Adding dialogue to the game

Hi there, friends and foes of democracy!!

The next version of Socratic Democracy is going to be a true (though humble) visual novel, and that requires dialogues. 

I have been in love with the idea of making these dialogues and have written a few some months ago. At the same time, I have been dreading the risk that adding dialogues may make the game slower and boring for most players.

But there is nowhere to escape. Dialogues are a requirement for this game. So, what should be done?

Benefits, risks and costs of dialogues

Benefits of adding dialogues in the game.

• Build character of NPCs. Dialogues are an excellent method to make non-player characters feel rich and alive. Talking and dialoguing characters can display opinions, mannerisms, desires etc. This is particularly interesting for the main NPCs, such as Charon (the philosopher), but is also true for minor characters who are little more than representations of their class (paupers, robbers, traders, slaves, oligarchs).
• Build the universe/world. Dialogues also allow the universe/world to come to life, with mentions of places, events, concerns, concepts.
• Display the polarization. In the story told by Socrates, democracy is facing a crisis of inequality and polarization. As the political science literature makes clear, polarization is not only a result of real-world issues (such as inequality, poverty, pollution, inflation) but also the discourses used to talk about those issues. Polarization feeds and is fed by extreme opinions and proposals.
• Debates are essential in a democracy. Dialogues are essential to portray democracy everywhere, but particularly in ancient Greece. The agora was a place of debate, gossip, accusations; the voting stages were a place for discourses and crowd reactions. Politicians would produce eulogies on cemeteries, and meet and talk to all citizens, rich and poor.
• The protagonist of Socrates’ story is someone who talks. He is portrayed as a young ambitious man who is very sociable, trained by the sharpest sophists, someone who can communicate with the crowds. 

Risks of adding dialogues in the game

• Boring. Dialogues can be boring. This problem only gets worse if dialogues are long, use a bad UI, or don’t provide information that is relevant to the player at that point in time.
• Slow. Dialogues can slow down game play, as there is more to read before advancing. The game was designed to take about 15 minutes to be played in full. But now i fear the duration will increase to, like, 25 minutes or more.
• Replayability. If a player has already seen how a dialogue goes, he may become impatient to see the same dialogue happen again, making the game less replayable. Many visual novels make this less of a problem by needing few replays, but socratic democracy is supposed to require some replays.
• Overload of information. Players can feel overwhelmed by the information provided in dialogues, fearing they have missed some relevant name, clue, or key. This can make the experience less pleasant. Unfortunately, dialogues do exist in part to provide clues, names, and keys, so the player’s reaction is fair.
• Game state dependency. The substance and choices of dialogues often depend on the game state, or the events that happened so far in a game. This makes these dialogues more enjoyable and replayable but means that more dialogue has to be written and the whole game tree of events has to be carefully thought out.
• Cost. Dialogues can severely increase the cost of my game. First, dialogues may increase the number of assets I need to buy, as dialogues ask for variations in character expressions. Second, players may desire those dialogues to have sound. Even if it is not an actual recording of the words been said (think of Celeste), but just a blurred sound, that sound should vary from character to character. Third, dialogues must be written and translated, and often require rewriting after game tests and minor story changes. Fourth, and lastly, dialogues must be programmed. I have learned how to use Dialogue Manager, an excellent Godot app, but I figured it is not in any way a trivial task. Pauses, option choices, and game state dependencies need to be hardcoded, and often, recoded.

Strategies to implement dialogues.

Dialogue as a UI for political campaigns

In modern political life, campaigns involve politicians producing discourses of all kinds to other parties, voters, media etc., who then react, complain, ask for clarification. Politicians then answer, and the cycle goes on. 

In healthy democracies, dialogues make the position of participants clearer over time. Not only does one learn the political positions of others in this process, but also refine their own.

Somehow, the prototype completely skipped dialogues. In it, Leonidas simply selects his campaign promises by clicking buttons in a menu. Currently, there are only 6 options available, which is not enough to make the game as interesting as it should be; it also doesn't do justice to the source text. However, adding more options will make this menu look tired, with just too many buttons on screen at the same time.

What I am thinking now is that dialogues can solve this issue by increasing the number of options available without increasing the number of options shown at any one time. Instead of pressing one or two choices out of X options, Leonidas could be in a dialogue with the people making initially vague promises of broad policies. Upon been questioned by voters to clarify the specifics, Leonidas could then select the exact policy in a menu with few suboptions of the vague promises made before. It would look somewhat like this:

• People: Leonidas, what public policy will you implement if elected?
• Leonidas: I will:
  • fund public services.
  • fund a cultural event. [option selected]
  • improve credit regulations.
• People: Ok, but what exactly are you talking about?
• Leonidas:
  • A new theater play.
  • Public parties. [option selected]
  • A philosophical debate.
• People: Sounds great 😊. But how are you going to fund it?
• Leonidas: I will:
  • raise taxes.
  • confiscate property.
  • reduce government expenditures. [option selected].
• People: How exactly will you do that?
• Leonidas:
  • Fighting corruption.
  • Defunding public baths.
  • Defunding public education. [option selected].

As can be inferred, the actual number of promises available to Leonidas is large. There are two promises been made, one for a public policy and another regarding public revenues. Each of these promises is made by selecting a vague option among 3 available and then selecting a detailed promise among 3 options. Thus, there are 9 options for each promise, and a total of 18 options. If I increase the number of options shown at each stage from 3 to 4, the total number of options grows exponentially to 32.

Besides, at any one time the player is only choosing among 3 (or maybe 4) options. There is no overload. And as the dialogue has a natural progression, it flows.

In hindsight, this is obvious: Campaigns are dialogues. But somehow, I didn’t think about it until this weekend. I swear I have a PhD in politics. I don't lack education, just intelligence😊

Make "universe-rich but non-consequential" dialogues optional

Dialogues which provide information about the universe, but without any consequence for the game play, should be made optional. One way to do so is by using characters that only provide information about the context. Like a... tutorial.

Charon is a sophist and mentor of Leonidas. Charon is thus a tutor. I am envisioning that, in the winter seasons of the game, Leonidas could visit Charon at his place, where they would drink wine upon a fireplace and talk about the game universe. There, Leonidas can learn more about the city’s past, what to expect from other characters and social classes, what use there is to a war. But this visit can be made completely optional. A player who is confident to know all there is to know about the game universe can just decide that these dialogue scenes can be skipped.

Use UI to clarify the consequences of any scene (with dialogue or not)

To make this work, the game design and context must make clear which scenes are optional, and which dialogues do not have game consequences. This is doable. For instance, when the player is looking at the overview map and deciding whether or not to visit Charon, hovering this option with his mouse, a message could appear saying:

Charon’s house

Gain knowledge (optional)

While hovering a different place in the map could bring this message:

Poor neighborhood

Gain knowledge and votes (mandatory)

Or:

Public party

Gain votes and happiness (optional)

Of course, the optional/mandatory dichotomy can also be represented by something graphical, so that eventually the player knows before reading what is the case.

The usual stuff

Besides that, I should of course work on all the usual techniques of the craft: make dialogues short, concise, well written, interesting, responsive etc.

Conclusion

Adding dialogues is a requirement to make Socratic Democracy the game it was set out to be. The political theme, the story narrated by Socrates, and the visual novel genre demand the use dialogues not only as a feature, but as the main mechanic of the game. While including dialogues brings risks and costs, good strategies can be employed to minimize these problems.

I have been dreading to think about these issues, but now that I am doing that… it is all very exciting!!!!