I have been laying on a lot of content for my reader(s)*. And the question you may be asking is, for a Text Adventure game, why all of this work on human personality? And the answer is: this game is all about personal interactions.

People have accused me of being a brilliant programmer. But I am not gifted enough to write an actual AI that can play the part of a human being. I definitely am not up to the task of creating a genius actor who can play the role of a thousand of people to form an entire society. But as a showman, I have to make the player believe that I have.

Part of that illusion is understanding how humans perceive other humans. Or, at the very least, how humans THINK they perceive other humans. My network model of personality is like a safe-cracker's schematic of a locking mechanism. Or a penetration tester's copy of the source code for a system she is trying to crack. To properly hack your way into something requires a deep understanding of how it works.

Entertainment is very much hacking the human mind.

The wrinkle in my case is making one human mind think they are interacting with an entire society of other minds. It may be on the smaller side as societies go, but it's still a society. Also, unlike most games, the idea that everyone on board is more or less stuck being a member of this society is a given. Even the hermits eventually have to interact with someone else. **

What I'm doing is breaking down personality and human interaction into something a computer can metric. I'm also keenly aware that different people have different reactions to the same interaction. Call a stranger fat, and they hate you. Call a familiar person fat, and it could be anything from an insult to an inside joke to a term of endearment. It all depends on what your relation to that person is, and what they already believe to be true.

Or at least that's what my minimal research is telling me. Though I'm starting to suffer from the same sort of innovations that make progress slow in every programming project I seem to undertake. Building a system that can automate things is far more time consuming and expensive than the labor I am trying to not expend.

Though, at my age, that's turning out to be less "flaw" than "defining characteristic." This game is definitely not something I am writing to make a ton of money. And I can't say that I'm trying to impress anybody. My only hope is that it inspires people to treat their fellow human beings a little better. And in the back of my mind, I really do hope that I manage to impress upon future game designers than "conflict resolution" does not require a belt of ammunition. And maybe somebody picks up an interest in programming.


Footnotes:

* - Maybe there are two of you?

** - Mental note: The Hermit as a character so has to be a thing.