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You Should Probably Play Facade

by Chris Remo, Jul 29, 2005 10:20am PDT
Related Topics – Games: PC

Rather suspiciously coincidentally, just after I happen to bring up designer/theorist Ernest Adams in relation to a Gamasutra article, the man goes and actually publishes an article on Gamasutra. Clearly I am psychic or something. Adams, always a popular speaker at events such as Game Developers Conference, has long been a champion of interactive storytelling as a medium, challenging game developers to come up with more creative ways of communicating with players. In his article You Must Play Facade, Now! he implores readers to download the freely-available game Facade (as the title suggests), as well as elaborates on why he thinks it's so important.

A new video game called Facade has just been released to the public. I'll say this right up front: Facade is one of the most important games ever created, possibly the most important game of the last ten years. More important than The Sims; more important than Grand Theft Auto; far more important than Half-Life. If you are a game designer, or you want to be a game designer, you must play this game.
Are Adams' superlatives deserved? Well, Facade does make dramatic leaps in terms of how a story in a video game can be told. The game casts the player as a friend of married couple Grace and Trip; you arrive at their apartment as they are going through some marital rocky waters. Over the course of the game, you can help them get back together, drive them further apart, hit on one or both of them--you do whatever you want. You can say anything you want to them too, because the game uses a natural text parser, certainly the best anyone has put in a game. Facade uses procedural methods to interpret what your typed text means and what affect it will have on Grace and Trip; they respond with body language, facial expressions, and recorded speech. As designers Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas are quick to point out, the game is just an experiement. It was entirely designed and programmed by the two of them over five years. As such, the game's visuals are rudimentary, but the important elements (facial expressions and body language) are well-represented and easy to read. One can break the illusion of reality in the game by deliberately being a jerk and typing nonsense, but when doing so the characters react much more realistically than, say, the NPCs in HL2's scripted sequences... I first saw Facade at GDC 2004. Since then I have written editorials praising it, have met with its creators, and have eagerly awaited its release. Now that it's out, I hope gamers and designers realize the implications it has on storytelling in games. It doesn't have to be applied to this kind of theatre-like drama; these procedural algorithms can and should find their way into all sorts of games. The designers have expressed their hope that professional developers will use their technology, and hopefully we'll start to see games taking advantage of it soon. The game is available for download from FileShack. The developers' website is http://www.interactivestory.net.


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60 Threads | 208 Comments
  • #197
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    By: bigimp This person is cool! x
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    Wow, this was horrible. Besides being very unpolished (poor installer, having to quit the game to try again, etc.), the main part of the game, the talking, is very poorly done. They keep blabbering about, they usually misunderstand you, they don't give you enough chances to talk, they don't understand much, there's no spell checking or whatever to at least give you the chance to fix something (I typed "abou tit" at some point, they started giving me shit)... I could go on, there are just too many lame things with it. They go from being your best friend to being angry at you for complimenting them because it's apparently flirting, then they you're accusing them of things you never said, etc. Blah, what a waste of an hour for me, and 5 years for them.
    Jul 29, 2005 11:27pm PDT
  • #147
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    By: jet-poop x
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    I tried this game a while back, and didn't have to try to be an asshole to them to break it.

    Everything I'd type, they'd stop talking and look at me like "wtf?" and then say something like "oooooohkay, ha ha." like I'd just said something really weird and off the wall and innappropriate, when all I had done was say one of their names, or asked a question, prefaced by one of their names.

    It seemed to choke on all but two things I said, and I was using normal english. No slang or internet-isms or anything.

    Well, not until I got insanely frustrated at them after about a half hour and started telling them FUCK YOU I HATE YOU, TRIP YOU'RE AN ANNOYING SACK OF SHIT AND I DON'T BLAME WHATS-HER-ASS YOUR ANNOYING BITCH OF A SOON-TO-BE-EX-WIFE FOR MOURNING THE DAY SHE FLUSHED HER YOUTH AWAY INTO THE SEWER OF YOUR SOUL.

    AND FUCK YOU TO GRACE.

    see if I ever come back to your house. fuckers.

    Then they asked me to leave and stopped responding to me at all. Inconsiderate bastards.
    Jul 29, 2005 3:05pm PDT

    Thread Truncated. Click to see all 2 replies.

  • #119
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    By: kewda x
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    not sure if anyone has mentioned this, as i dont have time to search all the comments, but the one thing ive noticed that is missing from a player of the game standpoint is MY tone of voice when im talking to these characters. Text I write has to be taken some way, and tone of voice is everything in conversations. This is the major drawback to designing something like this. How is my text I write taken the proper way? If someone in the game says something and I say "get out of here", that could be taken in a few different ways. Either disbelief or literally get out of here, i dont want you here.

    how do we jump this hurdle as designers in a game such as this?
    Jul 29, 2005 1:08pm PDT
  • #105
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    By: brushbaron x
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    I can see a text type or voice parser working in future games, I even think it's a possible step towards immersion. When I played text type adventure games I always felt in more control and immersed in what I was doing. I've always wondered if one could measure the brain activity of someone playing a text type adventure game vs. the exact same game in point and click mode. My guess is that in text type mode the gamer uses more of their brain and thus becomes more immersed in what they are doing. When I'm trying to think about how to accomplish a simple task in either mode, the difference between them is thinking, "use the translator on the alien being" vs. "click on this, then click on that."
    Jul 29, 2005 12:04pm PDT
  • #102
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    By: snowwolf x
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    I thought it was allright, i went through it twice and had a very hard time trying to steer the conversation anywhere, trying to get the people to work out their problems was impossible for me to do just by typing. But for the beginning it worked well for just simple answers, that was kind of fun, saying something random like "asshole" and then seing their face was cool, and then going "just kidding" and hearing them nervously laughing was really well done by the technology.

    I think that idea and technology can be really great things in the future, but i don't think that the scenario that its being presented in currently is very good.
    Jul 29, 2005 11:59am PDT