Blog - Improv Acting in Games

Friday, February 8, 2008

I happen to run my school's improvisational comedy club.
I used to be in a touring improv troupe many years ago, and when I got to this school was glad to find a student group for that. I worked my way up and got promoted to president of the club eventually.

In any case, I've been thinking about this recently because on the IGDA Writer's SIG mailing list, someone mentioned machinima, which I can at least claim to be knowledgeable about, so I piped up with a discussion on that.
I mentioned that although machinima is not interactive in its usual form, hypothetically speaking one could combine the machinima live-actor-controls-avatar aesthetic using a trained improv actor in order to run interactive stories in a virtual world.

This lead to a discussion on live teams in smaller MMORPGs doing just that, which I was not aware was done (admittedly, I'm rather behind in trying MMOs...) In most MMORPGs, it would be wildly impractical. WoW is just too huge to afford enough actors per server to cover all the users. Apparently the Matrix Online used the technique, however, to great success until they were bought out and apparently the practice was no longer continued at the new company. It's especially interesting as one of the team members was there to give first hand experience on writing for the actors. Neat!

Admittedly, even I have had the opportunity to use my improv acting skills in game development. Because of my role as head of the improv club, I was contacted by Urban Interactive and did an acting gig for one of their games they happened to do down here in Savannah (I was a pirate who gave players riddles to solve.) It was likely a great connection for the future, particularly as they're based out of Boston, where I have some ties to now thanks to my work with Emagination. Particularly as now thanks to Project Loyola, I'll have ARG experience which is sort of like what they do... and hey, they do hire game designers!

In any case, I find it interesting that having a background in improv is a skill that is actually applicable to game development, despite what one might first think. And admittedly, until AI vastly improves, improv actors are likely the only way to get true interactive storytelling in games. So there's potential there, although it does require the game to have a rather small user-base.

Coincidentally, as I'm also interested in narrative design, having a background in improv helps immensely, as in improv one of the best skills you can adopt is the ability to tell a story on the fly. Doing so requires you internalize story structure in your head in order to actually, completely off-the-cuff with other people, take the audience through a complete (if very brief) 3-act story.

Expect more from me on the topic of where improv and game development coincide. I think about it often.

Labels: improv, writing