| Façade | |
| Developer: | Procedural Arts |
| Publisher: | Procedural Arts |
| Platforms: | Windows, Mac OS X |
| Genre: | Interactive drama, interactive fiction, social simulation |
| Modes: | Single-player |
| Designer: |
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| Composer: |
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Façade is an artificial intelligence-based interactive story created in 2005 by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. Upon release, the game received attention from mainstream news publications for its innovative design, and prompted speculation about the potential use of artificial intelligence in video games. Following release, Façade has received a generally positive reception, with praise directed at its technical innovation and wide cultural appeal, particularly in online streaming, and mixed views directed to the verisimilitude of its representation of interpersonal interaction.
Façade is an interactive drama video game, structured as a one-act story about a married couple, Trip and Grace. The player assumes the role of a long-time friend, invited for an evening get-together at the couple's apartment in New York City; at first, Trip and Grace are friendly, but they become hostile as the player witnesses the devolution of their marriage.[1] The player interacts from a first-person perspective, moves using the keyboard's arrow keys, and chooses their name and gender. They can behave in any way they wish.[2]
The game uses text input to facilitate discussions with Trip and Grace, utilizing various artificial intelligence (AI) technologies that determine how the two respond to the player and each other. One is what the designers called "A Behavioral Language" engine, which dictates how the characters move across the apartment as they speak. Another is a "drama manager", which creates story beats from a set of preprogrammed events and finds ways, using the player's input, to raise tension and resolve the conflict.[3] Façade also incorporates natural language processing, identifying certain key words in player input and deducing the context behind what they are trying to say. The AI has limitations; for example, the couple might interpret the player announcing their pregnancy with Trip's child as an attempt at flirting with them.
Façade begins with a black screen and a voiceover from Trip, who is calling the player to invite them to the apartment. After they have chosen their name, they spawn in front of the door, overhearing an argument between the couple. Afterwards, Trip opens the door and lets the player inside.[4] Once inside, they can interact with various objects and pieces of furniture in the apartment, which can lead to new conversations, such as a Magic 8 Ball that gives advice.[5]
The player can discuss various topics with Grace and Trip during their stay, such as the couple's recent vacation in Italy, the drinks Trip prepares at the bar, and Grace's attempts at redecorating the apartment.[6] Other subjects of conversation can be about their work, hobbies, families, sex life, or the prospect of divorce. Other forms of interaction involve flirting and being physically intimate, with options to comfort, hug, or kiss the characters.[7] The couple can react to these in several ways, such as laughter, excitement, surprise, and anger. If the player behaves inappropriately, Trip and Grace react with great offense. Persistent rudeness can lead to the player's removal,[8] and so does excessive physical intimacy.
As Façade progresses, the couple gets into a fight, exchanging various accusations and passive-aggressive remarks.[9] [10] The player is prompted to take sides in the argument, which culminates in either Grace or Trip asking them a question about their relationship. When the game approaches its third and last section, the couple seeks advice from their friend about how to fix their marriage and what is wrong with either of them. One of the two programmers, Michael Mateas, described the section as a "therapy game". Eventually, Grace or Trip can confess a long-kept secret about themselves or the relationship. For example, before the night Trip proposed to her, Grace had a sexual affair with someone without telling him.[11] Afterwards, Façade will end in three ways: either Trip or Grace end their relationship, the two reconcile, or they tell the player that nothing has changed and continue arguing once they have left. The game is meant to be replayed several times, so that the player can discover other ways their conversations with the couple could have gone.[12]
Mateas co-developed Façade with Andrew Stern over five-years, self-funded and with a limited budget. Prior to development, Mateas was a doctoral student at the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science, and Stern was a programmer and designer on the virtual pet video game series Petz.[13] Mateas and Stern met presenting at a series of conferences on the intersection of artificial intelligence and interactive entertainment, and began initial work in 1998 on a long-term "interactive drama piece" and "commercial product prototype".[14] In 2000, Mateas and Stern formally commenced a full-time collaborative project to "build an interactive story world integrating believable agents and interactive plot", with a plan to create a game around a "domestic drama in which a married couple has invited a player over for dinner."[15] To develop organic and believable character behaviors, Mateas and Stern developed a complex programming framework described as 'a behavior language' to program and organize the expressions of multiple characters as 'believable agents'.[16] Façade was released for Windows in July 2005 as a free download from the developer's web site.
Following the release of Façade, Mateas and Stern planned to create a follow-up project titled The Party. Building on the design of Façade, The Party was planned to feature around the plot of being invited a dinner party, in which gameplay would be expanded to accommodate ten characters, greater environmental interaction, and more mature complex narrative beats, including sex and violence. Intended as a commercial product, Stern noted that The Party required investment to fund a small team of designers and programmers necessary to create the game's artificial intelligence.[17] In 2013, Mateas confirmed that development on The Party had ceased to pursue other projects.[18]
Many critics gave Façade positive reviews at the time of its release. Several publications like NBC News, The New York Times, Newsweek, and The Boston Phoenix praised the game for its technical achievements, writing that it was an important step for the evolution of video games, interactive entertainment, and AI.[19] Gamasutra wrote that Façade was "one of the most important games ever created, possibly the most important game of the last ten years," above The Sims and Grand Theft Auto. The reviewer, Ernest Adams, called the game's design "revolutionary" and "technically ambitious", listing six aspects he found impressive: the natural language processing and generation, emotional modelling, facial expressions, and body language.[20] The Economist mused: "as graphics improve, artificial intelligence is becoming an ever more important part of designing video games."[21]
Critics also wrote about how the game handled its characters and story, and they also found its attempts innovative. Adams praised Façade for being unlike most video games at the time, highlighting its lack of a victory condition and focus on personal relationships that he found believable. Many others said that Façade showed, with complex AI, that video games could be just as compelling when they are character-driven instead of action-driven.[22] As Set Schiesel, who did the New York Times review, wrote: "[this] is a future where games are driven as strongly by characters as combat [and] as much soap opera as shooting gallery".[23] Newsweek and NBC News argued that Façade represented a step in the right direction for creating interactive drama characters with emotional depth;[24] Newsweek said that this had special appeal towards women gamers, who began to be represented only within the past decade. Other publications covered the game's open-ended nature and praised how the player could change the story in real time instead of adhering to a pre-determined narrative branch. In the views of Wired, Façade approach provided a more immersive experience.
Façade won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2006 Slamdance Independent Games Festival; an early, incomplete version was a finalist at the 2004 Independent Games Festival. It has been exhibited at several international art shows including ISEA 2004 and Game/Play 2006.
Retrospective assessments of Façade have recognized the game's technical achievement in its application of artificial intelligence and popular appeal. Describing the game as an "important research and cultural milestone", Games Developer, formerly Gamasutra, identified Façade as project that made an "indelible mark on video games" due to the uniqueness and complexity of its design of artificial intelligence.[25] Similarly, The Guardian cited Façade as an "interesting" milestone and "fascinating experiment" in the advancement of emotional artificial intelligence.[26] The game was also recognized to have attracted mainstream attention, unusual for an independent video game at the time. Rock Paper Shotgun noted the game "was cutting edge enough to warrant scientific papers being written about it, but playable and interesting enough to be spread around the games world".[27]
Throughout the decade since its release, Façade developed a cult following and spawned several Internet memes, largely due to "Let's Play" videos on YouTube that exploited Grace and Trip's awkward reactions to what the AI deemed inappropriate behavior, which was sometimes nonsensical. Many high-profile YouTubers at the time accrued millions of views on their playthroughs; PC Gamer attributed the game's "second coming as an Internet meme" to PewDiePie's first video about the game, which garnered over seven million views, and also named Jacksepticeye and The Gaming Lemon as further contributors to increasing Façade mainstream exposure. Game Developer commented that "arguably [''Façade''{{'s}}] biggest impact is that people know what it is outside of the academic conference circuit".
Some retrospective reviews have expressed mixed views on Façade's execution as a simulation of interpersonal interaction, with Rock Paper Shotgun observing that the subsequent influence of the game on the broader industry had been largely overstated. PC Gamer noted that "if you play Façade as it was intended...their AI system holds up remarkably well", praising the character reactions to player inputs, although noting the game's "reliance on genuine interaction...makes it ripe for abuse". Describing the game as "an experiment rather than a finished game", Chris Dahlen, writing for 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die, noted "the graphics are basic, and the parser's not perfect; Grace and Trip often react to a suggestion they don't recognize with an awkward stare or look of horror."[28]