Computer Role-playing Games Research Articles

The Many Faces of Role-Playing Games

Role-playing games have evolved into many forms in their thirty-year history. From the traditional pen-and-paper form, that originated with Dungeons & Dragons, with a group of friends playing around a table, to large live-action role-playing game, with hundreds of people acting out their assumed roles.
 The first computer role-playing games appeared over twenty-five years ago and massively multi-player role-playing games, such as World of Warcraft are now one of the most popular genres of digital games. Despite this diversity players at least seem to think they know when something is a role-playing game. When players, writers and game designers say “this is a role-playing game” there are no problems, they all seem to know what each other means, what is and is not a role-playing game. Yet there is no commonly accepted definition of the form. Understandable, perhaps, given the diversity, but the implicit agreement about its use means that there may well be some common underlying features shared by the various examples.
 Hampering any attempt to understand what makes a game a role-playing game is the subtle divide between role-playing and role-playing game. Role-playing can take in many places, not all of them games (such as ritual, social activities, therapy, etc). This means that definitions of the role-playing activity are not that useful in separating role-playing games from other games. In this paper we start from the position that the players are correct: they know what a role-playing game is. By examining a range of role-playing games some common features of them emerge. This results in a definition that is more successful than previous ones at identifying both what is, and what is not, a role-playing game.

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) are emerging in the computer game industry as a very popular genre. These games have existed since the late 1990s, but in the last few years the market has become increasingly strong. This relatively new genre is attracting a widespread audience, bringing together those who previously enjoyed both pen and paper and computer role-playing games, as well as those who enjoy socializing with other players in a virtual environment. Game developers see MMORPGs as a potentially profitable business due to its widespread appeal, but the reality is that only a small percentage of MMORPGs that are released become a success [Kosak 2006]. This article attempts to determine the many aspects that make a successful MMORPG; it also attempts to ascertain what new and innovative features are expected by the users from the next generation of MMORPGs. This is achieved by looking at and discussing past literature and surveying the MMORPG community's perception of previous and current MMORPGs, as well as their expectations of the next generation. An online survey attracted 122 participants to provide their perceptions of current and past MMORPGs. This article determines and outlines the respondents' preferences in the MMORPG genre, discussing what implications these could have on its future. The survey also gave insight into the respondents' expectations of the future of MMORPGs. We conclude this article with a discussion of aspects of current MMORPGs that the participants would like improved, as well as new features they would like incorporated into the next generation of games.

Personality and Fantasy Game Character Preferences

The present study examined the relationship between personality and character preferences in fantasy computer role-playing games. Subjects were required to complete two measures: The Big Five Inventory and a survey designed to determine character preferences in fantasy computer role-playing games as well as relevant fantasy/gaming experiences. Several correlations were observed that generally support the hypothesis that individuals choose characters that are reflections of their own personalities. For example, individuals who scored high on extraversion tended to prefer characters that were described as charismatic. Likewise, agreeableness was correlated with preferences for characters with helping occupations and negatively correlated with more deviant occupations.

Generating Ambient Behaviors in Computer Role-Playing Games

Many computer games use custom scripts to control the ambient behaviors of nonplayer characters. As a result, story authors must write computer code for the game world's hundreds or thousands of NPCs. Creating entertaining, nonrepetitive NPC behaviors without investing substantial programming effort to write customized, nontrivial scripts is challenging. Current computer games have simplistic ambient behaviors for NPCs; it's rare for such characters to interact with each other. To address this, we developed a model that uses generative behavior patterns, which let authors quickly and reliably generate realistic and entertaining NPC scripts. The approach has proven successful, even in the challenging area of creating interactions between NPCs. This article is part of a special issue on interactive entertainment.

Adaptive game AI with dynamic scripting

Online learning in commercial computer games allows computer-controlled opponents to adapt to the way the game is being played. As such it provides a mechanism to deal with weaknesses in the game AI, and to respond to changes in human player tactics. We argue that online learning of game AI should meet four computational and four functional requirements. The computational requirements are speed, effectiveness, robustness and efficiency. The functional requirements are clarity, variety, consistency and scalability. This paper investigates a novel online learning technique for game AI called `dynamic scripting', that uses an adaptive rulebase for the generation of game AI on the fly. The performance of dynamic scripting is evaluated in experiments in which adaptive agents are pitted against a collection of manually-designed tactics in a simulated computer roleplaying game. Experimental results indicate that dynamic scripting succeeds in endowing computer-controlled opponents with adaptive performance. To further improve the dynamic-scripting technique, an enhancement is investigated that allows scaling of the difficulty level of the game AI to the human player's skill level. With the enhancement, dynamic scripting meets all computational and functional requirements. The applicability of dynamic scripting in state-of-the-art commercial games is demonstrated by implementing the technique in the game Neverwinter Nights. We conclude that dynamic scripting can be successfully applied to the online adaptation of game AI in commercial computer games.

Reference and blending in a computer role-playing game

In this paper, we give an account of reference and blending in the computer role-playing game (CRPG) Icewind Dale II in light of the theories of mental spaces and conceptual integration networks [G. Fauconnier, M. Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities, Basic Books, New York, 2002]. Focusing on the behaviour of the pronominals “me” and “you”, we demonstrate firstly, that the traditional accounts fail to adequately explain pronominal referential ambiguity in CRPG discourse fragments. In view of this, we argue for a more efficacious approach (grounded in mental spaces and conceptual integration networks) which shows a blending of the player and the character entities over the computer-mediated role-playing platform. Secondly, we note that the complex lattice of conceptual integration networks from which blending is observed facilitates immersiveness in computer role-playing and, more significantly, gives rise to an understanding of pronominal reference where identity is pluralised, distributed and dynamic.

Narrative as virtual reality: immersion and interactivity in literature and electronic media

From the Publisher: Is there a significant difference in attitude between immersion in a game and immersion in a movie or novel? What are the new possibilities for representation offered by the emerging technology of reality? As Marie-Laure Ryan demonstrates in Narrative as Virtual Reality, the questions raised by new, interactive technologies have their precursors and echoes in pre-electronic literary and artistic traditions. Formerly a culture of immersive ideals—getting lost in a good book, for example—we are becoming, Ryan claims, a culture more concerned with interactivity. Approaching the idea of reality as a metaphor for total art, Narrative as Virtual Reality applies the concepts of immersion and interactivity to develop a phenomenology of reading. Ryan's analysis encompasses both traditional literary narratives and the new textual genres made possible by the electronic revolution of the past few years, such as hypertext, electronic poetry, interactive movies and drama, digital installation art, and computer role-playing games. Interspersed among the book's chapters are several interludes that focus exclusively on either key literary texts that foreshadow what we now call virtual reality, including those of Baudelaire, Huysmans, Ignatius de Loyola, Calvino, and science-fiction author Neal Stephenson, or recent efforts to produce interactive art forms, like the hypertext novel Twelve Blue, by Michael Joyce, and I'm Your Man, an interactive movie. As Ryan considers the fate of traditional narrative patterns in digital culture, she revisits one of the central issues in modern literary theory—the opposition between a presumably passive reading that is taken over by the world a text represents and an active, deconstructive reading that imaginatively participates in the text's creation. About the Author: Marie-Laure Ryan is an independent scholar and former software consultant. She is the author of Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory and the editor of Cyberspace Textuality: Computer Technology and Literary Theory.