- An Emergent Story Engine -
Chroniqueur est une génératrice d’Histoire. Tout ce qui se passe dans le monde n’est pas seulement simulé, il est également documenté dans une sorte de vaste Wikipédia en constante expansion. C’est l’un des outils permettant la découverte de récits émergents. Si un personnage pique votre curiosité, vous pouvez en découvrir plus à son sujet. Ou à propos de sa mère. Ou de l’amant secret de celle-ci, âgé de 80 ans. Ou de leur enfant caché à la naissance qui… mais n’est-ce pas là votre fiancé ?!
L’un des objectifs de Chroniqueur est de rendre cette vaste archive historique aussi lisible, ludique et généralement aussi accessible à explorer que possible. Pour cela, nous nous inspirons des wikis, des infographies et des plateformes de nouvelles populaires.
Vous pouvez incarner n’importe qui dans Chroniqueur, mais vous pouvez aussi vous contenter de jouer l’historien d’un monde virtuel. Un historien ayant accès à une archive exhaustive et accessible de tout.
Chroniqueur is an emergent narrative experimentation platform. It is a deep social simulation generating a full human history that is completely documented. Players can both explore this archive freely and/or engage in embedded games.
A main goal of Chroniqueur is to give players the opportunity to discover stories that weren’t written beforehand—stories that have emerged “naturally” from the complex interactions of each world’s unique simulated characters. There are no writers (not even AIs!) for this game, we strive to design a dynamic world in which stories happen.
Every new Chroniqueur game generates a whole new world with thousands of people whose lives are entirely simulated. From the moment a character is born to the time of their death, everything they do has contextual reasons, as well as consequences to the world and other people. No cheating! This complex social simulation is one of the foundations of Chroniqueur and the engine from which emergent stories happen.
Chroniqueur is a perfect backdrop for all sorts of games: life simulation, survival, management, politics, etc. This is our current area of development. For the moment, the main form of interaction is the possibility to play from the perspective of anyone in the simulation (thousands of playable characters). This is still experimental though.
Chroniqueur is a History generating machine. Everything that happens in the world is not only simulated, it is also documented in a vast, ever-expanding Wikipedia of sorts. This is one of the tools available to help players discover emergent stories occurring in the game. If a character piques your curiosity as you play, you can find out more about them. Or about their father. Or their father’s secret 80 years old lover. Perhaps their hidden child turns out to be… your husband?!
The design and development of Chroniqueur has led to multiple technical and theoretical contributions
Chroniqueur is a research-creation project developed by the LabLabLab research group under the direction of Jonathan Lessard, game design professor at Concordia University. It has received funding from the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture.