The Insidious Manipulation of Mr. Jones [NaNo13, BxG, Scifi]

[SundownKid]

It isn't just that this story would be better if it were non-interactive, it's that I don't think game systems ought to be used in stories about love at all (or vice versa), because they can't simulate a thing like that.

That certainly makes sense and I've seen it discussed elsewhere. I did feel at various times that the choices the game was forcing me to make were stupid and didn't express what I would say, so I think you succeeded at that. However, if I were to change the ending of the story, I still would have gone down a different path. Perhaps adding extra dialog choices coming straight from Jones that made Eve malfunction because they weren't in her programming, causing him to discover the truth. I feel like as it is now, it's very heavy handed (and might have been even moreso) because you loaded it with the exposition at the end.

[DaFool]

Well there are fewer BxGs on this board, and the few remaining tend to be growing up (and with other focus like philosophy/technology, as this game is indicative of).

Well, I'm a bit ticked by Eve's dismissive attitude towards what IT people like.

Space Marines and Explosions are Art. Dammit. I bet what we consider "classics" today were considered cheap media back then. Give them time, they'll be like Star Wars -- iconic and an essential element of human culture.

Regarding the main fourth-wall argument and main criticism regarding developers:

Yeah, love stories are better told as kinetic novels. Actually, there are very few "dating sims" in the truest sense being made nowadays. Even a lot of anime VNs have comparatively few choices -- these choices are only meant to enable the player to preview and lock on to his favorite heroine. Once he's on her route, the rest of the game is practically a kinetic novel starring her.

If I were to develop a "robot dating game" where you make conversation, I'd use a chat engine. I'll also make heavy use of image maps so it will work with touchscreen devices (option for the player to fondle/physically harass.) It'll be creepy as hell and no better than those Japanese games where you pick up random objects to throw at moe characters on the screen.

Although I still think scripted characters still have some merit. I don't play MMOs much though I play every JRPG that is released nowadays -- there's just something appealing about scripted NPCs and party members that play their role properly within the context of a fantasy story.

[Funnyguts]

I had the same error Philip got, I think. I tried both versions you posted but got the same error each time. I'm running on Ubuntu Linux, by the way.

Traceback:

Code: Select all

I'm sorry, but an uncaught exception occurred.

While running game code:
  File "game/Date1.rpy", line 20, in script
  File "game/Date1.rpy", line 20, in python
IOError: Couldn't find file 'Textbox.png '.

This happens when I click "Start Game" at the menu. (There's also no music, I don't know if that's intentional or not.)

[Carassaurat]

I liked the humor in this.

I really liked the aesthetics, especially the backgrounds and how they contrast with the sprites.

Your CODE WHY expression in the credits is what I find myself doing like 99% of the time I'm working on a project.

Jones seems like a pretty smooth customer (as least, he was when I played, ahem) so I can't imagine why his superiors would need to create an elaborate scenario with a robot for him to practice loving. At the same time, this actually made the constant encouragement (Jones, you're the most handsomestest!) funnier to me for some reason.

I'm not sure what I think about the interactivity argument. I will say there's a difference between a "real" in-game choice, which alters the storyline in a significant way, and a "fake" choice, in which the player makes choices that don't ultimately matter, and as a player I find the latter annoying because it creates a false sense of agency--in that instance, I would rather be told the story outright.

I expect all players understand the developer is telling a story and that they're ultimately experiencing the story on the developer's terms, no matter what choices they make.

Edit: And from your most recent response, which I just saw:

"It's not a game about the plot, or Jones, or robots, or sexism, but (to me at least) about how much I get creeped out by dating games."
Gotcha. And they absolutely can be creepy.

Thanks, saguaro! I'm glad you like the aesthetics; I am always of the opinion that the main task of graphics in games and such is to guide the eye to important parts, and this was an attempt to make backgrounds 'complete' without giving them details to distract from what you should be looking at... also, they're relatively easy to set up.

I haven't gotten the impression anyone is really in favour of fake choices. How they end up getting used is a mystery — I think what happens is that people like to write stories with few choices but the players demand interactivity and fake choices are thrown in as a compromise in the hope that nobody notices. But who knows? I personally don't know how to deal with choices at all because it makes no sense to me in a good story that it isn't the protagonist's personality that leads to the outcome.

That certainly makes sense and I've seen it discussed elsewhere. I did feel at various times that the choices the game was forcing me to make were stupid and didn't express what I would say, so I think you succeeded at that. However, if I were to change the ending of the story, I still would have gone down a different path. Perhaps adding extra dialog choices coming straight from Jones that made Eve malfunction because they weren't in her programming, causing him to discover the truth. I feel like as it is now, it's very heavy handed (and might have been even moreso) because you loaded it with the exposition at the end.

You're right, and the more I think about it, the more it troubles me. I don't think your suggestion would quite work, because the problem in games isn't, to me at least, that they don't understand every kind of input (which is pretty self evident), but that they limit the kind of input that we have. That pressing buttons and clicking things is limited, I understand. That we are limited in our interpretation of something, is what I am against. In the end, I think this game might've been better if I had seperated the expositionary criticism from the game itself (and as you've noticed, I have already thought about this far more than I've been able to put into it). Thank you for thinking along .

Well there are fewer BxGs on this board, and the few remaining tend to be growing up (and with other focus like philosophy/technology, as this game is indicative of).

Well, I'm a bit ticked by Eve's dismissive attitude towards what IT people like.

Space Marines and Explosions are Art. Dammit. I bet what we consider "classics" today were considered cheap media back then. Give them time, they'll be like Star Wars -- iconic and an essential element of human culture.

Regarding the main fourth-wall argument and main criticism regarding developers:

Yeah, love stories are better told as kinetic novels. Actually, there are very few "dating sims" in the truest sense being made nowadays. Even a lot of anime VNs have comparatively few choices -- these choices are only meant to enable the player to preview and lock on to his favorite heroine. Once he's on her route, the rest of the game is practically a kinetic novel starring her.

