Emergence of content in game worlds is a hot topic, here and elsewhere. In an earlier Terra Nova discussion (A virtual world compiler?) John Arras posted a thoughtful and detailed reply. It is worth highlighting here, not only for the benefit of our RSS readers, but also for the provocative points it raises.
John would appear to be interested in capturing the engaging quality of backdrop-scenario based "player quests" in generated worlds (e.g. how to have this "emerge" from the interactions of a simulated society of NPCs). He asks the question, and makes this point:
Is it possible to replace the meaning and context and detail given by handcrafted quests within a static world with less detailed quests in a dynamic world if the dynamic world quests actually impact the state of the world? ...I don’t think it’s been done, but I think it’s possible... I think the main problem is that there isn’t an easy solution, and getting to a good solution will take a great deal of effort and a lot of failures.
John's strategy, in part, seems to be to recast the "lingua franca" of a very large sim-society into an object-based resource "language". It is about crafting with the basis for interaction, reasoning, and transaction between sim-folk. They may manipulate, manufacture, trade objects. It is a grotesquely consumer-based life for these sims, but he claims this crude language is all that is now scalable to vast sim worlds ("I don't believe it's possible to have huge numbers of NPCs that converse at a high level...Instead the meaningful communication takes place in the form of the creation, transfer, and use of objects...").
This would appear to be in contrast to, say, a deeply nuanced societal narrative based on other dramatic flames and desires, ala, say Henry V:
O! for a Muse of fire, that would ascend The brightest heaven of invention; A kingdom for a stage, princes to act And monarchs to behold the swelling scene. Then should the war-like Harry, like himself, Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels, Leash’d in like hounds, should famine, sword, and fire Crouch for employment. But pardon, gentles all, The flat unraised spirits that hath dar’d On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth So great an object: can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?
If to extend John's work beyond the objects of resources and crafting is to enumerate and formalize the relationships elements of a societal narrative into other kinds of objects and transactions... Then from these grammars we may see horses arise and kingdoms emerge: "A horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!" Perhaps, one day.
