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Idhan

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Idhan

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Content
Idhan

By
Elliott Mahler
Master of Fine Arts
Interactive Media & Games Division
School of Cinematic Arts
University of Southern California
May 12, 2017

Idhan Mahler 1
Table of Contents
1. Acknowledgments............................................2
2. Introduction..................................................... 2
3. Story Synopsis.................................................. 5
4. Semester 1: Exploration................................... 7
5. Semester 2: Experience Goal........................... 9
6. Production Retrospective............................... 10
7. Conclusion...................................................... 12
8. Work Cited...................................................... 13

Idhan Mahler 2
1. Acknowledgments
This project was made possible by the faculty support, resources, and facilities of the
USC School of Cinematic Arts Interactive Media & Games Division.
I give thanks to faculty advisors Jeff Watson and Margaret Moser; external advisor
Titouan Millet; team members Patrick Bender, Stephanie Henderson, Kelsey Rice, and
Alexander Thomas; thesis class professors Dennis Wixon, Dennis Ramirez, and Kiki Benzon;
fellow IMGD MFA class of 2017 students Bethany Martin, Brian Pickens, Chao Chen, Christina
Orcutt, James Cox, Julian Ceipek, Lishan Amde, Patrick Quah, and Thomas Lu for all of their
feedback, advice, and support.
2. Introduction
Idhan is an exploration in procedural generation’s potential for storytelling and
emotional impact.
The first semester was devoted to the exploration of a new procedural generation game
mechanic: In Idhan, all of the terrain the player encounters is ephemeral. When terrain goes
offscreen, it’s deleted and replaced by new randomly-generated terrain. Terrain features are
constantly changing, and for all practical purposes, every player’s experience is completely
unique. This mechanic leads to the most important of the game’s themes: Everything the player
sees in any given area will be permanently destroyed when they leave, and the player is the
cause of the destruction.
For the first semester, our research question was: Given this procedural generation
game mechanic, how can we develop an emotional investment in the player for this random,

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ephemeral space? Ordinarily, a player knowing that an environment is randomly generated
decreases their emotional investment in that environment. This effect was present in the recent
game No Man’s Sky , where the excitement of exploring new worlds decays into apathy, as
Douglas Heaven discusses, quoting Gillian Smith:
“All of the screenshots that came out to promote the game were phenomenally
beautiful,” says Smith. But of course these shots were hand-picked to show the best
that the game could produce. Not every world looks like that – and you don’t see such
variety when moving from one planet to the next. “You need to explore a lot of worlds
to find those interesting places,” she says. But after a number of them – 20 or 50,
wherever your threshold lies – the thrill of planet hopping fades. (Heaven, Douglas)
Our goal was to counteract this effect.
By the end of the first semester, we had a 10-12 minute experience with a
self-contained emotional arc. The player started in a grassy field, encountered cliffs and then
the entrance to the flower mutator. They activated the flower mutator and were saddened by
its destruction, then emerged to find the field full of flowers.
The second semester was spent taking this emotional arc and expanding it into an
experience goal for the entire game. Specifically, in observing players in playtests during the
first semester, I found myself frustrated that players would constantly ask when they would
unlock new abilities, search for a way to progress, or look for an enemy to defeat, etc.
Consequently, we adopted the experience goal which became the research goal for the
semester: We want the player to slow down and appreciate the current state of the game for
what it is, rather than rushing to find the next progression.
There are some key challenges with this goal. First, almost all game players, regardless

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of experience level, go into games expecting there to be challenge and progression. Second,
without traditional gameplay systems, it’s easy for players to get bored, even ones who have
accepted the game’s premise of little challenge or progression.

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3. Story Synopsis
Idhan is divided narratively into three parts: “Healthy”, “Sick”, and “Dying”. In the first
part, the world is verdant and full of life. In the second part, some of the plant life is dead or
sick. In the third part, the world’s waterways have dried up, and all life is visibly sick or dead.
Serving as a transition between each part is a “Mutator” which concentrates the beauty and
essence of a particular aspect of the world into a single spot.
The first mutator is the “Flower mutator”. The player finds the flower mutator deep in a
cave, and “activates” it by moving over several glowing circles on the ground (See figure 1) .
Once activated, the mutator blooms into a peaceful field of flowers, lit by a sunbeam shining
through a hole in the ceiling. The player can play or rest here for as long as they like -- but the
instant they move outside the circle, all the flowers rapidly die and the light fades. When they
leave the cave, they find all the flowers in the world to be dead or dying.

