Façade (video game)
| Façade | |
|---|---|
| File:Facadecurtain.jpg | |
| Developer(s) | Procedural Arts |
| Publisher(s) | Auto mata |
| Designer(s) | Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern |
| Platform(s) | PC |
| Release | 2005 |
| Genre(s) | Interactive Fiction |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
Façade is an artificial intelligence experiment by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern.
A couple, Grace and Trip, hosts the player in their apartment for cocktails and proceeds to have a relationship breakdown. Using full typed sentences the player can coach them through their troubles or drive them to be more distant from each other.
Somewhere between a video game and a drama, Façade takes advantage of voice acting and a 3-D environment, as well as natural language processing and other advanced artificial intelligence routines to provide a robust interactive fiction experience.
Façade has been the basis for a great number of academic publications and presentations, including Mateas's PhD dissertation from Carnegie Mellon.
Façade was released for PC in July 2005, as a free download from the InteractiveStory.net web site.
Because the installation file is extremly large even for broadband users (around 800 Megabytes) it was also included on PC Zones November 2005 coverdisk, which has helped bring it to the eyes of more gamers and interested parties.
The game/play is celebrated for its ability to provide a close simulation of human interaction, albeit with only rudimentary graphics and sound quality clips that are obviously re-used to save file space. The game is noted because the progression of conversation between the two characters Grace and Trip is rarely entirely the same, although it does cover the same major themes of dispassion, art and marriage. The player can take an active role in the conversation, pushing the topic one way or another to provide an interactive stage-play. These stage-plays are saved as scripts which can be saved after the game is finished.
Game Events
Template:Spoiler Most games finish with the player either offending Grace and Trip to the extent that Trip forcibly removes the player from the apartment or the couple manage to semi-reconcile and tell the player they need to be alone. It is however possible to get the couple to rediscover their love for each other or to push one character into leaving the other - sometimes admitting an affair, a fact decided at random upon game-start.
Because much of the game is designed to be 'on-the-fly' reactions to the player or other characters/events and because the game scenario is based on a random compilation of events (such as what topics are bought up, what drinks Trip wants to serve, whether either Grace or Trip have been adulterous etc.) the game becomes highly replayable.
The parser through which the player communicates to the actors is also mentionable as being able to recognise and accept a high number of complex commands and respond to them adequately. Questions such as 'Do you still love each other?', 'I think both of you are right' or even 'I think you are a talented artist, Grace. However isn't your marriage more important?' can all be fully incorporated into the game engine and the actors can respond in a variety of ways dependant on their mood, random settings and how the player has acted thus far. I.e. in one game an actor may respond favourably to the question 'Do you still love each other?', while in another setting Trip may escort you to the door for insinuating disorder in their marriage.
External links
- InteractiveStory.net - Home of Façade
- Façade's release covered on Grand Text Auto