Bioware demonstrates digital actors at Austin Game Conference
by Ludwig Kietzmann 
{ Sep 8th 2006 at 11:25AM }
An intriguing article on Gamasutra details Bioware's visit to the Austin Game Writers Conference and their resulting presentation, "Creating Characters for Games: Writing for Digital Actors." One of the few developers that puts as much, if not more, emphasis on stories and characters versus other elements of their games, Bioware outlined a change in writing methodology required for visually lush next-gen games. Unlike older, less ambitious role-playing games which furthered the story via motionless character portraits or a handful of canned animations, the upcoming Mass Effect has tasked writers with taking things such as body language and subtle physical gestures into account. It's an interesting case where the writer can rely on the graphics to tell a part of the story -- usually it's the other way around.The article also delves into the creation of the story and how the player's choices need to be plentiful while still remaining within the framework of the overall game. Again, the digital actor can be used to guide the player down certain paths, avoiding erratic or non-sensical behaviour that has a character suddenly going from cheery to murderous after the press of a button. There's definitely a tug of war going on between the player (who wants freedom) and the storyteller (who wants to tell a coherent tale). With more realistic graphics and lifelike characters being introduced in the coming years, it's unclear as to who will end up having the greatest grip.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
rjg @ Sep 8th 2006 11:29AM
Another badass xbox360 game I cannot wait for.
cringer8 @ Sep 8th 2006 11:53AM
Well, this doesn't seem like something other developers were intentionally ignoring. It's just something that's impossible to do. Subtle body gestures can never come close to replicating the even *more* subtle gestures the human face makes to communicate thoughts and feelings. A real human can express several different emotions simply by changing the shape the eye and nothing else. Have you ever had your girlfriend say, "Nothing's wrong," and yet you *know* something is wrong, no matter how hard she tries to hide it? It's in her eyes. It's an intangible connection we as a species share.
Very few of the greatest artists of all time have been able to successfully capture human emotion accurately. And when they do, it is a still shot; a moment in time. And it took them months of painting or sculpting, if not years.
Does anyone remember what the artists at Pixar accomplished with their short video of the old man playing chess? It was the closest we have ever come to capturing those extremely subtle facial changes to express thought and emotion. The only reason it was even possible is because it's easier to do it with an old man, because of the wrinkles.
To ask game developers to do it on a regular basis is ridiculous. It will never happen. The eyes are the window to the soul. Without a soul, a human replicant will always look like robot to us.
DarrenJ @ Sep 8th 2006 11:58AM
"It's an interesting case where the writer can rely on the graphics to tell a part of the story -- usually it's the other way around."
I'm off today, but what would the other way around be? The writer relying on the story to tell graphics? The graphics relying on the writer? My guess is you wanted to say something about relying on graphics in place of the story, but that's kinda what this is (granted a much cooler, more developed version of it).
Martin @ Sep 8th 2006 11:57AM
2: i disagree, it just a matter of time and money, we have allready seen big advances in this area, and i see no reason why it should stop, and not reach "natural" levels
Frosty22 @ Sep 8th 2006 12:12PM
Geez, Cringer8, could you be any more poetic?
I have learned long ago never to say never (oops). Each year technology pushes the table even further. Will it ever look exactly like a human? I hope not, we are detached from reality as it is, so lets try to at least keep games as a pasttime instead of an alternate reality for us to recluse into. But with the direction technology is going, who knows? Something to think about... we think about things in terms of todays limits based on todays technology (or whatever else) today. But the minute techology advances, those limits advance with it.
Eggman @ Sep 8th 2006 12:20PM
@ cringer, i think its just a matter of time till they start incorporating stuff like that into games. As it is, video game graphics are coming pretty close to photo realistic and from an article i was reading a few days back (not sure where it was) the author was talking about how the next step would be to focus on 'muscles' rather than the outer skin of people. This is where, i believe, we will start getting into the realistic animations and subtle facial changes thats been missing in games so far.
Another article had the author talking about how fleshed out AI is going to be the new thing in the next generation. Similarly, were seeing a greater concentration on physics in the last few years than had been b4. I think we will start to see a move away from things like bump mapping and all that which highlight an object/persons outer 'skins' appearance to physics/AI/animations.
I do agree with the author in that canned animations take away a lot of the immersion from a game. Rag doll physics for example is a great innovation a few years back but isn't perfect in its current form (limbs just kinda flail around randomly if a person for example is thrown off a building, in real life, a person would react to the exact situation whether falling down, being thrown up or against a wall).
