For those of you who know what Façade is, you should drop what you’re doing and start downloading it now.
For those of you who don’t know what Façade is… it’s an interactive drama that blew my mind at the 2003 Game Developers Conference. At the time, I was but a young greenhorn in the games game, and Façade was the most jaw-droppingly amazing thing I had ever seen an interactive simulation do. (Note that I’m carefully avoiding characterizing it as a “game,” since I’m not quite ready to call it one, having never played it.)
The best pithy description I can give is that it’s like playing in a one-act play on your computer. The technology is amazing, and I don’t mean the graphics. I mean natural language processing, the drama engine with the “beats” that Andrew so tantalizingly spoke of back in ’03, etc. Robin has a great take on Façade over at her blog.
Anyway, you should grab the game. It’s really worth your time. I’m downloading it as we speak–it’s about 800MB through BitTorrent, so it might take all day for me to get it. We’ll see. I can guarantee you I’ll be talking about Façade some more later on.
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