Blog - Dancing, Sex, Sword Fighting and Video Games: Now i've got your Attention!
Friday, February 15, 2008I'll count this as my vaguely Valentine's Day themed entry:
Although one of my fellow student friends hates whenever people say "We should make a game out of this!" I find it useful to try and figure out how simple things from my every day life could be turned into games, to keep my game design skills sharp. So sorry Joe, but I'm about to do just that!
I attended a blues dancing lesson a while back. I found it very interesting how all the moves interconnect (blues dancing is supposed to be a seamless flow) and how as the lead you can signal the other dancer what to do next wordlessly, with only your actions. A sure sign you're a game development geek is when you mentally replace the words character, person, etc. with "player": I automatically mentally equated my dance partner with a second player in a two-player game. I decided there were therefore some interesting dynamics there that would be interesting if I could figure out how to put them into mechanics.
In some ways, I sort of have implemented at least the latter: In an entirely different example of me taking something from my experience and turning it into a game, I'm currently making a short sword fighting game prototype in Flash based off some theater training I've had in stage combat sword fighting: specifically a concept called the offensive and defensive blocks. (A relatively decent description of the concept is described half way down this page, in the red/blue sections.)
Because it's for theater and the goal is to NOT actually get anyone injured, the offensive and defensive block systems are essentially sword fighting reduced into a simple, formalized system of 6 attack moves and a corresponding block for each move. Because of this extreme simplification and formalizing, I realized it was relatively easy system to adapt into a game. To return to the overall point though, in this stage combat system, like in all stage combat, the attacker (much like the lead in blues dancing) signals the defender which attack is coming with exaggerated sword swings (which look better on stage anyhow) and other nonverbal cues. One player's actions cue reactions almost instantly in the other "player".
So, I do have the concept of "lead signals second player what action they must do." If I manage to implement the player's ability to attack/opponent's ability to defend (currently the player can only defend, and the AI opponent perpetually attacks), then it'll be interesting as the lead/follower will be constantly switching.
Of course, the offensive and defensive blocks, by design, do not harbor easily the idea of interconnected flow of movement, as the block moves are designed around a central hub, where your sword returns to the middle "ready" position to strike out at each of the sections of the block when needed. There are a few exceptions to that, with a few moves that can flow seamlessly from one to the next, but it's mere coincidence or afterthought, and not designed in from the beginning like as was done in blues dancing.
In any case, the Flash prototype I'm working on is a sword fighting game, and there's lots of games out there that involve swordplay. None quite like my system: mine reminds me most closely of the system in Determinance, as both are controlled by gestural mouse control, but their system is much more free form. And, well, 3d. Mine would be if I could do some 3d programming...
The idea of a game based off two-person dancing is something I've not really seen done.
The most notable dancing games are DDR, which can barely be considered dancing, unless you're one of the insane people who actually can dance while playing. For the rest of us, that game should really just be called Stomp Stomp Revolution.
And playing games in the DDR series with two players has little in the way of meaningful interaction between the two participants. It's been a while since I've played the games, but the only thing I can recall in the way of meaningful interaction between the two players in a two-person DDR game is that the other person, if playing extremely well, can keep another player alive longer. This technique was often employed by me and my friends while trying to master insanely difficult songs on harder difficulty levels. One player would play on the hardest difficulty, and the other player would play it on an easier one, just to get a high enough score to keep the other player alive to finish the level. That's not really anything like dancing, though, nor is that much in the way of keeping the two-player experience basically akin to two separate single player experiences that happen to be going on simultaneously, side-by-side.
I don't remember exactly his wording, but Chris Crawford had a great line in one of his books about good interactivity being like good sex. Interestingly enough, blues dancing is a very sexual dance, so I'm sure the same sentiment applies. The kind of two-player interactivity in DDR is not something I would consider being "like good sex": If both partners are off doing their own thing, well, that's just kind of weird. The back-and-forth communication makes it good. Makes it... "sexy"? Measuring the quality of interactivity in degrees of sexiness is an interesting way to put it.
In any case, the dynamics of blues dancing has that, although a bit one-sided as there's always a lead. However, if the two dancers are scored together as one unit, as would be the case in a dance competition, then it'd still make for some damn interesting game dynamics: player one has to constantly spin a seamless, never ending flow of moves, player two has to read the signs and patterns from player one to determine what those moves are, and both have to, as flawlessly and seamlessly as possible pull them off, as signals for the next move are already being broadcast. Rinse, and repeat, until the song ends.
That would make a pretty neat dance game, I'd say.
And much "sexier" interaction than, say, that found in this thesis project.
Labels: design
posted by Brian Shurtleff @ 1:44 AM
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