Graphics can go way beyond lighting effects, shadows and all that which we already seem to have mastered over the generations. I think we'll c more of the aforementioned things in future games (like mass effect for example).
reguy @ Sep 8th 2006 12:20PM
i wonder if alloynes will come in here and say, but will the faces enhance the gameplay? i guess he would love it if it was mario
Ludwig Kietzmann @ Sep 8th 2006 12:22PM
Darren J -- I meant the graphics relying on the writer to get a story across. Sorry if that wasn't clear enough. Essentially, you had more dialogue to flesh out a character's intentions because the graphics weren't capable of conveying the same emotions. Now, you have animation that is able to do so and thus removing some work that would have originally been up to the writer.
Gareth Jones @ Sep 8th 2006 12:25PM
"I'm off today, but what would the other way around be? The writer relying on the story to tell graphics? The graphics relying on the writer? My guess is you wanted to say something about relying on graphics in place of the story, but that's kinda what this is (granted a much cooler, more developed version of it)."
I think what they mean is that in the past, a block of pixels that doesn't resemble anything is accepted by the gamer as a door to another world or as a fast car because of the story that surrounds it. Now on the other hand we can rely on the graphics to help tell the story. Simple really, no?
Gareth Jones @ Sep 8th 2006 12:31PM
Actors on TV look human despite the fact that your TV has no soul. Your TV is just a mass of coloured dots that arrange themselves in such a way to form an image that your brain recognises as a face.
Getting an image to be displayed on a screen is easy.
Calculating what that image should look like is the difficult part - what with the AI of the character, the folds, wrinkles and texture of the skin, the hair, the shine in the eyes etc. But once a machine has enough processing power to be able to calculate those things in real-time, getting the results of that calculation onto your TV will be easy - and when that happens you won't know if you're watching a real actor being filmed or a game character running off code.
The Intangible Fact @ Sep 8th 2006 12:34PM
@ cringer8
I wouldn't say it is impossible to replicate human emotions. By scanning and mapping out each muscle on the human face and placing it in a 3d model they could achieve that realism. Check out the movie "A Scanner Darkly".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Scanner_Darkly_%28movie%29
Lone Starr @ Sep 8th 2006 12:43PM
This is a perfect article for those who claim graphics don't matter.
Frosty22 @ Sep 8th 2006 12:47PM
umm... suggestion: I don't quite think that we should base this thread on eyes being 'windows to our souls,' and our souls being indicative of human emotion.
cringer8 @ Sep 8th 2006 1:06PM
Forsty22,
Only if you take it in a "religious" sense, which I'm not. I'm speaking of the part of "you" that makes "you" who you are.
Gareth Jones made a good point to strengthen my argument. An actor in a movie that we watch on a TV screen can still communicate emotion without words or context, even though the image is a construction of colored dots. Why is that? Shouldn't we be able to simply study the arrangement of those colored dots and apply it to a virtual face and achieve the same results? Clearly, it isn't that simple. There is something more to the human face that cannot be duplicated in a virtual environment. But that is just my opinion.
Sean @ Sep 8th 2006 1:05PM
#12
Yeah because the original Super Mario Bros was so much fun because of its super-realistic facial expressions on the 10 pixel Mario. Graphics are important just they are secondary to concept/gameplay.
Lone Starr @ Sep 8th 2006 1:12PM
@ Sean
Just because at one point in time graphics were secondary does not mean they are now. The technology is advancing to the point where graphics become an integral and essential part of the concept/gameplay.
Jake @ Sep 11th 2006 11:15AM
Well, whatever Bioware is doing, they are doing a great job of it. This game looks absolutely friken sweet. Anyone seen the E3 footage?
Oblivion + Star Wars + Bioware + 3rd person squad shooter + armed vehicle combat + Xbox 360 = awesomeness
Phillip @ Sep 8th 2006 1:23PM
I hope this game comes to PC a la KOTOR I & II.
JD @ Sep 8th 2006 1:30PM
Bournemouth Uni and Bioware should really get together to make this tech work, facial muscle simulation is the way this will be achieved.
http://www.joystiq.com/2006/09/07/muscles-the-secret-to-better-animated-game-characters/
Sean @ Sep 8th 2006 1:44PM
@ Lone Starr
I agree with you in part as technology evolves our expectations increase. Graphics can increase immersion in plot driven games; however in today's video game market budgets are soaring.
As budgets hit astronomical levels certain corners will inevitably be cut. I would rather play a game wherein gameplay and storyline was the emphasis during production over having realtime emotional expression. Moreover most of these story-driven games (ie Final Fantasy Series) play more like interactive movies than video games. Personally these games detach me from the experience more than immerse me, regardles of how many muscles they can simulate in the human face. And real movies will have games trumped for quite some time in the realism department.
I'd like to know when games stopped being games and became technology/graphics engine battles.
Take for example the recent Doom 3. Visually a masterpiece however gameplay and storyline were incredibly mediocre. Always had the feeling of been there done that. On the flip-side Half-Life 2 was an incredible experience not only because of the graphics, but because so much emphasis was placed on introducing new ideas to the rather stale FPS bag of tricks. It was the gameplay/conceptual differences and not graphics which separated Doom 3 and Half-Life 2 making the graphics in this particular case secondary.
Or how about the upcoming Wright game Spore which looks absolutely spectacular. All that with what I would consider average graphics. Albeit this game has not been released yet, it still has to prove itself, Wright is one of those developers that has a good grasp on what is important in gaming.
Katamari, New SMB, Geometry Wars....I could go on but its a short list of games that did not depend on graphics to be fun. They are called video games after all...
Frosty22 @ Sep 8th 2006 1:47PM
I really think it is or will be possible though, through face mapping. If you were asked to make a sad face, or an angry face, or a surprised face, etc, you would be able to do it without actually feeling that emotion. And a good portion of people would be able to distinguish the emotion that you are portraying, whether you are feeling that emotion or not. If they mapped the muscles on the face and what they do during those emotion portrayals, why would they not be able to integrate that in game? Granted, it may never be perfect, but we should be able to distinguish the emotion being portrayed. To be perfectly honest, the flaw isn't necessarily in the software, but also in us. Often times we get other peoples emotions wrong. We think they are angry when they are really confused, or we think they are happy when they are really being sarcastic, etc. Take a test yourself and see if you get it 100% right. My point is, even if the software is perfected, there will always be imperfections in us. But they should be able to get the software to a point hwere we are at least able to distinguish emotions most of the time. link for test: http://www.wwnorton.com/psychsci/activity/ch10_activity.htm
Good discussion though.
Sean @ Sep 8th 2006 2:21PM
Now a game where reading facial emotions accurately, (ie a detective/crime story) would really put technology like this to use.
segadult @ Sep 12th 2006 11:26AM
Stories have been told through graphics for a long, long time. There have been many games that have no dialogue at all, but communicate story through character animations and positions. Then there are RPGs that, since the SNES days, have used facial expressions to communicate the mood of the text below. If you want to talk about subtle facial expressions, talk aobut subtle facial expressions, but story telling has been done visually in videogames for about as long as there have been characters in videogames.
aZn_1080p @ Sep 8th 2006 2:29PM
whateva, I've seen bioware 'rpg' games, they are pretty weak, and the characters they always brag about are lame, they have no style or pizazz, just the same boring crap, pick good or evil answer. You want to see badass character design, look at Final Fantasy, or Metal Gear Solid, or Devil May Cry. Those are character driven games with characters everyone will remember for the rest of their lives.
cringer8 @ Sep 8th 2006 2:53PM
Are the fanboys out of school already? Shame.
JPRacer @ Sep 8th 2006 3:21PM
aZn_1080p wrote: "whateva, I've seen bioware 'rpg' games, they are pretty weak"...
Yeah, you're probably right, that's why Bioware is considered one of the best RPG developer in the world.
asurroca @ Sep 8th 2006 3:49PM
@ Sean
It really depends on the type of game. One of the goals for any RPG is to be as immersive as possible, and good writing, scripting AND graphics go a very long way towards achieving that goal.
aZn_1080p @ Sep 8th 2006 3:56PM
"Yeah, you're probably right, that's why Bioware is considered one of the best RPG developer in the world."
LOL! Riiiiiight... by who? Nothing they have done can come close to Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, Disgaea, Kingdom Hearts, Champions of Norath or any of the other top RPG franchises.
Lone Starr @ Sep 8th 2006 4:08PM
@ Sean,
"Personally these games detach me from the experience more than immerse me, regardles of how many muscles they can simulate in the human face."
That's your personal preference, so I can't (and won't) disagree with you there. My point is that there is huge potential here (as evident by the focus companies like Bioware are putting on this technology).
You bring up the example of Doom 3, and I think that's a good example to bring up. If the gameplay in a game with great graphics is a little bit lacking, I believe it will hurt sales. Developers will learn (if they haven't already) that pretty graphics are not always good. But if there is a strong element of gameplay which relies on graphics, then that is great.
Frosty22 @ Sep 8th 2006 4:20PM
Taking your bait isn't even worth the time, azn_1080p (man even your name reaks of fanboyism).
JPRacer @ Sep 8th 2006 6:34PM
aZn_1080p, there's a big difference between Japanese RPGs and all other RPGs. I agree that the RPGs you named are really great/good RPGs but saying Bioware makes poor games is like saying Burnout is a great racing game and Gran Turismo is not. They're both racing games but of different styles.
Japanese RPGs are not really my style. In general they favor flashy graphics with predictable storyline and linearity of actions and simple character development over good storyline and character development. And for me these two criterias are the most important in a RPG.
And when I say Bioware is one of the best developer in the world, it's my opinion and thousands/millions of others and the general video game press.