If I were to develop a "robot dating game" where you make conversation, I'd use a chat engine. I'll also make heavy use of image maps so it will work with touchscreen devices (option for the player to fondle/physically harass.) It'll be creepy as hell and no better than those Japanese games where you pick up random objects to throw at moe characters on the screen.

Although I still think scripted characters still have some merit. I don't play MMOs much though I play every JRPG that is released nowadays -- there's just something appealing about scripted NPCs and party members that play their role properly within the context of a fantasy story.

The thing with Space Marines and explosions is that they're the only kind of taste you can have in some environments — I've hung around game designers and 3D artists and it is quite uncomfortable is everyone has the same taste in things except for you. I don't know, it might be a theme that deserved being explored more carefully and respectfully than it was here, because while the outside-deride/inside-pride dichotomy is true for most, there are people ashamed of geek connotations. But remember that I'm still enough of one to write a handful of Warhammer 40k lines by heart .
I don't know if you're quite right saying that our classics used to be cheap; Seneca's plays were very popular in history, most notably in the 17th century, but scholars today don't regard them to be much more than excuses for gore and special effects. Nobody would rate them above those of Aeschylus today.

I agree with you that many dating games are pretty close to kinetic novels — Katawa Shoujo has you make a choice once every few hours. But there are still popular stat raiser games like RE:Alistair++ which teach you that if you model your life around having the same interests as he, a boy will have to like you. Or the Coming Out On Top demo which I recently played, certainly not by the least capable developer, which teaches that you should talk in the way he likes to be talk to and order the drink he likes and then a guy will have to like you. That anyone can see love as something which is about quantifiable good and right answers, rather than about being yourself, is something I consider highly disturbing.

I had the same error Philip got, I think. I tried both versions you posted but got the same error each time. I'm running on Ubuntu Linux, by the way.

That's peculiar. This is just a wild guess, but perhaps the error is in the extra space after png in "Textbox.png " — which is a typo, but certainly so minor that it doesn't seem to cause problems on Windows. Perhaps it does on Linux and Mac. I've re-uploaded a version in which I've deleted that extra space, it might just work (or you could delete it yourself, that might be quicker if you're as familiar as you are). Thank you for reporting — let me know if this is it!

[philip]

Carassaurat-
Have been following this thread, hoping that you or someone could fix the Mac problem. I just finished downloading the story again, and am now able to open it, so apparently the extra space was the problem. Hoorah! I am looking forward to enjoying the story this evening; it has been driving me nuts not being able to do so, as there has been a so much enthusiasm and discussion about the story. Thank you for persevering and fixing the problem!

[Obscura]

Games then! Because video games are interactive structures on the computer, they require that you speak the computer's language in order to communicate with it; in this case, it's a little menu with a handful of clickable options. The objective is no longer interpretation, it is manipulation, because it's a game and you want to win (The Chief: "Keep that in mind: you don't understand a robot, for their patterns of thought — if you can call them that — are alien to us. Instead, you analyze, recognize and {i}exploit{/i} them.") Rather than having the whole of your mind to forms answers and questions about a work, you get the questions handed and given a range of options that might be your answers. They're never your answers, of course, they're the writer's.

I utterly disagree with this. You're making an incorrect distinction between games and books.

Books have ALWAYS been a means of thought and emotional manipulation, to which we willingly subject ourselves. People like to think they're more objective in some sense, but really, people don't pick up a book to start analyzing the author's perspective from cover to cover. It's a form of escapism and hypnosis (neither of which I look at negatively when realized for what they are.) If you want to put it in more politically correct terms, reading fiction is an exercise in which you willingly displace your own perspective with another's.

The only thing with books is that most of the manipulation is harder to discern because those who write fiction are far more skilled than those who write games.

I totally disagree with the idea that when you read a work of fiction, it's because you want to THINK. This idea that you have "the whole of your mind to forms answers and questions about a work" is a completely idyllic, and might I say, naive view of how fiction works.

People read fiction because you want someone to think for you, in a different way than one is used to. If it causes you to see something from a more intelligent or nuanced perspective, that's the sign of a great book. But it doesn't change the fact you're voluntarily submitting yourself to how the author wants you to see the world. You exist in a dream, or lie, as it were, for a few hours. Again, I don't see this is as a bad thing.

You can disagree with a book all the way through, but a game won't allow you to disagree with any of the options; you either have to pick one or leave the game altogether. That's the irony behind that very last line of Jones: the only option you have to pick from is one that says that you can't express your own thoughts in games. If you disagree with that option, that very fact is its proof right there!

This is bullcrap. The fact there is interactivity in games only makes the entire enterpise more transparent. How many times do you hear people complain that the choices they made in the game aren't the ones they felt should have led to so-and-so result? When you allow for interactivity, what happens is that the player is now subjecting their own preferences into the work. As soon as that individual preference is either ignored or mishandled in some way, you've broken the hypnotic state. You get enough complaints? People leave the game.

Edit: Oh my, how did I miss this?

I agree with you that many dating games are pretty close to kinetic novels — Katawa Shoujo has you make a choice once every few hours. But there are still popular stat raiser games like RE:Alistair++ which teach you that if you model your life around having the same interests as he, a boy will have to like you. Or the Coming Out On Top demo which I recently played, certainly not by the least capable developer, which teaches that you should talk in the way he likes to be talk to and order the drink he likes and then a guy will have to like you. That anyone can see love as something which is about quantifiable good and right answers, rather than about being yourself, is something I consider highly disturbing.

Uh, can you tell where exactly "love" comes in this entire equation.

I think your problem is actually with the romance genre in general, not actually dating sims which are a subset of that. Romance as a genre abides by an X+Y=Z type formula, in the same the same way I see a lot of movies about your average shlumpy guy emphasize that if he just tries hard enough and shows how much he loves her, he can get the girl who is miles out of his league.

[Carassaurat]

Whoah, easy there. I apologise if I offended you .

I utterly disagree with this. You're making an incorrect distinction between games and books.

