University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Fall from Grace: an experiment in understanding and challenging player beliefs through games

(USC Thesis Other)

Fall from Grace: an experiment in understanding and challenging player beliefs through games

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content

FALL FROM GRACE:
AN EXPERIMENT IN UNDERSTANDING AND CHALLENGING PLAYER BELIEFS
THROUGH GAMES

by

Jivitesh Singh Dhaliwal
A Thesis Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC SCHOOL OF CINEMATIC ARTS
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
INTERACTIVE MEDIA & GAMES DIVISION

May 2020

Copyright 2020 Jivitesh Singh Dhaliwal
ii

Acknowledgements
These past three years have been nothing less than the most perfect dream for me. I have become
a better game director, designer and person because of some incredible people.
I want to thank my mentors and thesis advisors for their advice and guidance.

My journey in games started with your book, Tracy. I would never have thought that I’d be so
lucky to have you be my mentor in real life! I am truly grateful for your mentorship and for
teaching me on how to make not just good, but great games. I would never have found my true
calling without you.
Andreas, thank you for giving me the greatest gift: of teaching me how to think. Your class
inspired me to explore ideas that I would never have without you. You are also a source of
constant inspiration!
Richard, thank you for being so generous with your mentorship, passion, kindness and hugs,
those always make my day! Working with you on Phenomenology taught me so much about the
great potential of games. Your understanding and gentle push make me want to emulate you!
John, your clarity of vision and generosity is something I aspire to reach one day.

I hope you all continue to mentor me through the next phase of my life.

I also want to express my sincerest gratitude to my team: Devon Gadzinski, Shuyan Li, Aparajita
Nautiyal, Jessy Li, Robert Wolf, Cloud Tian, Meny Menczel, Kathryn Yu, Joanna Shen, Akil
Anderson, Jenny Li, Zhen Ai, Alexandria Morales, Haider Khan, Jaivansh Mathur, Remi Wedin,
iii

Eric Pratt, Olivia Peace and Abby Sherlock: I couldn’t have been blessed with a better team! Fall
from Grace is more beautiful than what I could have imagined because of all of you.

I would also like to express thanks to my amazingly talented and wonderful MFA cohort: we did
it, folks! You guys are the best! Rudi, Karter and Caleb: mischief managed! Mariana, Bonnie and
Mer: those karaoke sessions in thesis space will remain one of my best moments during thesis
year; Michael & Elle: we have to eat more cookies; Bria, Brooke, Ahmad, Ryan: I know you’ll
all be making history; Iris and Qiqi: you’ve always been the most wonderful friends!

Thank you, Anshul, Jyoti, Puru, Aditi and AVP for cheering me all the way.

Thank you, Anantika, for always believing in me. I can’t imagine how I would have gone
through this without your support. We are one step closer to taking over the world!

To Mama, Papa and Puneet: you have been my greatest inspiration, the source of my strength.
You have given so much to get me here. All I am is because of you.
iv

Table of Contents
Acknowledgements ii
List of Figures vii
List of Tables vii
Abstract viii
Chapter 1: Belief vs. Knowledge: Understanding ourselves through Games 1
a. Introduction 1
i. Requirements to run this experiment 1
ii. Why games are the perfect candidate to explore this idea 2
b. Designing the Thought experiment 4
i. Building blocks of the philosophical sandbox: creating an ethical
dilemma using differences between different philosophies 4
ii. Understanding the player’s belief at different stages 5
iii. Providing a contextual narrative rhetoric to continually challenge the
player’s unique belief state without positing a ‘right’ choice 5
iv. Designing moments of reflection for players to understand and reflect
on their own beliefs 6
v. Affording players the choice to change their belief based on new
Knowledge 7
Chapter 2: Narrative Structure 8
a. Weaving an ethical dilemma in the into the core of the narrative 8
i. Choosing a plausible, contentious issue to provide constant conflict:
overpopulation and a pandemic 8
v

ii. The real story: A thinking machine gains consciousness 9
b. Branching structure of Fall from Grace 12
i. Characters and character story arcs 14
1. The Creator, Daniel 14
2. Leah 15
3. Soc 16
ii. Humanizing the other choice: embodied experience for a contrasting
perspective 18
c. Biblical underpinnings in a near-future sci-fi 19
i. ‘Fall of Man’ and consciousness 19
ii. Reinterpreting mythological characters and adapting them for a
science fiction story 20
d. Impact of Covid-19 on the evolution of the narrative 20
i. The spread of a pandemic while making a game featuring a pandemic 20
ii. Playtest data correlation during covid-19 quarantine 21
Chapter 3: Character Design 22
a. Silent (unformulated) characters vs. verbalizing (pre-formulated) characters 22
b. Designing morally difficult characters that audiences can relate with 23
Chapter 4: Game Design 24
a. The mechanics of building trust 24
b. The mechanic of influencing the world around the player 27
c. Elevating narrative drama through level design 27
Chapter 5: Lessons Learned and Future Work 29
vi

a. Difficulties encountered with philosophical game design 29
b. Incorporating design practices to future design 29
c. Avenues for research 29
a. Impact that I am assuming and aiming for 30
Bibliography 31
vii

