Awareness of Surroundings

The ability of algorithmic agents to detect and react to all deigetically relevant phenomena.

For agents of game worlds to behave convincingly, they need to exhibit some characteristics. One of these is having an Awareness of Surroundings, i.e. noticing and reacting appropriately to things, agents, and events that they can perceive.

Examples

The enemies controlled by computers in First Person Shooters such as the Doom series or the Counter-Strike series are programmed to be both aware of players and the items one can retrieve from the environment. While the inhabitants of the Elder Scrolls series and Fallout series and many other Computer-based Roleplaying Games have the same functionality, showing proper responses to movement, closeness, etc., in non-combat aspects of the gameplay make these games lack some Awareness of Surroundings that socially believable characters should have (see Lankoski & Björk for a more detailed exploration of this).

Using the pattern

Enemies Algorithmic Agents, Pick-Ups Power-Ups

Algorithmic Agents, Non-Player Characters

Enemies,

Diegetic Aspects

Providing Thematic Consistency is one of the reasons for making Algorithmic Agents have an Awareness of Surroundings.

Consequences

That Agents have an Awareness of Surroundings provides one of the requirements for them to display both a Sense of Self and an Own Agenda. This can also help for a game to have Thematic Consistency.

Relations

Pick-Ups Power-Ups

Can Instantiate

Own Agenda, Sense of Self, Thematic Consistency

Can Modulate

Algorithmic Agents, Enemies, Non-Player Characters

Can Be Instantiated By

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Can Be Modulated By

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Possible Closure Effects

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Potentially Conflicting With

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History

A rewrite of a pattern that was part of the original collection in the paper Gameplay Design Patterns for Believable Non-Player Characters.

Acknowledgments

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