Interview with Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern about Façade
A whole new level of "interactive"
By Russell D. Carroll [March 18, 2004]


What do you think makes Independent games distinctive?
Independents have much greater opportunity to take design risks, which is so important if we're going to discover new forms and genres of interactive entertainment. Traditional game companies tend to act very conservatively, which unfortunately greatly slows the pace of innovation and discovery.

In addition to taking design risks, independent games have the opportunity to take technology risks, to develop new enabling technologies, like new artificial intelligence architectures, that require real technology research, something game companies aren't willing to do right now.

How did your studio get your start in working with independent games?
I [Andrew] quit my game industry job of 7 years in order to work on this project, self-funded, collaborating with Michael, who was a PhD student during most of the project. The project was made possible because we spent a total of 6+ person-years with little or no pay.

I [Michael] do this work as my academic research. I'm currently an assistant professor at Georgia Tech, where I do research in Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based art and entertainment, including game AI. I've also started the Experimental Game Lab (egl.gatech.edu) as a place to do interdisciplinary work in game design, technology and culture. Work like Facade requires a level of AI research that just isn't done in industry, yet it produces new genres that potentially have huge economic impact. The game industry doesn't currently believe there's any such thing as game research (I mean technology and design research, rather than cultural research) - I'm hoping Facade helps show them there is.

What is the most innovative feature of Facade and how is it innovative in your mind?
It experiments with a new form of interactive entertainment best described as "interactive drama". It is the first project we know of that combines real-time personality-rich interactive virtual character behavior, non-trivial natural language processing, and drama management. The integration of these various technologies, in tandem with a new way of deconstructing and reconstructing a story, allowed us to build what we believe is a unique interactive experience.

The first-person, real-time interactive story has been the holy grail of story-based games for a long time - this is the holodeck dream. But what we've primarily seen in games is the holy rail - linear or mildly branching story experiences where the game action really has little or no influence on the plot. With Facade, we're really trying to take a step closer towards putting the player in a story, where the actions they take really matter. And to do this, branching story approaches won't cut it - the burden on the author becomes far too great to support deep, plot-level interactivity. This is one of the places where AI research comes in.

What do gamers appreciate most about Facade?
It remains to be seen how much traditional gamers will like Facade, although of course we hope they do; we think Facade offers different kinds of pleasures than a typical game. It's intended to appeal to a broad, mass audience, including women.

What was the most difficult part of Facade to program?
There are several equally weighty components to Facade, and they have all been challenging and labor intensive to implement. These include personality-rich conversational behavior, natural language parsing, drama management, and a non-photorealistic animation engine.

Other than your own game did any one of the IGF finalists or Student Showcase games stand out to you? Why?
We haven't yet played the other games, but the descriptions look impressive. However Facade is perhaps the most radically different "game" in the group.

What is your definition of an Independent Game?
When a few individuals get together and build a game, that's surely an independent production. The line gets blurrier as the budgets go up and the funding gets more conventional.

How do you think Independent Games will evolve in the future?
We really hope that more individuals will take the plunge and develop their own fully-realized games and interactive experiences. The amount of freedom and control you get as a creator is worth the tradeoff of all the labor and monetary sacrifice.

What is the biggest challenge facing Independent games?
Finding individuals willing and able to structure their lives to accommodate the demands of creating a fully-realized independent production. But interactive entertainment has so much potential and so many frontiers of innovation, we highly encourage people to go for it, to make it happen!

As one of the leaders of Independent Games, what is next for you?
We're hoping to finish Facade as quickly as possible, so we can each move on the to the next project! Although we may choose something a bit more sane and less risky next time. For me [Michael], I'll continue pushing on new AI architectures and game designs enabled by these architectures, including autonomous characters that can learn and adapt, and ever more generative story systems. One of the challenges of doing this work in academia is finding the means to create independent, releasable games. Creating games is important both to keep research focused on real technology problems that come out of game design, as well as to validate and push on the AI solutions coming out of research. But it's difficult to find the resources to do this in an academic setting.