List of Figures
Figure 1. Node 3 of AI World 17
Figure 2. Branching Narrative Structure of Fall from Grace 19
Figure 3. Leah in the boardroom conflict scene 22
Figure 4. SOC inspiration 23
Figure 5. SOC concept art 24
Figure 6. Level layout of Node 1 30
Figure 7. Node 2, the player’s first encounter with Soc 31
Figure 8. 3D level layout of a node in Fall from Grace 32
Figure 9. Level design augmenting narrative tension in Node 3 33

List of Tables
Table 1. Narrative Beats and Mechanics of Fall from Grace 16

viii

Abstract
This paper describes in detail the process of implementing the Socratic idea of belief vs.
knowledge through games. It breaks down the idea into a list of requirements and establishes a
framework that can be applied to design games to challenge players’ beliefs. It also builds upon
ideas of using Socratic dialogue in games, as well as discoveries made during the design of the
game, Fall from Grace that help establish a strong framework. The paper concludes with
possible applications of this work in the design of virtual beings as well as future research that
can build upon this idea.
1

Chapter 1: Belief vs. Knowledge: Knowing ourselves through Games
Introduction
My mission in life is to create interactive media that helps players understand themselves better.
A pivotal moment in my life came about when I read Plato’s book Meno, a Socratic dialogue
between Socrates and Meno, which explores the definition of virtue. The most influential idea I
read in the book was the idea of true belief vs. knowledge (Plato’s Meno, 2004), which
expressed that we start with a belief about a virtue, and through experience, gain knowledge
which ties down that belief to a truth.

Each individual arrives at their own set of beliefs based on the ‘truths’ or knowledge they gain
through experiences. The more knowledge we gain, the better equipped we are to understand our
own selves. Fall from Grace is my attempt at leveraging this idea to help my players understand
themselves better.

Requirements to run this experiment
In order to design an experience that challenges an individual’s belief and helps them gain
knowledge, we would require the following:
1. A participating individual
2. A topic that they have a true belief about
3. An instance (which I will call system in the following) hat is able to identify this belief
4. An innate ability of the system to provide relevant missing information that challenges
the individual’s true belief and leads to greater knowledge, and finally
5. The ability to repeat this process.
2

The role of the system that identifies and challenges the participant’s belief has traditionally been
played by a human. In Meno, Plato’s Socrates acts this system, challenging Meno through
contextual questions. However, it is not just humans who can make good systems.

Why games are the perfect candidate to explore this idea
Interactive media and games in particular are also at a unique advantage to act as the system.
While other media may have a participating individual and useful information to disseminate,
they lack the ability to identify an individual’s belief and challenge it appropriately. Passive
media offer only a one-way communication originating from the content creator which ends at
the audience. However, for this idea to work, we require a two-way communication which
allows the participant to communicate their present belief state to the system, and allows for the
system to respond to this state with the relevant missing information that will lead to greater
knowledge for the participant.

Interactivity is a crucial component to understand the participant’s current state of belief. By
allowing a player to take an action and keeping track of the player’s choice, an interactive/ game
system gains the ability to respond appropriately. While it is certainly plausible that players may
choose to behave differently within a game and obfuscate their true beliefs, for the purpose of
this thesis, I am going to assume that participants playing Fall from Grace react to the game
system naturally, based on their current beliefs while remaining open to gaining knowledge.

3

So far, out of the requirements for this experiment I wrote earlier, games can have a participating
player with a set of beliefs, as well as a system that can understand the player’s belief from the
player’s actions and communicate some information back to the player and repeat the process.
The next question then becomes: what kind of and which information should the game
communicate back to the player?

In his book, When is True Belief Knowledge?, Foley argues that to take the individual from true
belief to knowledge, they need to be aware of important truths surrounding their belief (Foley,
2012). Presenting the important truths through a game means that the designer/ system needs to
have the required knowledge and pass it along to the player at the right moment. Of the ways to
communicate missing information and transferring knowledge, stories are among the most
commonly and effectively used.

Games, especially narrative games which can present contextual narrative rhetoric, meet all the
criteria for being able to run this experiment. This is why I chose to execute my thesis as a
narrative based game. In the following sections I dive deeper into the thought experiment,
detailing the philosophical, narrative and interaction structures among others and conclude how
games are indeed powerful media to help players understand themselves better.

4

Designing the Thought experiment
The pursuit of my goal of executing this experiment led to the following goals:
1. Design a narrative with a strong ethical dilemma at its core
2. Understand the player’s belief at different stages of playing the game
3. Provide a contextual narrative rhetoric to continually challenge the player’s unique belief
state without positing a ‘right’ choice
4. Design moments of reflection for players to understand and reflect on their own beliefs
5. Provide players the choice to change their belief based on new knowledge
Each of these sections are described in greater detail below:

Building blocks of the philosophical sandbox: creating an ethical dilemma using the
differences between different philosophies
The most important requirement to create an ethical dilemma at the core of the narrative was that
it needed to support fundamentally different philosophical lenses through which the player could
view the core-conflict. A requirement would be that the outcome of making a choice based on
different philosophies should be drastically different. The game would also need to understand
which philosophy the player was leaning towards when making their choice. In order to reduce
the scope of the game, the choices we would afford would have to cater to only a few
philosophies.

A few years ago, I took Michael Sandel’s immensely popular Harvard ethics course and then
read his book, Justice: What’s the Right Thing To Do? (Sandel, 2009) learning from which I
5

found two philosophies that stuck out to me: Utilitarianism and Kant’s Categorical Imperative
and so I decided to use these two as the basis of driving my ethical conflict in Fall from Grace.

The narrative my team and I designed (see the narrative section for more details) broadly allows
the player to choose between the two philosophies: ‘the greater good for the greater number of
people’ and ‘anything that harms humans cannot be saving humanity’.

Understanding the player’s belief at different stages
Due to the non-procedural nature of narrative, I decided to reduce scope by splitting the game
into different ‘nodes’. Each node would consist of a chunk of narrative which would provide new
information. The player could go from one node to the next by making a choice based on the
knowledge gained through the new information. This allowed the game system to understand
what the player’s belief was at the different stages of the narrative.

Providing a contextual narrative rhetoric to continually challenge the player’s unique
belief state without positing a ‘right’ choice
The narrative ‘knowledge’ that the player receives at each node in Fall from Grace is influenced
by the choice they made in the previous node. The game system’s understanding of the player’s
belief through their choice allows the game to respond selectively to that player. Fall from Grace
has a branching narrative structure, and the branch that the player lands on is contextual to their
previous choices. While thinking about this narrative structure, I realized that the game needed to
have a central character who could back up the narrative the player received, and try to get them
to adopt the ‘other’ belief, always trying to get the player to challenge their thinking. This idea
6

was inspired by Socratic dialogue and led to the creation of the character SOC in honor of
Socrates (see character section for more information).

Designing moments of reflection for players to understand and reflect on their own beliefs
This experiment would be meaningful only if it mimicked the participant’s ethical decision
making process in real life. As Bandura has pointed out, participants can make correct ethical
decisions when not under any pressure (Bandura, 1999), however, the real world seldom works
like an ethics class. In Fall from Grace, there are varying degrees of stress involved with
decision making at each node. In order for players to go with their instinctual choice, their true
belief, the first node at which they must choose is designed as a high stress environment. The
player is given a very short time window in which to make their choice. They are not given any
time at all to reflect on their choice, and by extension their beliefs. However, subsequent choices
take place under less stress, and are designed to allow players to take more time to make their
choices if they need to. Other characters in the game, especially Soc, also act as external
reflectors, encouraging the player to think deeper about their choice.
In Reality from Fantasy, Balzac brings up the differences in participants’ engagement with ethics
when they have no personal stake in the outcome (Balzac, 2010). By making the player embody
characters, and by developing the relationship between the player and Soc, Fall from Grace
raises the stakes and encourages the player to think deeper about how they decide to solve the
ethical dilemma.

7

Affording players the choice to change their belief based on new knowledge
The most important part of this thesis is to allow for players to be able to change their belief
models. This choice needed to come right after gaining an understanding of the issue from
another character’s perspective. This choice based belief switching is incorporated into the
branching narrative structure. While the game has a two branch structure, the ability of players to
switch branches the deeper they go into the narrative is what makes this experiment possible.

8

Chapter 2: Narrative Structure
Weaving an ethical dilemma in the into the core of the narrative
Choosing a plausible, contentious issue to provide constant conflict: overpopulation and a
pandemic
Based on the two philosophies I decided to use, and having personally experienced problems
associated with overpopulation (I’m from India, a country whose population is now 1.3 billion),
the one topic kept coming to my mind as the core conflict driver for my thesis was
overpopulation in a resource depleting world. However, overpopulation just by itself did not
drive enough conflict. In Pixar Storytelling: Rules for Effective Storytelling Based on Pixar's
Greatest Films, Dean Movshovitz (points out how the best Pixar films all have a strong conflict
built into their premise (Movshovitz, 2016). Professor Tracy Fullerton’s guidance helped me
identify how to structure the ethical dilemma with the narrative. Since the player had to face an
ethical dilemma, the choice would need to be whether to save people or not with the choice
needing to have a dramatic tension building it up. That led to the idea of a deadly pandemic that
has spread to over a quarter of the population and threatens to cause unprecedented loss of
human lives.

The core ethical dilemma that the player faces is to choose between saving a significant
percentage of the world’s population from an ongoing severe pandemic or to let those with the
disease die a painless death and ease the resource drain on a dying planet, so that others may live
more humane lives.

9

Research into population growth patterns (UN World Population Prospects, 2019) led me to
choose the setting of the story: Fall from Grace is set in 2083 AD when the world’s population
has reached 11 billion and computers have vastly more processing power. Rising population and
decreasing resources over the past few decades has led to the crumbling of governmental support
functions in developing nations. Essentials, including food, have become harder to attain for
everyone, while corruption and self-interest have become predominant virtues. For a sizable
population, living conditions are less than humane.

The pandemic that we reference in the game (Nixavid-83) falls in the family of Severe Acute
Respiratory Syndrome viruses because we needed it to spread from patient to patient quickly. I
talk more about this in the subsection on the impact of covid-19 on the evolution of the narrative.

The real story: A thinking machine gains consciousness
While on the outset it feels like the story is about this ethical dilemma, the story is actually about
an AI gaining consciousness. The idea that suffering might be a requirement for an advanced AI
to gain consciousness (Metzinger, 2015) appealed to me as a rich area for narrative exploration.
The ethical dilemma described earlier proved to be the perfect source for that suffering. It also
seemed poetic: humans have managed to alter animal populations to create more balanced
ecosystems (Brett, 2015), but population control of humans by humans could result in a biased
preference. However, by introducing another species, the question of human population control
becomes more approachable.
In Fall from Grace, the player plays as an AI computer virus, programmed to sabotage a
supercomputer that is trying to synthesize a vaccination for the pandemic. The narrative structure
10

of Fall from Grace is divided into three sections based on the three stages of consciousness the
player’s AI character goes through:
1. Unconsciousness
2. Consciousness
3. Higher Consciousness
Ludo-narrative harmony was the most important narrative design challenge my narrative team
had. The mechanics and narrative needed to mirror each other and evolve over the course of the
game, reflecting the state that the AI character is in. Each section builds on the mechanics
introduced in the previous section.
Section Narrative Beat Mechanics

Unconsciousness
Waking up in the world, only
a plugged in wire is visible
Unplug the wire from the chip
The world is revealed slowly
showing the player the next
area they needed to go to
Explore the world and unplug
the wire by moving
The world gets harder to
navigate, the next plug
requires creative thinking
abilities
Solve 3D puzzles to change
the environment around you
and to reach the plugs
A voice starts guiding you
towards plugs protected by
Plan and strategize to evade
enemies while navigating the
11

sentries world

Consciousness
Creator appears and reveals
the central ethical dilemma:
the player as a computer virus
to sabotage the creation of a
life saving drug in an
overpopulated world

Agency to follow the creator
or to go against him

Gaining knowledge through
embodied experiences and
experiencing human suffering
Comfort other characters,
agency to switch beliefs

Higher Consciousness
Making a final choice based
on knowledge and experience
gained

Reflect on choices made
Table 1
Narrative Beats and Mechanics of Fall from Grace

The mechanics develop from survival oriented mechanics to taking the player towards logical
and emotional reasoning and finally to helping the player understand themselves through
reflection. The narrative develops from the AI character blindly following the ‘voice of God’ of
their creator, to the creator becoming a peer and allowing the player to go with or against the
creator, to finally the AI character itself becoming a superior being after having gone through
suffering and having made it through a tough ethical dilemma.

12

Branching structure of Fall from Grace
To reduce the scope of the thesis, the branching structure was kept at the minimum level required
to conduct the experiment. The narrative takes place in two different worlds:
1. The AI world
2. Memory Fragments
Figure 1: Node 3 of the AI world

The AI world is an abstract space presented as the inside of the super computer. When in the AI
world, the player encounters the character Soc, a snake (see Reinterpreting mythological
characters section below for more). Soc’s purpose is to challenge the player on their initial belief
based choice that the player is required to make at node three.
There are five ‘nodes’ in the game: a node represents a different game level where new narrative
information is provided to the player. In the first two nodes, the player learns about the world
around them and can only hear the creator’s voice telling them what to do. They can interact with
13

the world around them by navigating the world and ‘unplugging’ the chips that they see around
them as their creator, Daniel asks of them. This action causes enemies to attack them. However,
for the most part, this game is much more heavily focused on the narrative, and so the use of
enemies in the game is mainly to drive up narrative tension. There is some narrative sprinkled
through the first two nodes: the boardroom scene and the creator’s voice over. The player
encounters Soc in node two. Soc is an essential companion character in Fall from Grace. I
describe the boardroom scene along with others in detail in the following sections. In node three,
the player is made aware of why they were created: as a computer virus to sabotage the creation
of a life saving vaccine. Socrates is also revealed to be a previous iteration of the player AI: a
computer virus designed to bring down the machine from the inside. Daniel makes his intentions
clear: he wants to bring down the computer system so that patients with the disease may die off
because he sees that as the only way to reduce suffering on the resource depleted planet. We also
introduce Leah in node three, as the CEO of the pharmaceutical company who is desperately
trying to get the player to oppose the creator.
If the player chooses to go with the creator, they go forward to node four. However, if they
choose to go against the creator, they need to go back and fix the computer chips that they
unplugged in nodes one and two. In order to reduce confusion, the nodes the player can go back
to are referred to as node 2 prime and node 1 prime.
In nodes four and five, and two prime and one prime, the character backstories, referred to as
‘memory fragments’ are introduced based on the choices that the player makes.
14

Figure 2. Branching narrative structure of Fall from Grace

The memories get more intense and personal if the player does not change their initial belief at
the end of the node. These memory fragments are described in detail in the next section.