Figure 1: Flower mutator

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The second mutator is the “water mutator”. They find a whirlpool in one of the world’s
many rivers, which sucks them down into an underwater tunnel system full of rapidly-flowing
water. The player navigates this tunnel system until they find a central area surrounded by
powerful waterfalls (See figure 2) . This area is again a peaceful place where the player may stay
as long as they like, but when they try to leave, all the water and all the waterfalls dry up and
are replaced by brown, cracked ground. When they leave, they find that the world’s rivers have
suffered the same fate.

Figure 2: The entrance to the water mutator
The final mutator, which ends the game, is the “light mutator”. The sun sets, and
fireflies come out to light the world during the night. Some of them lead the player to a central
location full of glowing lights and playful fireflies. Once again, the player can stay as long as they
like, and once again, when the player leaves, all the lights go out and the screen is black. The
player’s character is still visible, but nothing else. The player roams around in darkness for a

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moment before they also fade out.
Each of these mutators reflects the theme of the core mechanic: When the player
leaves, they cause the area they were located to be destroyed. We make the mutators as
unique and beautiful as possible to deepen the emotional impact of their destruction.
During the first mutator, the player doesn’t know that leaving will destroy it. In the
following two mutators, there are context clues to make sure the player recognizes they’re in
another mutator. Once the player understands, they know that leaving will destroy them. This
creates a bittersweet moment in which the player knows they eventually must leave, but is
reluctant to leave because they don’t want to destroy the mutator. Eventually, they decide they
can’t wait any longer, come to terms with the impending loss, and leave.
4. Semester 1: Exploration
Our goal for the first semester was to find a way to build an emotional connection
between the player and the randomized terrain. We pursued three methods for building
investment.
First Method
The first method was to add “islands of authored content” within the “sea of
randomness”. The player might come across a unique tree, or a ruined building, or a flower
that’s a different color than all the others. This method is effective, but depends heavily on the
amount of authored content present. Unique items diminish in emotional impact every time
they’re encountered, so a large pool of content is needed if a game is to rely on this method.

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Second Method
The second method was to allow the player to influence the terrain generation
algorithm. The terrain would start out almost completely blank, and one by one, players would
encounter “mutators” that would add features to the game world. In the end, we only had time
for one: Players discovered inside, and inside was a cryptic puzzle. Upon solving it, a small field
of flowers bloomed, and then died. When they went outside, flowers were growing in the grass.
This method was successful in developing an emotional reaction in the player. One
playtester said “I feel like I did something wrong” when the flowers died, then expressed
delight when they went outside and saw all the flowers. We conclude that this method has
potential but requires a very large scope to execute effectively, since many different mutators
would need to combine in many unique ways to feel satisfying.
One unexpected result from this method is that if the world begins with homogenous
visuals, the player assumes that anything that stands out must be important, and more
importantly, that it must be interactive in some meaningful way. In the flower mutator cave, we
added flowers lit up by sunbeams as decoration. The flowers moved and rustled when the
player touched them, but had no mechanical effect on the game. These flowers were the most
visually complex thing the player had seen up to that point, so players assumed that they must
be important, and were confused when they didn’t do anything.
Third Method
The final method to build investment was to constraining the play time. Rather than
create an infinite experience, we created a limited experience in which we control and tune the

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amount of time players spend in an area before triggering a new effect. By doing this, we can
move the player on to the next section of the game before they have a chance to grow bored of
the previous section.
I believe constraining the play time has the most potential out of these three methods
for developing a connection between the player and the random content.
5. Semester 2: Experience Goal
In the second semester, our goal was to use our lessons learned in the first semester to
build a game with a focused player experience goal: The player should slow down and
appreciate the game’s current state for it is, at least temporarily, rather than constantly rushing
to find the next progression.
We explored two different techniques to achieve this experience goal:
First Technique
The first technique was to alter the way the player character behaves when idle. Rather
than standing still, the character wanders around and explores the nearby surroundings until
the player moves again. In this way, the player character embodies the experience goal we
want the player to have: They’re content to wander around, checking out nearby things at a
leisurely pace, patiently waiting until the player is ready.
This stands in contrast to idle animations in which the player character just stares at the
screen, waiting for the player to do something. The path the character traces out is also itself a
new visually interesting element that is only present on-screen when the player isn’t moving,
adding a subtle reward for standing still.

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Second Technique
Another technique for encouraging the player to slow down was to fill each mutator
with unique visuals and audio only present within the mutator. The flower mutator has unique
music and more tightly-packed flowers, the water mutator has waterfalls and animations of
waves in the water, etc. We also visibly destroy the mutators when the player leaves,
encouraging the player to stick around and enjoy it while they can, knowing that they can’t see
it again.
Based on playtest results, this technique is effective at encouraging players to stop
within mutators, with players visibly reluctant to leave.

