must do to make the game more accessible is quite impressive."

Alfredo Chaves, director of operations at DC Studios, echoed this sentiment. "It's a natural evolution from the way we currently do games. From a developer's standpoint, my reaction was 'Wow, that's complex!' What they've done is really cool. [Yet] I'm not sure if gamers will be as impressed since they expect games to act in the way real life does."

Moving forward, A2M's Philippe Poisson announced that he and Heather Kelley (who have formed Kokoromi, a game design collective) will be hosting a video game related event at SAT on November 9th called GAMMA. The event will showcase experimental games that synchronize to music played by a DJ and a band. Those interested in submitting an entry can visit www.kokoromi.org for more details.

Chapter Sponsors

Posted by ChristinaReinards on September 24, 2006 04:02 PM

Comments

Posted by: Mike at October 24, 2006 11:57 AM

Posted by: Jonas Vanderhaegen at November 8, 2006 08:41 AM

Posted by: Berni Skok at December 30, 2006 10:02 PM