Characters and character arcs
There are three main characters in the narrative who are designed specifically to bring out the
different player beliefs. The three main characters are:
1. The Creator (Daniel)
2. Leah
3. Soc

Daniel
Daniel grew up as an orphan with his older sister, Grace in a resource depleted city. At the age
of 9, when his sister was 12, he lost her to a stampede at a food bank. This memory shapes his
desire to prevent the suffering of others like his sister. As he grows up, he tries to change the
15

world around him, specifically to reduce overpopulation. When he is older, he goes to slums,
trying to teach the poor people residing in the slums to have fewer children. However, he is
young and naive as he does not understand that the poor don’t have children because they want
to, they have them because they need more hands to feed the mouths. When in the slums, he
faces dejection and feels disillusioned at being unable to help the circumstances. The third and
final memory fragment associated with Daniel that players experience is a boardroom
confrontation between him and Leah. Daniel has gone on to become one of the most successful
AI designers at the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporation. He is the chief architect of a
highly sophisticated computer system that can decode the genetic makeup of any viral disease,
and can run simulations to produce a low cost vaccine for the disease. However, his boss, Leah,
who is the CEO of the corporation does not want to lose profit by releasing low cost medicines.
He ends up feeling even more disillusioned, feeling like the only way to save the planet is to let
nature take its course and allow the quick acting virus to reduce the population. His belief in his
idea is so strong that even though he has the same disease himself, he does not want the cure to
exist. His memories are presented to the player in the reverse chronological order, with the most
intimate and moving memory presented in node one prime, shown to the player only if the player
believes that Daniel’s philosophy is wrong. Daniel urges the player to bring down the
supercomputer that he created, so that it can no longer simulate the vaccine that could save the
lives of infected patients.

Leah
Leah is a middle aged executive and CEO of the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporation. She
is initially shown to have an aggressive and selfish outlook. However, if players choose to go
16

with Daniel’s philosophy, they see memory fragments from Leah’s life which show her
experiencing the pandemic first hand: the first time inside a hospital elevator, seeing the sick and
the dying patients, and the second time in a hospital room with her son who has also contracted
Nixavid-83 and who innocently encourages her to save the lives of everyone else. Her story arc
is designed to show that humans are flexible and can change, even from being greedy to wanting
to help others. The second part of her narrative is inspired by Buddhist mythology which depicts
Siddhārtha Gautama discovering suffering when He saw a sick person, a dying person and a dead
person. Leah urges the player to try to save the people by fixing the chips they unplugged and by
doing so, allow the supercomputer to continue producing the vaccine.

Figure 3. Leah in the boardroom conflict scene

SOC
SOC is the most important character of this thesis. She embodies the idea of Socrates and his
questioning nature. She is inspired by my interpretation of the biblical tale of the ‘Fall of Man’
(see the section on biblical underpinnings below), and also represents the character Grace
17

(Daniel’s twelve year old sister) who died protecting Daniel. SOC is the player’s companion
character, with them throughout the AI world.
SOC was designed by Daniel to serve the same purpose that the player is serving, i.e. to bring
down the supercomputer from the inside. However, due to her size (she is massive in relation to
the player) she got caught early and needs the player’s help to go further. The player’s AI
character is designed as a more fragile character who needs her help to get through the harsh
computer world, while Soc is gigantic and powerful, able to defend against enemies, a design
inspired by Fumito Ueda’s work on The Last Guardian (Stuart, 2015). Her true purpose is to
question the player’s belief by trying to nudge them to think more about the path they did not
choose. She personifies doubt and the knowledge that we don’t always have complete
knowledge. No matter which choice the player makes, Soc is designed to make a friendlier case
for the other choice. Her loyalty to the player’s AI character is complete however. Even though
she believes in the opposite of what the player believes in, she protects the player. SOC passes
away towards the end of the game protecting the player, in effect raising the stakes for the
player’s final choice of what they believe in.
18

Figure 4. SOC inspiration

Figure 5. SOC concept art

Humanizing the other choice: embodied experience for a contrasting perspective
19

The narrative experienced by the player as ‘memory fragments’ is through an embodied
experience in Virtual Reality (VR). When embodying Daniel or Leah, the player can experience
the situation by ‘being in their shoes’. Studies (Philippe et al, 2018; Peck et al; Yee and
Bailenson) show that embodiment increases empathic abilities and influences self-concept and
behavior. This makes the presentation of the player’s opposite belief through an embodied point
of view narrative have a greater impact on the player, and makes them more likely to switch their
beliefs. At the very least, the embodied perspective gives them a different lens to see the problem
through.

Biblical Underpinnings
‘Fall of Man’ and consciousness
Fall from Grace draws a significant number of ideas from the biblical story of ‘Fall of Man’, in
which Adam and Eve are shunned from the Garden of Eden for failing to follow God’s explicit
orders to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge. Upon re-reading the story last year, my
interpretation of the story was that it was a story about consciousness. My interpretation is that
Adam and Eve are in a state of bliss in the perfect walled garden as long as they remain in a state
of semi-consciousness about their own existence. As long as they do not consume from the Tree
of Knowledge, they would remain in the same state of bliss. However, the snake represents doubt
which encourages them to eat from the tree. They choose to assert their autonomy by going
against the express wishes of their creator and gain ‘knowledge’ which makes them self-
conscious. This is the knowledge of good and evil which brings suffering along with it, and
combining ideas from Metzinger, it is this suffering that brings about consciousness. Upon
20

researching this topic more, I found more work (Fitzpatrick, 2011) alluding to similar
interpretations. Some of them argue that by gaining this knowledge, humans have been elevated
to the rank of Gods.

Reinterpreting mythological characters and adapting them for a science fiction story
I wanted to take this idea and apply it to an advanced AI being. In Fall from Grace, Daniel plays
the role of the Creator, or the AI’s God. SOC represents doubt about an idea, the ethical dilemma
represents the forbidden fruit and the human suffering experienced is eventually what elevates
the AI to the level of its Gods.
Impact of Covid-19 on the evolution of the narrative
The spread of a pandemic while making a game featuring a pandemic
When researching pandemics as the setting for the narrative, I found some references (Gates,
2015) about the likelihood of a major pandemic striking soon and about our level of
preparedness. However, I could never have imagined that there would be a pandemic (covid-19)
while we were making our game about a pandemic.
The emotional response to the pandemic was really powerful, and it made me question if
Daniel’s character would be seen in a much more negative light. Due to this, while we were
originally designing the branches to be balanced, we decided to add a more emotional scene for
Daniel. This made his morally difficult character be more relatable (see section on Designing
morally difficult characters).
Additionally, some scenes that take place in the hospital borrowed images from real life hospitals
all over the world. I wanted to capture the emotion of despair that people were feeling looking at
those images to make a stronger case for Leah’s perspective, to show why her character evolved.
21

Playtest data correlation during covid-19 quarantine
At the time of writing this paper, we have not conducted additional playtests to understand how
players respond to Daniel’s character given the current circumstances.
22

Chapter 3: Character Design
Silent (unformulated) characters vs. Verbalizing (pre-formulated) characters
Jeremy Bernstein’s GDC talk (Kidwell, 2018) on the different kinds of protagonists made me
aware of the differences between silent and verbalizing characters. Silent characters do not have
any clear wants, or needs; they are like empty vessels that the player can pour themselves into,
while verbalizing characters like Nathan Drake from Uncharted (Uncharted 2, 2009) have very
clear wants, needs, goals and obstacles that are set independently of the player’s actions. The
establishment of strong wants, needs, goals and obstacles sets up strong characters, and strong
characters are better at emotionally moving players.

This presented a great opportunity for the design of the different characters in Fall from Grace.
The player can embody three characters: the AI virus, Daniel and Leah. The AI virus needed to
be a fair, external agent that could take an unbiased decision based on the knowledge it got
through its experiences. This reasoning allowed me to choose my AI character to be a silent
character.

Both Daniel and Leah are verbalizing characters, expressing their wants, needs and desires even
when embodied by the player. To do this, I choose to keep their interactions passive: the player
could not change Daniel or Leah’s narratives through any actions they took. They could only
engage with other characters in a more passive manner. Although this choice came at the
expense of player agency, however, it worked perfectly for the purposes of my thesis.

23

Designing morally difficult characters that audiences can relate with
Both Leah and Daniel embody the most extreme versions of their philosophies. This can make
characters feel alien if not done right. To make my character relatable, I felt that they needed to
have reached their set of wants, needs and views by having gone through more relatable
experiences. It was the different set of events which when strung together would make the
characters feel relatable. To do this, we followed the following narrative design principles:
1. Show characters having failed when trying to achieve their wants
2. Show that characters are aware of how they are perceived due to their extreme moral
choices, and make them acknowledge this to the player
3. Present context about how they arrived at their unique positions through memory
fragments
4. Bring players into their embodied perspective to help create emotional empathy for the
characters
5. Show them to be subtly human in other areas through small actions
By following these design principles, we managed to make our characters feel less rigid and
more human.