Despite these two methods, Idhan doesn’t achieve its experience goal as well as I’d like
it to. One primary reason for its failure to get players to slow down is the art style. I’m doing
almost all the art myself, and my skills are limited, so the game’s visuals fail to keep the player’s
attention. The fact that the visuals seem crucial to this experience goal is itself an important
result, however.
6. Production Retrospective
What Went Well
Consistently, I heard advice to the effect that actually being productive during the time
you work on your thesis was critical. The urge to distract yourself with social media is seductive,
for example. To counteract this, I set up a full workstation in the thesis lab, and made a
commitment to only work on my thesis project while at this workstation. I installed the Chrome

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plugin StayFocusd to block social media during work time, and made an effort to mentally treat
going to the thesis lab like “going to work”. This was effective at improving my productivity, and
through this I learned that being productive itself is a strong motivator: It is an excellent feeling
going home at the end of an 8 hour work day knowing you got a lot done.
I’m satisfied with the decision to split the project into two different semesters. By
committing to making a fresh start in January, I was able to focus on a smaller-scope deliverable
throughout the first semester. Rather than worrying about my decisions in the first few months
affecting the entire year-long project, I was free to experiment with ideas without the fear that
those ideas might not work. At the beginning of the second semester, I had a much better
understanding what I wanted out of the project due to the work I did during my first semester,
and so I was able to build a solid plan with a clear vision.
What I’d Do Differently
If I were to do another thesis project, I would make a personal commitment to scope
the project as if I was the only one doing any of the work. This includes writing, programming,
art assets, sound effects, music etc.
A trend I saw in my own project and in my classmates’ projects is that teammates who
are students have limited time, and thesis projects tend to be at the bottom of their priority list.
As a result, it’s common for team members to drop off projects, and the ones who stay only
have time or a few hours of work per week. At this work rate, the team leader ends up
spending just as much time producing their team members as the team members spend
working. The net effect on team throughput is as if the team member wasn’t there.
I would still seek out teammates, because I think collaboration is beneficial to almost

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any project, but the project should still be scoped based on the assumption that the team
leader is the only one actually creating assets for the game.
7. Conclusion
In the course of this project, we asked two questions. The first was How can we develop
emotional investment in the player for a procedurally generated space? We tried three methods
- two of which are effective, but require designers to create lots of content: Mixing authored
content into the procedurally generated content, and letting the players’ actions in the game
influence the generation parameters. The final method has the most potential: Constraining
and tuning the play experience to have a definitive end, rather than trying to make an infinite
experience. Through these methods, we successfully developed an emotional connection
between the player and our random environment.
The second question was How can we encourage the player away from constantly trying
to progress, and to simply enjoy the current state of the game for a moment? We tried two
techniques to achieve this goal, both of which show promise. The first is to design the player’s
idle behavior to match the experience goal -- casually exploring the nearby environment, not
pressuring the player to continue. The second technique was to create interesting, unique
visuals and sounds that are only present for small parts of the game. Despite both of these
techniques showing promise at achieving the experience goal, the game overall failed to
capture the goal.

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8. Work Cited
Heaven, Douglas. "When infinity gets boring: What went wrong with No Man’s Sky." New
Scientist. N.p., 6 Sept. 2006. Web. 20 Mar. 2017.

Abstract (if available)

Abstract Idhan is a peaceful game about mindfulness and loss. This thesis paper discusses game design challenges in developing such a game and the results of design decisions. We conclude that a promising avenue for design exploration is ""procedural experience design"", an application of procedural generation that gives fine-grained control over a player's experience.

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Asset Metadata

Creator Mahler, Elliott (author)

Core Title Idhan

School School of Cinematic Arts

Degree Master of Fine Arts

Degree Program Interactive Media

Publication Date 05/08/2017

Defense Date 05/12/2017

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

Tag game design,mindfulness,OAI-PMH Harvest,procedural generation

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Watson, Jeff (committee chair), Millet, Titouan (committee member), Moser, Margaret (committee member)

Creator Email emahler@usc.edu,join.together@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c40-372106

Unique identifier UC11258224

Identifier etd-MahlerElli-5326.pdf (filename),usctheses-c40-372106 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier etd-MahlerElli-5326.pdf

Dmrecord 372106

Document Type Thesis

Rights Mahler, Elliott

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