For awhile now we have been reading various mentions of the interactive drama Facade, though we have yet to get such an in-depth analysis of the game as we do in Expressive Programming.  I was really interested by the explanation of it offered by the book, so I decided that it was time to try the game out for myself and see how well it succeeded at doing that which the book claims it does. Even in just the first few minutes, as evidenced by my multiple times playing through, you can see the amount of variance possible from minor changes in action taken by the actor.

I played through Facade many times.  The first time I didn’t quite understand what I was doing, and therefore had a difficult time interacting with the characters and the environment.  I waited outside the door and listened to Tripp and Grace argue, wondering if / how I could do something to assuage their argument.  Eventually Tripp notices that I am at the door and he opens it.  He is happy to see me, but Grace is yelling at him from the bedroom.  She is uncomfortable with my presence immediately, and her responses show this.

The second time through I realized that I could interact with objects in the world, so when the game started I made the choice to knock on the door and throw off their argument.  Tripp responds by telling Grace that I am there and opening the door.  Grace, now aware that I am there, is not as hostile towards Tripp in the opening exchange and is, therefore, more welcoming towards me.  Rather than spend time criticizing her interior decorating, Tripp instead offers me a beer and their argument over fancy drinks ensues.  In the first time through, this argument unfolded in a similar way, but Grace’s remarks were more hostile and were directed at me.  The conversation also took place after I had insulted her interior decorating, so she was already pissed.

The game, overall, is interesting.  Expressive Processing has a very strong view of the game, and a lot of the discussion of Facade that we have read talks about it as a great model for interactive gameplay, though I found the user-interfacing to be difficult.  I think it is interesting to look at it in contrast to the Sims franchise, also observed in Expressive Processing.  The Sims games, as explained in the book, explain the process by which the game operates in a clear and accessible way, and this is, theoretically, what makes the game enjoyable.  Users are able to manipulate the system in order to achieve the desired results, and the confines of their operations are made clear to them right from the start.

In Facade, you are given very little information about the interfacing process.  You are told that you can move, interact with various objects, and speak to Tripp and Grace.  What you say, how you say it, when you say it, when you do something, what you choose to interact with, are all up to you.  In this way the game is both complicated and straightforward.  Straightforward in the sense that the interaction is very similar to real world interaction, and so choosing what to say, when to say it, how to say it, etc. comes very naturally.  However, the game doesn’t respond as easily as it could, often having the characters ignore the comment and continue on with their dialogue, or functioning sort of as a redirection tactic and leading the characters down a different but still fundamentally similar argument.  In this sense it is frustrating.  It is hard to know if the actions you are taking are having any real effect on Tripp, Grace, their marriage, their feelings toward you as their friend, etc.

I think that what makes a game like the Sims fun for people is that it is a goal and result based game, even if the results are not what are normally found in games.  And while Facade does in fact have an end and specific results and goals, your progress towards these goals is not easily recognizable, and it is easy to become uninterested because of this problem.  So while both games are goal-driven, in the Sims games, the progress can be seen, therefore making the game more interesting and making the interaction with the characters more intriguing.  Facade is, perhaps, too close to a realistic interaction to be as entertaining, at least in my opinion.  Though it is odd to consider two games that are life simulations and chart the difference in entertainment factor as something so simple as real-time result indicators vs. results with no easily discernible indicator.

I am going to continue to play and will hopefully figure out how to screenshot so that I may include a few images and a bit more discussion of the gameplay.

**Edit: I have been able to play a bit more this morning, and managed to successfully get Tripp and Grace to decide to talk about their marriage and see if they can work out their issues.  Unfortunately, this was not done by any skillful or masterful playing of the game or knowledge of the human condition.  It was by sheer insistence.  Anytime they would say something to one another, I would interrupt them and say that I thought they should stay focused on their relationship issues.  Over and over again I said this when they would try to move on, and eventually they stopped arguing and agreed with me.  It is, at its core, very similar to a condition satisfier in a game such as the Sims.  Their “we need to talk about our marriage” bar was low, and I filled it.

What is interesting to me, then, is the limits that games such as this, with free language interaction, have imposed on them.  All the time while playing it seemed as if it would search for certain “buzz” words in my sentences and then respond to it the way it is conditioned to, just as Expressive Processing describes it.  They basically have 5 loaded responses to any certain sentence, and when they get a certain response from me they just unload the response tree they have prepared.  There is very little “learning” going on, instead progression through a tree, similar to how a game such as Fallout would process.  By selecting dialogue from a list, you choose the way people will perceive you and treat you.  The only difference between Facade and Fallout is that in Facade you get to choose what you want to say, giving you the illusion of agency.  Games like Sims or Fallout, where the system of interaction is more easily discernible, ends up being more enjoyable because there is less guessing involved in the same type of output.