Comments on: Simulating Seduction

By: Soupnazi

Soupnazi — Wed, 11 May 2011 21:55:38 +0000

After your reply to my comment (which was very timely, too!), I’m here with some ideas that I think could add more, good complexity to the seduce target mission.

There are three levels to this. First, which I think is kind of obvious, is having an actual flirt interaction, which the AI will occasionally do themselves. But then if you want to get a bit more complicated, why not have the probability of flirting depend on the character? Then when you see a character that doesn’t usually flirt (I’d think you’d have to figure out the probability of flirting per character yourself, adding some skill to the matter) flirting with another character, you would be suspicious; likewise, if you see a flirty character doing little flirting, you have a reason to be suspicious, without any hard tells.

The third part has two different ways of implementation; first, a more simpler one, where each character not only has a probability of flirting, but a probability of which gender they’d flirt with (adding a bit more complexity). However, this would just be the majority of the time, so a “straight” character flirting with someone of the same gender wouldn’t be a hard tell. Then, the more complicated version: each character has a different probability of flirting with individual other characters, not just gender, so if you see a character flirting with a character they don’t usually flirt with you have reason to be suspicious.

That… was rather complicated, actually. I hope you like the concept!

By: Calinda

Calinda — Tue, 22 Feb 2011 09:21:09 +0000

The idea for SpyParty seems great! And loads of fun if you consider that the sniper will have a lot of trouble when having to decide who is the spy and who is the target.I can’t wait to play it!!!

By: Tobias Grace

Tobias Grace — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 12:54:27 +0000

Loving how this is developing and I cannot wait for it to reach stores.
A few ideas I had whilst reading various articles and comments,
Firstly with the campaign mode, there’s a lot that could be messed around with here (Same as pretty much any other part of this game) such as a Spy Campaign, A Sniper Campaign or a combined campaign… All with different storylines. A non-linear storyline would be great, for example The Spy is given a set location for his first mission, but at that mission depending on what missions he completes would then relate to what different locations could be unlocked. Like if he did indeed seduce “The owner of a set of keys to a bio-nuclear facility” then his next mission would be to do with bugging the owner of said facility’s house. Or thinking on that, you could at the beginning of the game be given certain objectives overall such as “We suspect the Terrorist organization Kill’em’all (stupid names in spy films are the best!) captured our best scientist. For what reason we are unsure but it’s sure to be nefarious. We need you to investigate” but be given 3 of these or so, and by doing different things in different locations would lead to helping one branch of the campaign more than the others. But there would also be crossovers such as The Scientist who is providing the bio-weapons for Kill’em’all is also the scientist behind the security system at the White House that failed when the president was captured by another terrorist organization. This would mean that when you go to a party that the scientist is out you could either seduce him for information, or bug him etc. It opens up loads of new ideas.
Also with the sniper/spy campaign, you could switch between being a spy completing missions and the same person trying to thwart attempts to spy on your government. Though in addition to that, maybe you’re not always the good guy, you could in fact be an evil terrorist spy attempting to gain information on the security of the White House in order to capture the president! This could also lead to an extremely difficult “Boss-mission” where you have to seduce the president at the White House. But to be able to gain access to the White House you must have already seduced the Head of Security at a previous location in another mission. Sorry I’m babbling with this but it just brings so many cool ideas to mind. I’ll finish this for now or I’ll go on for ages but I’ll be sure to comment later :)

By: checker

checker — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 03:01:28 +0000

Hey Alan, the current Contact Double Agent mission is actually “unknown from a set of possibilities”, so it’s like you say. The Sniper gets a variable number of Suspected Double Agents in his or her view, and the real Double Agent is guaranteed to be one of them. So, the Target being completely unknown with no clue is actually the other axis to explore. I probably should have mentioned that in the text above, I’ll edit it now.

By: checker

checker — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 02:59:35 +0000

That’s a great point about the Target approaching the Spy. I’ll have to stew on that, thanks!

By: Alan Au

Alan Au — Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:13:02 +0000

Hmmm. I’m thinking about the gameplay implications *for the sniper* by making it a “seduce any” vs. “seduce known.” Certainly if it’s seduce known, you may as well just make it the ambassador and be done with it, but at the opposite end, you just have a variant on the double agent. I’m wondering if a “seduce one of four” scenario might be a better fit for the gameplay difficulty grid and the spy-fiction.

By: Mark

Mark — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:34:36 +0000

Highly interesting idea, but the part that seems most intriguing is that of the Sniper seeing two people repeatedly having conversations, and not being sure who is the Spy or the Target. Especially if the Target starts to approach the Spy after being seduced, allowing the Spy to pretend to be the Target.

By: checker

checker — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:08:25 +0000

It’s actually more difficult than I thought it would be to find pictures on the internet of James flirting with fully clothed women.

By: checker

checker — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:06:32 +0000

I like the idea of explicitly pitching you as the bureau chief while selecting the missions and characters, that’s a good framing for that phase. We’ve talked about having you be the chief during some single player stuff as well, so that might mesh well. And yeah, there are going to be little bits of bio sprinkled all over the place, just enough to get the player’s internal storyteller warmed up!

By: checker

checker — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 22:02:50 +0000

Yeah, I definitely want to have diversions and delegation. John mentions this below as well.