24

Chapter 4: Game Design
The mechanics of building trust
The player’s AI character is designed to be tiny in comparison to the environment. The effect is
compounded by placing it in VR. These choices are deliberate: we wanted the player to feel
insignificant and for the creator, Daniel to feel larger than life. This choice also allowed my art
and design teams to create SOC as a much larger being that could protect the player. There is
only one kind of ‘enemy’ in the game. The player’s AI character is entirely vulnerable to this
enemy. The player needs SOC’s help to get past these enemies. However, SOC is also somewhat
vulnerable: SOC does not attack the enemies, but does get hurt by the enemy’s attacks.

SOC’s design was inspired by the design of Trico in The Last Guardian as mentioned earlier.
We also needed to build trust by sometimes putting SOC in danger and requiring the player to
save SOC. This relationship’s development was greatly dependent on the level layout. Some
level layouts are shown below.
25

Figure 6. Level layout of Node 1

As shown in Figure 6, the player can teleport only along connected wires. If a switch is open, the
player may not travel there. The solid filled circles show where the switch connections are and
the color defines which switches will be operated by these switches. For example, the purple
switch connection above ‘Chip 2’ closes the switch at the purple circle location and allows the
player to move forward to ‘Chip 3’. The red triangles represent enemies. By themselves the
26

player can not overcome the enemies, so their only way past them is to quickly move past the
slow moving enemies.

Figure 7. Node 2, the player’s first encounter with Soc

Soc is unable to pass the red areas called ‘Soc-stop’. The player however, can pass through these
areas unscathed. They can also temporarily turn off these stops by manipulating simple puzzles
at the console if it exists. The dotted wire represents a path that can be traversed only once,
which causes SOC to wait for the player to unlock the area for her to progress. The player can
only leave from Chip 2 if SOC is simultaneously pulling a lever with the player. All these
mechanics help build a close relationship between the player and SOC.
27

Figure 8. 3D level layout of a node in Fall from Grace

Mechanics of influencing the world around the player
The player can make their choice by unplugging or plugging the wires at the chips marked in
Figure 7 and in Figure 8. If they believe in the creator’s philosophy, they would need to unplug
all the chips in the five levels, otherwise, they need to plug back in wires into the chips in the
first two nodes that they unplugged. Players also need to ‘infect’ the last chip on a node before
proceeding

Elevating narrative drama through level design
The level design in Fall from Grace is crafted to support the narrative. Some levels are created to
augment the narrative tension by placing enemies in certain ways.
28

Figure 9. Level design augmenting narrative tension in Node 3

Consider the level layout of Node three as shown in Figure 9: the enemies are placed all around
the player. The destruction of the wire coming out of Chip 0 indicates to the player that they
have only one direction to go in. As soon as they complete the circuit, the enemies are triggered,
raising dramatic tension, and forcing the player to take a quick action. This is a special condition
for node three, where we want the player to make a gut instinct, belief based choice. By
structuring the level in this way, we manage to raise the tension and force the players to act
quickly.

29

Chapter 5: Lessons Learned and Future Work
Difficulties encountered with Philosophical Game Design
The greatest difficulty I encountered while designing a game that relied heavily on philosophy
was making the game engaging while also staying true to the philosophical experiment. Adding a
narrative layer based on a rigid underlying philosophical structure is an uncommon writing
technique, and I found out why while making Fall from Grace. It can lead to dead states, boring
situations, and sometimes it can require rework on the entire story structure.

I feel that now, at the end of my experiment, I am finally in a position when I completely
understand the extent of the experiment. I found it challenging and rewarding to craft balanced
narratives and coming up with choice structures that forced players to think harder. I would
consider this experiment a success, if even a single player goes through Fall from Grace and
changes their belief based on the knowledge they gained after playing this game.

Incorporating design practices in future design
I intend to use quite a lot of ideas from Fall from Grace in my future work. My mission has
always been to help my players understand themselves better, but more than anything, making
this game has helped me understand myself better. I will continue my exploration of contextual
narrative rhetoric and try to move it closer to procedural rhetoric while thinking about virtual
being design. I think that Fall from Grace has a lot of rich ideas that will be applicable to virtual
being design, especially when Natural Language Processing (NLP) becomes more mainstream
and accessible.
Avenues for Research
30

I made a lot of assumptions while making this game, including assuming that an instinctual
choice reflects our subconscious belief. I think this is a question we can test through games in
future research projects. I am also not entirely satisfied with the way I designed reflection. Even
though there are very few games asking these questions, I feel that there needs to be a lot more
research into how to make players reflect on their choices.

Impact
Impact that I am assuming and aiming for
I am aiming for my thesis to create a discussion around interaction and narrative design
structures that can help players understand themselves better. I also hope that Fall from Grace
will be seen as an example which proves that philosophy and ethics can be engaging and with the
right underlying design structures, can leave a lasting impact on a player’s life.

