Façade is a 2005 interactive storytelling video game by Michael Mateas and Andrew Stern. Conceived by the developers as an "interactive drama", Façade tasks the player to use text input to converse with two characters, Trip and Grace, who are experiencing conflicts in their relationship. The game uses artificial intelligence methods, including natural language processing, to simulate a conversation between the player and two characters. The developers, Mateas and Stern, both carried an interest in artificial intelligence and interactive entertainment, and began work on the game in 1998.
Upon release, Façade received praise for its innovative design and generated commentary about the potential use of artificial intelligence in video games. It received the Grand Jury prize at the Slamdance Independent Games Festival and was a finalist for the 2004 Seumas McNally Grand Prize. Following release, Façade received further retrospective praise for its design, although sources expressed mixed views on the contemporary impact and influence of the game. Façade is the subject of numerous scholarly analyses, and has been discussed both as a digital play and as electronic literature.
Due to the awkward and unexpected behaviour that could occur from its interaction model, the game generated a cult following and Internet memes from Let's Play videos on YouTube. A planned sequel, The Party, began development in 2006, discontinued in 2013, and resumed in 2024.
Gameplay
Played in a first-person perspective, the game is set in an apartment where the player can move around freely using the keyboard. Prior to starting the game, the player also selects a name from a list, which is reflected in how the game's two characters, Trip and Grace, address them.
The game uses natural language processing, identifying certain key words in player input and deducing its context, to influence the conversation and the reaction of Trip and Grace to the player's conduct.
The game begins with a black screen and a voiceover from Trip, who is calling the player to invite them to the apartment. The player is prompted to take sides in the argument, which culminates in either Grace or Trip asking them a question about their relationship. 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.
Development
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. 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". To develop organic and believable character behaviors, Mateas and Stern developed a complex programming framework named "A Behaviour Language" to program and organize the expressions of multiple characters as "believable agents", and a "drama manager" to organise events in the story to guide the interactions towards a tension and resolution of the plot. Façade was released for Windows in July 2005 as a free download from the developers' 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. In 2013, Mateas confirmed that development on The Party had ceased in order to pursue other projects. In September 2024, Mateas and Stern stated in an interview that development has resumed.
Reception
Many critics gave Façade positive reviews at the time of its release. Several publications like NBC News, 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 five areas of technical achievement: its natural language parsing and conversational interaction, natural language generation, emotional modelling, facial expressions, and body language. The Economist mused: "as graphics improve, artificial intelligence is becoming an ever more important part of designing video games."
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. 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". Newsweek and NBC News argued that Façade represented a step in the right direction for creating interactive drama characters with emotional depth; Newsweek said that this had special appeal towards female gamers, who began to be represented only within the past decade. An early version of the game was also nominated as a finalist for the Open category of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2004 Independent Games Festival.
Legacy
thumb|upright=1.4|Grace and Trip's awkward reactions to what the AI considered inappropriate behavior, which did not always make sense, made Façade the subject of several comedic videos and [[Internet memes, causing it to develop a cult following years after its release.]]
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", Game Developer, formerly Gamasutra, identified Façade as a project that made an "indelible mark on video games" due to the uniqueness and complexity of its design of artificial intelligence. Similarly, The Guardian cited Façade as an "interesting" milestone and "fascinating experiment" in the advancement of emotional artificial intelligence. 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".
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. Although considering the game's praise as warranted and "hugely influential" of its time, Julie Fukunaga of Stanford Daily critiqued the game as "visually jarring" and "frequently glitchy", finding the narrative presented an unrealistic representation of marital conflict and featured "irredeemable characters".
See also
- Cybertext
- Expressive Intelligence Studio