Implementing InteGra
InteGra is one of the principal unique selling points of Ibru, a comprehensive system that models the player character’s personality based on their behavior and adjusts the game in real time.
We have already introduced the general principles of the system we are developing together with SWPS, and it’s time to break it down: How will it actually work? How will player choices impact the psychological model? How does it differ from how other RPG games model reactivity to increase immersion?
What’s in a model?
The player’s behavior is tracked by InteGra in real time using a personality model: Instead of isolated decision points that result in infrequent, but significant changes, it takes into account the entire behavior of the player’s character: What they say in dialogue and how they behave towards other characters, how they tackle the gameplay challenges, how they handle their cases and which conclusions they draw…
As a result, the aggregate effects of player character’s behavior create a constantly evolving personality model. InteGra then uses this model to alter the game, such as by modifying the player character’s responses to match their personality: Consistently using aggressive solutions and engaging in such behavior produces a detective that is direct, brusque, even a little hostile in his interactions with others - while a more cerebral, analytical approach will make him interact with the denizens of the city of gods in a more reserved, calm manner that may help potential perps incriminate themselves.
Players are not locked into a specific personality either: The goal of InteGra is to provide a more nuanced solution to the problem of ludonarrative dissonance by matching the options given to the player in e.g. dialogue to the personality of the character they roleplay.
This also includes covering cases where the character’s behavior changes as players experience the story. Instead of choosing between alternatives that no longer match their character’s personality, InteGra provides individualized options based on the personality model.
Where InteGra comes in
Every game is fundamentally limited in its ability to individualize the gameplay experience: A writer can only create so many variants of a single dialogue line, much less entire dialogues; a designer cannot build an infinite number of variations of character behaviors and reactions. As otherwise the scale of individualization grows exponentially, both make necessary assumptions and approximations of player behavior while creating the game.
InteGra is designed to make this both manageable and practical. Rather than rely exclusively on complex webs of scripts, flags, and variables, necessitating an individualized solution for every game, InteGra provides a single, scalable system that collects information about players’ choices, actions, and general behavior within the game and feeds it into the game as usable data.
As a result, instead of an abstract alignment system that accounts for a specific set of decisions - such as whether the player behaved in an aggressive, noble, or pragmatic manner in dialogue - an InteGra-enabled system can track the full spectrum of player behavior, from general behavior towards the world and its inhabitants to mechanics used, allowing for much finer modeling of player behavior and more individualized design.