Books have ALWAYS been a means of thought and emotional manipulation, to which we willingly subject ourselves. People like to think they're more objective in some sense, but really, people don't pick up a book to start analyzing the author's perspective from cover to cover. It's a form of escapism and hypnosis (neither of which I look at negatively when realized for what they are.) If you want to put it in more politically correct terms, reading fiction is an exercise in which you willingly displace your own perspective with another's.

The only thing with books is that most of the manipulation is harder to discern because those who write fiction are far more skilled than those who write games.

I totally disagree with the idea that when you read a work of fiction, it's because you want to THINK. This idea that you have "the whole of your mind to forms answers and questions about a work" is a completely idyllic, and might I say, naive view of how fiction works.

People read fiction because you want someone to think for you, in a different way than one is used to. If it causes you to see something from a more intelligent or nuanced perspective, that's the sign of a great book. But it doesn't change the fact you're voluntarily submitting yourself to how the author wants you to see the world. You exist in a dream, or lie, as it were, for a few hours. Again, I don't see this is as a bad thing.

I'm going to go out on a limb here since I haven't (yet) read Wahrheit und Methode, but I believe Hans-Georg Gadamer did some important work in dispelling the idea that there is one objective form of any work of art (although the hermeneutics he agitates against sees interpretation of the author as an action by the reader, not as something undergone by the reader, as you pose.) You can't just leave the reader out entirely as if there is no background whatsoever — we all have our personal, cultural and historical background that shapes the way we view anything, including texts. Getting into contact with a subject shapes and changes both you and it and what happens is a Horizontverschmelzung in which you interpret the work through your own context.

You don't read a text in the same way someone five centuries ago did, nor do you read them in the same way I do or anyone else. To me, the second book of Don Quixote is closer to horror than it is to the (probably intended) comedic effect. Mozart's 40th symphony has been said to have a "Grecian lightness and grace," but has also been called "a work of passion, violence, and grief." No interpretation can be said to be better than the other — but the idea that it is the author who has absolute control over the interpretation is, in my opinion, hard to maintain.

A game, on the other hand... The right answer in Jones today will still be the right answer in Jones in a thousand years. The interactive options will still be the same. The ways in which it allows us to see it are the same to you and me, which is odd, since we're different people.

I know of people who were melancholy at the release of the Lord of the Rings movies because the way they viewed its content in their imagination would likely be replaced forever by the film maker's vision. A book leaves the images open to your imagination; a movie will leave the thoughts of its characters; but a game? We've even got the what-ifs laid out. What is there left for the imagination? Is a game not a tool to see how something actually plays out so that you don't have to imagine it?

This is bullcrap. The fact there is interactivity in games only makes the entire enterpise more transparent. How many times do you hear people complain that the choices they made in the game aren't the ones they felt should have led to so-and-so result? When you allow for interactivity, what happens is that the player is now subjecting their own preferences into the work. As soon as that individual preference is either ignored or mishandled in some way, you've broken the hypnotic state. You get enough complaints? People leave the game.

And rightfully so — a game forces you to pick one of its options and use it as if it were your own opinion. Moreover, it has a right opinion that it forces you into holding. But you seem to imply that there is a possibility for an author to write your opinion, or something close enough to it — which means that you've got the whole world's opinions cut down to a mere handful of clickable options. Besides, even if if it were magically possible for the author to write the options in such a way that they would entirely match what you would have written if you did have full control, even then I think it would still be inferior to formulating that very same opinion by yourself. (I fully realise the irony in that I'm the one quoting other people here all the time.)

Uh, can you tell where exactly "love" comes in this entire equation.

I think your problem is actually with the romance genre in general, not actually dating sims which are a subset of that. Romance as a genre abides by an X+Y=Z type formula, in the same the same way I see a lot of movies about your average shlumpy guy emphasize that if he just tries hard enough and shows how much he loves her, he can get the girl who is miles out of his league.

Well, I have problems with those too, but what bothers me about games is that in order to make a game about romance you have to see romance as a game. It becomes a challenge in which you deserve a win if you meet certain standards, rather than a situation in which you see if your characters match.

[Obscura]

Whoah, easy there. I apologise if I offended you

No worries, you didn't offend me at all. I just find your viewpoint to be completely different from my own. And it's an engaging subject, so I appreciate the chance for discussion.

No interpretation can be said to be better than the other — but the idea that it is the author who has absolute control over the interpretation is, in my opinion, hard to maintain.

A game, on the other hand... The right answer in Jones today will still be the right answer in Jones in a thousand years. The interactive options will still be the same. The ways in which it allows us to see it are the same to you and me, which is odd, since we're different people.

See, I think the problem here is you're saying the "right" answer in the game is automatically the "right" answer in the player's head. They are NOT the same thing. In a book, when A and B leads to C, there is ONE answer. In a game, when A and B leads to C if you pick 1, and D if you pick 2, you now have TWO answers, and TWO stories. You're saying that the player automatically drops any sense of critical capacity just because there are TWO stories now, whereas the same person wouldn't in a book.

Just from my own experience, I HATED the "stories" that I were given in the dating sim I played last year, so much so that I've made my own, something I've stated several times now in other threads. I hated that each of the options made many assumptions that I didn't agree with, I hated that I had to act like a doormat to get the men in the game to like me, I hated that I couldn't be more proactive in who I chose, I hated so many things about how my choice affected the characters in a way that was really alien to me as someone outside of that particular mindset. If I were to go by your theory, I would have just been like "oh, it's not the game's fault I hated it so much, it's because I picked A over B!" This is such an outrageous assumption to think someone stops thinking and judging during a game, while feeling more critical while reading a book. So much so that if I sound offended, I apologize. I'm really not. I'm more aghast, if anything, because your claim runs so counter to my experience.

Well, I have problems with those too, but what bothers me about games is that in order to make a game about romance you have to see romance as a game. It becomes a challenge in which you deserve a win if you meet certain standards, rather than a situation in which you see if your characters match.

That's an interesting take on it. I guess you see romance and dating sims in terms of here's GIRL A, and here's BOY B, and this what GIRL A has to do to get BOY B. From my own perspective, I don't see my game like that at all, in terms of generic characters doing generic things. My interest as a game creator is fundamentally creating memorable and colorful characters, with their own personalities. How you talk to Alex will get you different results from how you talk to Phil, Jed, Ian, or Brad. There might be a "right" and "wrong" way to deal with them, but it's a "right" and "wrong" way that's specific to those characters individually, and changes from character to character.

But back to the point, I think you're saying what's the "right" answer in a game is what a player accepts as "right" in terms of worldview, which I find to be insane.

[SundownKid]

That's an interesting take on it. I guess you see romance and dating sims in terms of here's GIRL A, and here's BOY B, and this what GIRL A has to do to get BOY B. From my own perspective, I don't see my game like that at all, in terms of generic characters doing generic things. My interest as a game creator is fundamentally creating memorable and colorful characters, with their own personalities. How you talk to Alex will get you different results from how you talk to Phil, Jed, Ian, or Brad. There might be a "right" and "wrong" way to deal with them, but it's a "right" and "wrong" way that's specific to those characters individually, and changes from character to character.

But back to the point, I think you're saying what's the "right" answer in a game is what a player accepts as "right" in terms of worldview, which I find to be insane.

Yeah, I agree with this. It's not really the player's actions, but influencing what the main character would do in the game. The player is not necessarily Jones, and the choices don't have to be infinite to accommodate the player's desires. A romance game is still a story between two characters, where the interactive part comes in is influencing the direction of the story rather than being IN the story.

[Carassaurat]

@Obscura: I'm not sure our experiences are that much different from each other; I hate those decisions you mention too, in which you're force to act in a way that you disagree with. But it seems that we diverge at that point and you decide that the solution is to have more and better options; whereas I think that all options are, to some degree or another, disagreeable. And while that is, as you mention, a major frustration with games, it isn't so with texts, or nobody would ever read Lolita or a biography of Hitler.

I don't quite understand that last line. You say that the right answer in a game doesn't necessarily have to be the right answer for your world view. But before you said that if a right answer isn't righ in your world view ("really alien to me"), you HATE it.

Yeah, I agree with this. It's not really the player's actions, but influencing what the main character would do in the game. The player is not necessarily Jones, and the choices don't have to be infinite to accommodate the player's desires. A romance game is still a story between two characters, where the interactive part comes in is influencing the direction of the story rather than being IN the story.

That I wouldn't really have as much of a problem with, but I think that that's a view that is hard to maintain when something turns into a game, i.e. when you have a goal you're trying to reach by your decisions. If there is no such thing as a loss or win condition, then the value of every route will have to be determined by the interpretation of the player; but if there is a win, then the worth of your decisions will be measured by the game (Alex +5, etc.). What's more, you generally see people describing options taken in the first person perspective ("I hated that I had to act like a doormat"). Funnily enough, my failed NaNoRenO game last year was actually about trying to see how third person choices would work (not "I will do so-and-so" but "Diane will die at the end").

[Obscura]

I don't quite understand that last line. You say that the right answer in a game doesn't necessarily have to be the right answer for your world view. But before you said that if a right answer isn't righ in your world view ("really alien to me"), you HATE it.

I should clarify that. I hated the worldview of the dating sim I played.

The worldview can be something I disagree with, and/or it can be completely alien, for me to play it.

In the case of game above, not only did I find it alien, I hated it. (Being alien here is just being used a descriptive word. A game can be very, very familiar to me in terms of its elements for me to hate it too.)

[arachni42]

I finally played this last night

I had a lot of fun with it. After "winning," I went back all OCD-like and ferreted out most of the other responses, including some of those that vary based on what you tell her your job is. (I thought that was a nice touch; a lot of games remember points but "forget" what happened earlier in conversation.) The UI and scrolling text was neat. I liked the tone. I liked the art. I found the performance of 4'33" in the background to be top-notch. No, really, I was highly amused. I don't know if this has been updated since I downloaded it, but I ran into two typos:
"she'll probably cross-reference this data in het memory banks"
"but you can't led your life's decisions be made by others"

It was a bit heavy-handed but not so much that I minded. (Usually what I mind is heavy-handed + feeling talked down to, and I didn't, though I have my own opinion on the message of course.

Regarding the message...

A game, on the other hand... The right answer in Jones today will still be the right answer in Jones in a thousand years. The interactive options will still be the same. The ways in which it allows us to see it are the same to you and me, which is odd, since we're different people.

The writing and the options and the points system will always be the same, but the interpretation is not any more the same than Don Quixote or any other piece of writing. Yes, I get what you're saying about more choices in a way being less than no choice, because without a choice you're "allowed" to think any number of possibilities, and being presented with choices specifically polarizes the work.... and, on top of that, there are "right" choices (ie. to win the game). And I know there are people who play dating sims only with the intention of winning, but there are some people like me who play to see the "reactions" to all the choices and even delight in the "bad" ones sometimes. That means there are at least two very distinct interpretations of any dating sim. Now, there are dating sims that may be quite boring if you choose the wrong answers -- but that's a problem with the writing, not the dating sim format.

Yes, of course I've had experiences in games where I felt "railroaded" by choices. I've felt equally frustrated by some pieces of non-interactive fiction, particularly when they omit or (worse) misrepresent a certain point of view -- especially when the plot and characters underline it. If I'm watching a movie that's going in a terrible direction, believe me, I feel just as upset that I don't get a say in it as I do in a dating sim where none of the choices are ones I like (ie. I don't get a say in it). I mean, in a sim, yes, choices like that draw attention to the lack of real choice. That doesn't mean I haven't cringed with stories in other media that offended my sensibilities. In both cases, the writer(s) had a choice, and I know it! I am sure there are probably people who view it differently because they accept their lack of control from the outset of other media, but are perhaps more caught up in the illusion of control in a dating sim until they are faced with a menu that breaks it. I don't know. All I know is that different people react in different ways to various sims.

In this particular community, I've seen people complain more when their choices don't matter than when they're not able to self-insert. (In fact, there is one discussion where several mention they don't like the self-insert and tire of "silent protagonists." But generic protagonists are a writing choice, not a requirement of the game format. I will concede that it may be more difficult to write a well-characterized protagonist in interactive fiction, but it's certainly not impossible.) People in other communities, well, I'm sure they have their own preferences about expressing their preferences in-game.

A book leaves the images open to your imagination; a movie will leave the thoughts of its characters; but a game? We've even got the what-ifs laid out. What is there left for the imagination? Is a game not a tool to see how something actually plays out so that you don't have to imagine it?

So you're saying that for you, games don't leave anything up to the imagination? Well, I can understand why you have a dislike of games, then. But that's not true for me. I mean, yes, if the writing is shallow, there is not much for me to imagine, but the same is true of movies/TV (and books except for exactly what the characters and settings look like). The form of storytelling is different (just as it's different in movies than a book than a comic, etc). Visually, much more is left to the imagination in a VN/sim than a movie... but you were talking about how things play out. Your statement here is that games don't leave much to the imagination because they play different things out... which implies that for you, a large part of what you imagine about a book or a movie has to do not with what happened, but what might have happened. Hmmm. That is an interesting thought. I don't usually concern myself much with "what-ifs" except in cases where they are laid out. There are a few cases I have, when writing fan fiction.

Well, I have problems with those too, but what bothers me about games is that in order to make a game about romance you have to see romance as a game. It becomes a challenge in which you deserve a win if you meet certain standards, rather than a situation in which you see if your characters match.

Well, romance (and other social interactions) are a game to some degree. I mean, going up to someone in a bar and saying "There's a party in my pants..." isn't going to "win you any points" IRL, either. IRL, it actually represents something about a person (in this case, it definitely means that they don't understand social boundaries, and their over-eagerness likely means insecurity, which may translate into baggage when you actually have a relationship). In a sim, all it represents is a click and a point value (or negative point value). It's an imitation. An artist may put some paint on a canvas that looks like and represents light shining off of a glass, but in actuality it is pigment arranged in a particular, static way. That doesn't mean the painting sucks. The painting sucks if the artist did a bad job. If the artist did a good job, the painting will be good -- to some people. We all vary in taste.

"Deserving" to win and a sense of entitlement... well, that's a completely different ball of wax. Hmmm. You know, it would've been interesting back in my art/media classes in college if people had done projects on "video games and entitlement" instead of the endlessly popular "video games and violence." But that's neither here nor there.

Despite any self-deprecating message, I still enjoyed your game and found the satirical elements entertaining. I also felt the "sim" aspect was accurately... painted. For me, there were things to imagine about the characters, just as with any fictional characters. (I won't go into detail here because I actually want to finish my post, but I will upon request.) I had fun with it.

[Carassaurat]

Hey, look, someone wrote an article that's much like my argument a mere handful of days after I released Jones. Perhaps it's more coherent. If nothing else, I can comfort myself with being "current".

I finally played this last night

I had a lot of fun with it. After "winning," I went back all OCD-like and ferreted out most of the other responses, including some of those that vary based on what you tell her your job is. (I thought that was a nice touch; a lot of games remember points but "forget" what happened earlier in conversation.) The UI and scrolling text was neat. I liked the tone. I liked the art. I found the performance of 4'33" in the background to be top-notch. No, really, I was highly amused. I don't know if this has been updated since I downloaded it, but I ran into two typos:
"she'll probably cross-reference this data in het memory banks"
"but you can't led your life's decisions be made by others"

It was a bit heavy-handed but not so much that I minded. (Usually what I mind is heavy-handed + feeling talked down to, and I didn't, though I have my own opinion on the message of course.

Thank you for the kind words! It's funny indeed how many games don't bother to mention the choices you made, because it's not very difficult at all and quite fun. Admittedly, you have to be comfortable with the idea that nobody will ever read some lines (for example,

Eve criticises you if you said you work as a model and then say that she shouldn't want to be special by her looks. I imagine most people would go for the model-specific option in that decision.

I wish I had had more time for that, the game becomes increasingly narrow as it goes on.

I hadn't fixed those typos, but did as soon as I read your post. It's amazing how you can read over the most serious and obvious errors in your own work.

Regarding the message...

Hmm, let me try it from a different line of thought, I'm just rambling my way through here, to see if I can make sense for myself...

I don't actually dislike games at all! What I dislike is when games try to represent the human condition, which I don't think they properly can because they're systems and within such a game system, there is one opinion that is absolutely, unquestionably, objectively 'right'. So within, the author is omnipotent and you can only talk in options that he or she allows and get reacts that he or she thought up. The participation of the player, I don't think it really matters; all options are contained within the game, it is complete in that sense. An interpretation is an act of the recipient and is always outside of the piece — and it's the infinity of interpretation that might be what makes something art. (This, if I understand correctly, is also pretty much the argument in the article I linked above)

It may be useful for my argument here to make a distinction between stories with decisions and games. I don't really have all that much of an issue with stories with decisions, except that I feel I can't write them properly myself because (and I think I mentioned this) it's uncomfortable how it isn't the characters that drive the story. Again, though, I suppose the problem I have with them is that they're claimed to be more than they are because you get choices, which I don't think is that big a deal, and it's certainly not a dialogue. If you're playing a VN to see all routes and not to win — and if the VN accommodates this — then I don't see how it is fundamentally different from the movie Lola Rennt (Run, Lola, Run) which also plays out a handful of possibilities. Or an alternative ending for a movie. Or that idea I had of simply splitting the screen to play out the options at the same time at every point at which you'd normally get a decision, thus a kinetic novel with multiple routes.

Games are more problematic because they're about problem solving. So, my conclusion above would be that you can only interpret from without, while analysing, not while playing. That puts a game on par with books, movies, music and such, which are the same in that regard. What I think inhibits the interpretative process in a game is a couple of things.
For one thing, you're so encouraged to stay inside the game to solve its puzzle that you're hardly encouraged to go out of it. You don't even need to.

In Jones, this is represented by the Chief, who always reminds you of how Eve is a program that has to be manipulated. It's his views that make the Doctor's spiel about love and feelings untenable, just as any game character can't be seen as both a game system and a character at the same time.

More, a game teaches you within its structure that x + y = z. For it to then expect you to critically think about the nature of x + y on its outside, while providing a perfect answer within itself is disingenuous at best. Game systems don't have opinions, they're challenges and they only have rights and wrongs, truths and untruths (within its universe, anyway). A book says "here's an opinion, form your opinion on it" a game says "here's a truth, form your opinion on it."

Can a game designer lie? Can he or she say "x is the right answer, but that's not true"? It seems like you'd end up in Moore's paradox, whereas a writer can easily have a character lie all the way through a story. Just the same, I don't think a game designer can be mistaken, what rules he writes are true. Any piece of text can be untrue, but rules can't be — and at the end of the day, picking options is based on rules, even if they are as simple as "if you picked a, you go to route x".

I'm going to have to mull over this a bit more, as I don't think this is all that good of a response...

Despite any self-deprecating message, I still enjoyed your game and found the satirical elements entertaining. I also felt the "sim" aspect was accurately... painted. For me, there were things to imagine about the characters, just as with any fictional characters. (I won't go into detail here because I actually want to finish my post, but I will upon request.) I had fun with it.

I wouldn't dare ask of you to spend yet more time writing up your opinion on my game, especially considering how little thought I had put into the characters, but if you felt the uncontrollable urge, I'd be more than eager to read it! Thank you for your lengthy and intelligent post .

[arachni42]

Thanks for the response (and article link); I actually did decide to comment some on the characters below... but first...

Hey, look, someone wrote an article that's much like my argument a mere handful of days after I released Jones. Perhaps it's more coherent. If nothing else, I can comfort myself with being "current".

Hehe... yes, I think it explains things pretty well. I have the impression it's rather trendy right now to be including choices in games (in general, not just VNs) and some developers may consider it the be-all and end-all of storytelling. (Kind of like lengthy unskippable opening 3D cinematics seemed to be a few years ago.) And, of course, it's not.

Thank you for the kind words! It's funny indeed how many games don't bother to mention the choices you made, because it's not very difficult at all and quite fun.

Yeah, probably because it takes extra planning and isn't the priority, but still.

I don't actually dislike games at all! What I dislike is when games try to represent the human condition, which I don't think they properly can because they're systems and within such a game system, there is one opinion that is absolutely, unquestionably, objectively 'right'.

I'll just throw in a tangential comment here about how I loved Knights of the Old Republic (the 2003 one, not the MMO), but was always annoyed that (a) there was no benefit to being neutral (gameplay-wise the "right" choice was to commit to either light or dark), and (b) the logic of "light side" powers and "dark side" powers made little sense... case in point, "stun" was a light side power and "fear" (a shorter stun) was a dark side power. Of course, this is kind of the fault of the Star Wars universe...

That game gave dialogue options, although some of them only determined which questions you asked the NPC first. But others gave light/dark side points, and I remember when I decided to go dark side and made my first really evil choice. The NPC started crying and I actually felt bad. It really surprised me, because here I was feeling empathy for a computer program! But then, I guess it's as logical as feeling empathy for any fictional character.

I got over it very fast though and from then on whenever I did something evil I just laughed maniacally. Dang, what are video games teaching kids these days?!?!

So within, the author is omnipotent and you can only talk in options that he or she allows and get reacts that he or she thought up. The participation of the player, I don't think it really matters; all options are contained within the game, it is complete in that sense. An interpretation is an act of the recipient and is always outside of the piece — and it's the infinity of interpretation that might be what makes something art. (This, if I understand correctly, is also pretty much the argument in the article I linked above)

I think the part I actually disagree with isn't the limitation of the game, but the idea that the interpretation of other pieces of art/writing is so broad. I mean, if I just painted a rose, I'm sure you could come up with an effectively infinite number of things to say about it. In a way, it is you ascribing meaning to it, because it is not a rose, but merely pigments arranged on a 2D canvas. BUT, I have chosen to arrange those pigments in a particular way, such that the viewer will look at it and think "rose" and not "elephant" or any number of other things. So, I am specifically attempting to communicate something. The more specific I get, the fewer choices you have for interpretation. For example, if it's a person handing the rose to another person, any proper interpretation would be limited to emotional symbolism (likely, but not necessarily, romantic). If it's a rosebush planted at the end of a row of grapevines illustrating an essay about using roses to gauge the water needs of wine grapes, then you'd be daft to say it's about romance. (Although I admittedly would not be able to give you a "bad ending" if you did!) If it's a rose that is sprouting wings, then I clearly do not intend a viewer to apply the laws of physics to it. (Although, in the end, it is all in the viewer's imagination -- there is no rose. It is merely pigment. I'm merely using semiotics to send some sort of message, whether it's as broad as "rose" or as specific as "the role of rosebushes in a vineyard." You can claim it's an "elephant" if you want, but I would go ahead and call that wrong in the context of my painting... unless I'm a bad painter, then all bets are off! )

Run, Lola, Run is an interesting parallel. More for VNs I think than dating sims, which use points. (Perhaps point systems could be compared to my painting a rose but labeling it "not an elephant." Besides being unsubtle, it would cause somebody out there to assert that they can think of it as an elephant if they please! Or maybe... "Not an apple," because if I'm not a very good artist it might actually look more like an apple than a rose, even though I might consider apple "wrong.")

Games are more problematic because they're about problem solving.

Yes... you're limited in what actions you can do (and therefore how creative you can be). (Of course, it doesn't mean that players don't sometimes find ways to do something that the developers didn't think of, particularly in MMOs. Not so much dating sims. That is, until somebody decides to make a *dating sim MMO*!!! Ha ha ha!!)

I think it takes a certain amount of game writing skill to not break the illusion. But again, I think there are cases like that in other media, just not having to do with "choices." For example, a big plot hole can break the illusion in a movie.

I wouldn't dare ask of you to spend yet more time writing up your opinion on my game, especially considering how little thought I had put into the characters, but if you felt the uncontrollable urge, I'd be more than eager to read it! Thank you for your lengthy and intelligent post .

LOL.... Well, I know you meant for them to be flat characters, it's just that...

The Chief and the Doctor don't fall neatly into the usual cliches. I have to wonder what kind of people they would have to be to create and program a particularly complex android who, as far as they know,* has to be able to respond seamlessly to a wide variety of possible conversational approaches that this Jones guy might take.
*In the story, they do not know they are video game characters, so their work goes way beyond the bounds of a simple dating sim. It would "all make sense" if they were your typical mad scientists who can plead insanity, but they appear to have a different motivation: they want Jones to have fun. There is no evidence in the story that this isn't genuine. It's like making a dating sim, except that (a) it would be way more work, and (b) they aren't selling it to people. Unless, of course, Jones was just a playtester and they were going to sell it, but they don't say that. In fact, they are employing him, so they're out the cost of the android, its development, and Jones's time.
I also wonder about Jones. He's delightfully faceless. What kind of work, exactly, does he normally do?!? Seems to be some sort of dream job if they think he's great at seduction.... on the OTHER hand... the sarcasm of the story lends itself very well to the interpretation that he's a socially inept geek (who is, perhaps, gullible enough to buy the story about needing to go after Eve). For all we know, he's fat and ugly, too. And he likely has an irritating sense of entitlement.
I actually went back and skimmed a little bit ... I just noticed that at the end, when the Chief and Doctor are telling Jones this is like those dating sims, they explicitly mention "picking the correct answers"... but this is before they "know" they are in a game. And yet given their early dialogue it doesn't seem they have been feeding him choices of answers. This does not come across as a "plot hole," because it all makes sense for you, the author, of course, but you are speaking through these characters and not directly. This makes it reflect extra poorly on their "intelligence" (or perhaps "wisdom") when they refuse to acknowledge that they are characters.
One last consideration is that Eve "herself" appears rather more intelligent than her programmers. They don't seem like "the type" that would invent complex conversations about synesthesia and the like. Obviously, they don't need to be, because they're not the author... However, because the story is what it is, part of their job is to tell the player that he's a rock star, he's got teh skillz, etc. In other words, there's no need to think that the personality they've shown the protagonist is more than a surface one... hinting that their characters are more complex than they seem (even to YOU, haha!). Although they set up your message, they are not "voice of the author" characters -- the player is (rightfully) forced to take that role! That's what leaves the possibilities open.

Anyway, that about sums it up... I'm probably weird for being interested in characters that are programmed metaphors, but there ya go!

[Carassaurat]

I'll just throw in a tangential comment here about how I loved Knights of the Old Republic (the 2003 one, not the MMO), but was always annoyed that (a) there was no benefit to being neutral (gameplay-wise the "right" choice was to commit to either light or dark), and (b) the logic of "light side" powers and "dark side" powers made little sense... case in point, "stun" was a light side power and "fear" (a shorter stun) was a dark side power. Of course, this is kind of the fault of the Star Wars universe...

That game gave dialogue options, although some of them only determined which questions you asked the NPC first. But others gave light/dark side points, and I remember when I decided to go dark side and made my first really evil choice. The NPC started crying and I actually felt bad. It really surprised me, because here I was feeling empathy for a computer program! But then, I guess it's as logical as feeling empathy for any fictional character.

I got over it very fast though and from then on whenever I did something evil I just laughed maniacally. Dang, what are video games teaching kids these days?!?!

The thing with the Star Wars morality, though is that any child can see that it's completely nonsensical, has no relevance at all for daily life and is basically an escapism into a much easier world in which there are clear bad guys who conveniently carry colour coded weapons. It's so ridiculous that nobody takes it seriously. What happens when you have grey moral choices in games is that people will discuss them as if they are a branch of ethics, despite being no less irrelevant than black and white choices. When I'm confronted with a choice between having to kill a puppy or kill an elderly dying lady, that might require more thought than Star Wars's choice to either save a puppy or force choke it, but both have nothing to do with the moral things we do in real life. I don't mind choices being absurd, but please, game designers (and Matrix writers), don't claim any relevance.

I think the part I actually disagree with isn't the limitation of the game, but the idea that the interpretation of other pieces of art/writing is so broad. I mean, if I just painted a rose, I'm sure you could come up with an effectively infinite number of things to say about it. In a way, it is you ascribing meaning to it, because it is not a rose, but merely pigments arranged on a 2D canvas. BUT, I have chosen to arrange those pigments in a particular way, such that the viewer will look at it and think "rose" and not "elephant" or any number of other things. So, I am specifically attempting to communicate something. The more specific I get, the fewer choices you have for interpretation. For example, if it's a person handing the rose to another person, any proper interpretation would be limited to emotional symbolism (likely, but not necessarily, romantic). If it's a rosebush planted at the end of a row of grapevines illustrating an essay about using roses to gauge the water needs of wine grapes, then you'd be daft to say it's about romance. (Although I admittedly would not be able to give you a "bad ending" if you did!) If it's a rose that is sprouting wings, then I clearly do not intend a viewer to apply the laws of physics to it. (Although, in the end, it is all in the viewer's imagination -- there is no rose. It is merely pigment. I'm merely using semiotics to send some sort of message, whether it's as broad as "rose" or as specific as "the role of rosebushes in a vineyard." You can claim it's an "elephant" if you want, but I would go ahead and call that wrong in the context of my painting... unless I'm a bad painter, then all bets are off! )

Identifying something as a depiction of a rose is only a very shallow understanding; in Erwin Panofsky's categorisation, of the primary kind. It being a rose is its subject, but not its meaning. But at the end of the day, you and I wouldn't experience a picture of a rose in exactly the same way. We'd describe it differently and we'd have different feelings to go along with it. Maybe I have once romantically given a rose, which I fondly remember. Maybe I lament how giving roses is such a commercialist cliché. Maybe I long for the days when we'd give roses instead of tweets. That's all possible. And I could very well associate a rosebush with romance, though the author didn't intend it to be; that doesn't make it wrong. Even if it's only very subtle, you and I will never experience that rose in the same way, and our interpretations of it on the level of meaning will differ, and they're all equally right. A game decision, though? A is the right answer for you, and for me, and for everyone else.

Yes... you're limited in what actions you can do (and therefore how creative you can be). (Of course, it doesn't mean that players don't sometimes find ways to do something that the developers didn't think of, particularly in MMOs. Not so much dating sims. That is, until somebody decides to make a *dating sim MMO*!!! Ha ha ha!!)

I think it takes a certain amount of game writing skill to not break the illusion. But again, I think there are cases like that in other media, just not having to do with "choices." For example, a big plot hole can break the illusion in a movie.

Most movies don't hold up entirely, or at all ("Don't give me logic, give me emotion" — Billy Wilder) but we're willing to accept a handful of plot flaws, as long as it's not too outrageous, for the whole thing to work. Similarly, we're willing to overlook game options conflicting with our own opinions for us to see everything through to the end. But while the former asks us to overlook one part of the work for another part of it to work, a game asks us to overlook our opinion for the work. That an opinion of another can be close enough to ours for us to hold it is a bit scary to me — you let someone else think for you.

LOL.... Well, I know you meant for them to be flat characters, it's just that...

The Chief and the Doctor don't fall neatly into the usual cliches. I have to wonder what kind of people they would have to be to create and program a particularly complex android who, as far as they know,* has to be able to respond seamlessly to a wide variety of possible conversational approaches that this Jones guy might take.
*In the story, they do not know they are video game characters, so their work goes way beyond the bounds of a simple dating sim. It would "all make sense" if they were your typical mad scientists who can plead insanity, but they appear to have a different motivation: they want Jones to have fun. There is no evidence in the story that this isn't genuine. It's like making a dating sim, except that (a) it would be way more work, and (b) they aren't selling it to people. Unless, of course, Jones was just a playtester and they were going to sell it, but they don't say that. In fact, they are employing him, so they're out the cost of the android, its development, and Jones's time.
I also wonder about Jones. He's delightfully faceless. What kind of work, exactly, does he normally do?!? Seems to be some sort of dream job if they think he's great at seduction.... on the OTHER hand... the sarcasm of the story lends itself very well to the interpretation that he's a socially inept geek (who is, perhaps, gullible enough to buy the story about needing to go after Eve). For all we know, he's fat and ugly, too. And he likely has an irritating sense of entitlement.
I actually went back and skimmed a little bit ... I just noticed that at the end, when the Chief and Doctor are telling Jones this is like those dating sims, they explicitly mention "picking the correct answers"... but this is before they "know" they are in a game. And yet given their early dialogue it doesn't seem they have been feeding him choices of answers. This does not come across as a "plot hole," because it all makes sense for you, the author, of course, but you are speaking through these characters and not directly. This makes it reflect extra poorly on their "intelligence" (or perhaps "wisdom") when they refuse to acknowledge that they are characters.
One last consideration is that Eve "herself" appears rather more intelligent than her programmers. They don't seem like "the type" that would invent complex conversations about synesthesia and the like. Obviously, they don't need to be, because they're not the author... However, because the story is what it is, part of their job is to tell the player that he's a rock star, he's got teh skillz, etc. In other words, there's no need to think that the personality they've shown the protagonist is more than a surface one... hinting that their characters are more complex than they seem (even to YOU, haha!). Although they set up your message, they are not "voice of the author" characters -- the player is (rightfully) forced to take that role! That's what leaves the possibilities open.

Anyway, that about sums it up... I'm probably weird for being interested in characters that are programmed metaphors, but there ya go!

Ha, I loved reading this — it's very interesting!

I think you've correctly pointed out that the 'universe' has a ton of contradictions, flaws, inconsistensies and holes in it. Partially that is because of the function of the characters; if Eve were written as satirically as the Chief and the Doctor, it'd be easy to counter my argument by saying that this was just a very bad dating game. At other times, however, my satirical streak took over, which is why she has a dramatic-for-the-sake-of-drama final breakdown over her mother and lines such as "you've earned me!" She's a very inconsistently written character like that. The Chief and Doctor, your handlers, were completely satirical spoofs of game designers/game design philosophies, and they wouldn't have worked if they weren't as silly as they are. The idea was that I wanted to convey that even a game with a fairly sophisticated character such as Eve, and with plenty of options and reactivity is in the end, when you really look at it, as silly as the Chief and the Doc's views — which is why the contrast was needed, but that does make the fact that they created her a bit unbelievable, I'll admit. I think I only came up with that particular plot twist after having started writing (and after the characters were who they are), and kept it because it sort of ties things together and makes it a jab at game design even if you don't pick the True End. The handlers' motivations are those of game designers, spread fun and don't really think through the ethical implications.
Jones is funny. You and other people refer to him in third person, but in truth, I don't think there is a Jones. All 'his' actions are picked by you (with the minor exception of spewing Warhammer quotes, in which the 'Jones' speaker has some more than the menu), and there is no separate Jones entity from you. It's why the main menu changes to 'The Insidious Manipulation of the Player' after you've finished. So if you think Jones is socially inept, fat, ugly and entitled... draw your own conclusions. A lot of VNs have a habit of placing you in a position of a very bland protagonist, it's true, but games generally don't differ much from The Insidious Manipulation of Mr. Jones's sycophant tendencies. Have you ever played Half-life 2? It's horrible in that regard. If in-game compliments mean that we're in reality inept, fat, ugly and entitled, then most AAA video games are pretty insulting.
Finally, about picking the correct answers. If you refuse the Wisdom before the second date, they'll also mention that it's useful to know the correct answers (and all the Wisdom device does is tag one of your options as the correct one). I'll agree that that makes no sense whatsoever if you want to maintain a canon in which everyone is actually a person instead of a bunch of lines that I typed. It's part of a red herring in which I tried to suggest that maybe you are playing the robot and Eve is the real person (which is also why Jones speaks out every line after you've clicked it and why Eve says "It's almost if you were designed for me" right before sexytime.) I suppose the question becomes whether it's fair for me to say 'it's a computer game' in-game at the end to excuse all the ways in which things don't add up, or whether it matters.