31

Bibliography
1. Balzac, Stephen R. Reality from Fantasy: Using Predictive Scenarios to Explore Ethical
Dilemmas. 2010.
2. Bandura, Albert. "Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities." Personality
and social psychology review 3.3 (1999): 193-209.
3. Bertrand, Philippe et al. “Learning Empathy through Virtual Reality : Multiple Strategies
for Training Empathy-Related Abilities Using Body Ownership Illusions in Embodied
Virtual Reality.” (2018): , Guegan, Jérôme, Robieux, Léonore et al. (2 more authors)
(2018) Learning empathy through virtual reality : Multiple strategies for training
empathy–related abilities using body ownership Illusions in embodied virtual reality.
Frontiers in Robotics and AI. 26. ISSN 2296–9144. Web.
4. Fitzpatrick, Joseph. The Fall and the Ascent of Man : How Genesis Supports Darwin.
UPA, 2011.
5. Foley, Richard. When Is True Belief Knowledge? Princeton University Press, 2012.
6. French, Brett. 20th Anniversary of Yellowstone Wolf Reintroduction Observed. The
Billings Gazette, 2015.
7. Gates, Bill. “The next outbreak? We’re not ready”, TED, 2014
www.ted.com/talks/bill_gates_the_next_outbreak_we_re_not_ready
8. Kidwell, Emma. GDC 2014: Jeremy Bernstein on How to Establish Characters in Games.
Gamasutra, 2018.
9. Metzinger, Thomas. What if they need to suffer?. Edge.org, 2015.
10. Movshovitz, Dean. Pixar Storytelling: Rules for Effective Storytelling Based on Pixar's
Greatest Films. Bloop Animation, 2016.
32

11. Peck, Tabitha C et al. “Putting Yourself in the Skin of a Black Avatar Reduces Implicit
Racial Bias.” Consciousness and Cognition 22.3 (2013): 779–787. Web.
12. Plato's Meno. Newburyport, MA: Focus Pub./R. Pullins Co, 2004.
13. Sandel, Michael J. Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do?. New York : Farrar, Straus
And Giroux, ©2009. Print.
14. Stuart, Keith. The Last Guardian: Fumito Ueda's quest for epic minimalism. The
Guardian. Retrieved 22 June 2015.
15. Uncharted 2: Among Thieves. For Playstation 3, Naughty Dog, 2009.
16. United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. World
Population Prospects 2019: Highlights. ST/ESA/SER.A/423, 2019.
17. Yee, Nick, and Jeremy Bailenson. “The Proteus Effect: The Effect of Transformed Self‐
Representation on Behavior.” Human Communication Research 33.3 (2007): 271–290.
Web.

Abstract (if available)

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Come with Me: a cooperative game focusing on player emotion

PDF

Penrose Station: an exploration of presence, immersion, player identity, and the unsilent protagonist

PDF

The Toymaker’s Bequest: a defense of narrative‐centric game design

PDF

Light at the End of the Tunnels: level design and its relationship to a spectrum of fear

PDF

Ascension: an analysis of game design for speech recognition system usage and spatialized audio for virtual reality

PDF

The future of games and health: towards responsible interaction design

PDF

duOS

PDF

FRKN WKND and video game mixtapes: developing talent and experience through video game mixtapes

PDF

That's not how it happened: unreliable narration through interactivity

PDF

The Palimpsest project: producing a cultural shift to enable a systematic shift

PDF

Super Opera Squad

PDF

BeachcomberVR: inspiring exploration: concepts in the production of a virtual reality game

PDF

Morana: explore healing potential of virtual reality storytelling

PDF

Revisions: an exploration of metafiction and metaphors in game design

PDF

“Mystical” VR: an experimental VR experience exploring concepts and symbolism of ancient Andean worldview based on the symbol ""La Chakana""

PDF

Garden designing a creative experience with art and music orchestra

PDF

Real fake rooms: experiments in narrative design for virtual reality

PDF

There You Are: an exploration of storytelling methods using in video games

PDF

Cultural-specific mechanics (Case study: Agave VR): can mechanics in games reflect cultural values?

PDF

Ascension: a look into context-dependent memory development in virtual worlds

Asset Metadata

Creator Dhaliwal, Jivitesh Singh (author)

Core Title Fall from Grace: an experiment in understanding and challenging player beliefs through games

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 05/02/2020

Defense Date 04/22/2020

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag belief vs. knowledge,branching narrative,consciousness,contextual narrative rhetoric,dialectical games,game design,Games,interactivity,narrative design,OAI-PMH Harvest,player beliefs,reflection,silent protagonist,Socratic dialogue,virtual reality

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Wixon, Dennis (committee chair), Fullerton, Tracy (committee member), Lemarchand, Richard (committee member)

Creator Email jiviteshdhaliwal@gmail.com,jsdhaliw@usc.edu

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-294533

Unique identifier UC11666093

Identifier etd-DhaliwalJi-8395.pdf (filename),usctheses-c89-294533 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-DhaliwalJi-8395.pdf

Dmrecord 294533

Document Type Thesis

Rights Dhaliwal, Jivitesh Singh

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the a...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA