The Prom: An Example of Socially-Oriented Gameplay

Abstract

The Prom is a game where the player manages the social life of a group of high school students and creates the situations from which dramatic, thought provoking or at least funny stories can unfold. The setting of The Prom involves a group of alternative high school kids (e.g. Emos, Goths, Geeks, etc.) and their dramatic lives as they prepare for the upcoming school prom. Through creating friendships, making people become enemies, controlling who gets to be in the "in" crowd and much more, the player can shape the social world of the characters. Each character has a distinct personality represented by interests (e.g. what bands they like), needs (e.g. a character may need to demonstrate a certain degree of dominance over others), traits (e.g. being a particularly jealous person), social networks (e.g. to what degree a characters like, are attracted to or respect one another) and social status (e.g. who is dating who).The social artificial intelligence system Comme il Faut (CiF) drives this gameplay experience by simulating per character needs and traits, social statuses, social networks, social history and most importantly to gameplay, the outcomes and effects of social games. CiF is a playable computational model of social interactions designed specifically to allow autonomous characters to play social games. By giving player controls to navigate a social, rather than physical, space, The Prom is being created to demonstrate how CiF and social games can create a practically limitless numbers of possibly compelling stories and gameplay.