Context of Practice Indie Research: Facade

Facade was a artificial-intelligence based interactive story created in 2005 that was created by Michael Mateas, Andrew Stern and John Grieve. This again is a very unusual game to come across but it works out being very interesting. You play as someone who has been invited over to Trip and Grace's house as one of there friends from a number of years ago. Things appear to go well until you walk through the front door, and it is clear that there is some kind of domestic taking place which is clear the longer time you spend there.

The game looks to the player to type in a sentence to get a response from either Trip or Grace and things you say will spark different results, either helping them, driving them apart further or just messing around with them as they continue to get more angry at you. It is a very unique experience which will no doubt take you a couple of times to get right as the slightest thing could offend either one of them and get you kicked out. Whilst there is the option to do this, you can also take what there saying to you and respond to it. From playing through for just a few minutes we learn that Grace decorated the apartment, something that Trip thinks is something out of one of her design catalogs, but if you praise her, this sparks a response that's appropriate and will make her side with you more.

It's an interesting prospect to a game, and also the environment is quite badly drawn and there isn't much way in environmental storytelling from that perspective, there is a fair bit of interaction available to play with. Alongside the general conversation and talking through Trip and Grace's problems there is also a number of objects that can be interacted with in the environment that can easy spark more conversation between the characters and there are many paintings on the walls that you can talk about to Trip or Grace. This level of detail, although not very well designed, as to me the apartment is rushes and there is barely anything in it, but the level of detail is superb and due to the A.I in the game, it actually allows conversation that you can start along with conversations that they turn it into.

This game is actually a great influence for my project as it shows that even in a small room you can have that level of interaction and are able to create conversation at your will even though eventually it will come down to their relationship. But besides that it is a great example of storytelling and especially due to the fact that it goes into a lot of detail, and if played correctly you do feel that you are there friend of many years who can help them through there marital spat.