Hi, I'm sophie houlden, and I'm going to talk about the fascinating topic of best methods for formatting custom data and why writing your own string parser is better for your appliactions. actually that's a lie, SURPRISE! that's what this talk is actually about, SURPRISES! surprises can be good! (You're going to be parents!) surprises can be bad! (You're... going to be parents! D:) surprising our audience is something our form can do exceptionally well. since we have so many ways of doing it at our disposal, but surprise isn't really considered enough in a lot of approaches to game design I think. --------------- first of all, lets make sure we all know what surprise is. and it probably comes as a surprise (oh yeah I went there), but surprise is an EMOTION. and it's an emotion that only lasts a very short amount of time. (if it goes on too long, we are talking about shock, I'm not going to talk about how to shock, partly because enough games try it (even though most are shit and doing it for the wrong reasons) partly because surprise is just way more classy.) people don't often realise surprise is an emotion, first and foremost, when we put a surprise into our game, we are trying to generate this emotion. the second important point is that surprise doesn't last long (that would be shock), and whilst I'm not saying surprise is better than shock, shock can actually be much more valuable I think, but it's much, much harder to do it properly. I mean, when people normally think of games trying to shock, they picture this or this or this and they seem to really great shocks in gaming like this . also I think I should point out the 'sex-shock' isn't always a bad thing, for example this is bordering on shocking, but it's pretty charming too, and plays a key role in the motivations for this character. would CJ brave a tower of death just to be with this slut? I don't think so. I've lost track... where was I... oh right, surprises, they don't last long! the second important point is that surprise doesn't last long (that would be shock), but the memory of the best surprises will last a long long time. the memory of some surprises will even last a lifetime . surprises are wonderful because Let's get academic, or at least pretend to, ( academics are smarter than me:( ), the University of Southern California got some very clever people to look into surprise and they have some clever things to say and made some clever contributions. first of all, they decided that 1 unit of surprise is called a 'wow'. they then go on to do cool things like measure people's wows/s when exposed to varying input data. none of this is useful to us really, but they have some very impressive looking formulas kicking about so when they start to talk in actual english, I trust them when they say stuff. and here's what I think the key things are: Two things are needed for a definition of surprise: first we have to accept you can't predict everything, the observer MUST be uncertain about what they will experience (if you have perfect foresight, you will never be surprised) and second, we must accept that not observer will react with the same amount of surprise as others, and will often react with different levels of surprise to the same stimulus even to themselves at different times. only the first point is of true importance to us, but the second should not be ignored, even using science, YOU CANNOT GARUENTEE the amount of surprise your players have, so if a part of your game hinges on a surprise, realise that even if *most* people are surprised, not everyone will be, and this could essentially mean this part of the game fails these players, and is wasting their time. this is exceptionally important when it comes to spoilers and foreshadowing, you can tell people too much. but the really important part is the uncertainy, since we have a strong influence over the expectations of the player. how certain they are something will play out a certain way is essentially something we have in our control. the boffins from USC explain that 'an event is surprising when the distance between posterior and prior distributions of beliefs over all models is large.' that is to say, surprise is a big change in what you expect. for example, I show a person black screen, the longer the screen is black, the greater their expectations of the person that the screen will continue to be black, but if the screen suddenly turns white, the persons sensory input contradicts their expectations, they are surprised. admitedly, this isn't going to be much of a surprise to anyone. but what if the screen sprouts legs and runs out of the room? this would be a much greater difference in the expectations of the person, and would result in a much greater surprise. that, is basically my long winded way of saying, engineering surprise is really the engineering of people's expectations. so, easy way to be surprising, do something unexpected! (just remember what is expected is something you have a great deal of influence over) if Surprise is measured by large changes in what we expect, what if we are 'expecting' something to change? what if we expect for the next frame to be wildly different. this is of course, antici- - pation! and frankly I would argue that this is a type of surprise in its own right, and arguably, a very, very fun type of surprise. since when the player expects a change and we don't give it to them, their sensory input is different to what their expected input was. they thought something was going to happen, it didn't. personally I think it's awesome to do this to people... but, I'm a tease :P a great thing about anticipation surprise is you can build it up, anticipation may not result in a sudden amount of 'wows', but you can arguably get more wows by placing them over time. an example of this would be in a horror film where someone is walking through the dark house alone, they hear something and the movie drags it out, as time goes on your expectations of the person getting knifed to death increase, they build and build. sometimes you are given relief, sometimes your anticipation is removed 'oh it's not going to happen' but that's a great place to put a regular surprise stabbing of course ;) it's well established of course that the true masters of surprise are ninjas, but we can't look up to them too much, since we want to use surprise differently, we are essentially the nega-ninjas. allow me to illustrate: Ninja: "SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER!" Dude: "Oh Wicked, what kind of surpr-" Ninja: "DEATH SURPRISE BITCH" *swoosh swoosh* Game Dev: "SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER!" Dude: "Oh Wicked, what kind of surpr-" Game Dev: "FUCKING COOKIES!" *world explodes from too much awesome* sure, sometimes the surprise is still death and we kill our audience in magnificent ways, but unlike the ninja, if we are doing it well the player survives, and enjoys the horror we just inflicted on them. it was actually a moment of surprise that inspired me to make games. in final fantasy 7, when you get out of midgar, the game keeps going. it gives you a fucking world. it goes from hours inside an enclosed, oppressed city, and then you are free. it was a moment of wonder and amazement for me, and when I tried to tell a friend about it at school that day (which I was almost late for - I CAN'T STOP NOW MUM!) he didn't believe me. yes this was only on the first disc, but I was a kid, for all I knew the other discs just had an extremely long ending movie on them. but it was a surprise to me, intentional or not, I got more than I expected, and loved it. it always feels great, especially if the player was having fun already. for another example, one that WAS clearly intended. did any of you actually assume the party escort submission position, or did you go through all the back rooms of aperture science? it felt amazing right? when GLaDOS says "remember that time when the platform was sliding into the fire pit and I said 'goodbye' and you were like 'NO WAY' and then I was like 'we pretended we were going to murder you' that was great" it really WAS great? and it's not just giving the player a new place to explore, another great way to surprise the player is to give them something new to do. this is something a lot of metroidvania games excell at. there are hints when you see a gap you can't cross but you can see collectables or whatever on the other side. maybe you were going to get a double jump? maybe a hang glider? maybe a grappling hook? fuck that, player is expecting it! give them something totally unexpected maybe teleportation! maybe a fucking airplane. maybe a whole other character, in fact, kill the character you were playing as before. know what your player expects, and whilst they play with your game, you should play with their expectations. your relationship with your player is much like a traditional relationship, you can improve it by being surprising and doing something unexpected. don't give your player flowers and take them to a resteraunt, ok well do do that if it works, but really, try and be spontaneous during development. we're indies, we can afford to try things that might not work (ok maybe not 'this level should be an MMO' but you know what I mean). be spontaneous as you make the game, and that spirit will be a part of the game itself, the player will feel it... probably. I dunno it's getting a little 'spiritualy arty farty' here. perhaps don't include this. giving the players surprises they don't know they want yet! not letting players have surprises they look for. make them wait till christmas day before they get their presents! bad surprises are sometimes good surprises.