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It's an exciting time. Unreal Engine is being used to great effect in things like The Mandalorian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk https://www.youtu

It's an exciting time. Unreal Engine is being used to great effect in things like The Mandalorian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUnxzVOs3rk The latest developments in large language models are another area interesting to me personally as a developer. Since the beginning of the video game medium, limitations in programming game AI have left video games stuck in a corner, where they use violence as the primary means of driving immersion, simply because it's just too complicated to model human-like behavior outside the domain of simple carnival games. Some games try and brute force their way around this by explicitly picking from a set of predetermined branching paths at predetermined critical moments. But the latest AI tools, first seen in stuff like the GPT-3 powered AI Dungeon, reveal that there will soon be new methods of maintaining a coherent story in a simulated game. We won't have to always resort to violence and fancy carnival games for much longer.

localplume 4y ago
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hackernewds 4y ago
Exactly! I'm excited for NPC to act like AI, and have full fledged conversations. Now, if they're allowed to have previous memories of their interactions of not could be interesting, since that is currently banned by ClosedAI
- atchoo 4y ago
  I fear how buggy that could make future games. Some essential NPC interaction gets stuck in a weird loop / starts speaking Chinese / gets triggered into a Tay like paranoid Nazi rant while adamently denying the existence of the key it is holding that it's meant to give to the player to progress.
  - x-complexity 4y ago
    At worst, it's going to lead to a "is this a good NPC response" pipeline, where the model spits out lines based on its given prompt, and each one is approved by a proofreader. The minutes of time spending on thinking up what an NPC would say is now (about 10 seconds of speedreading 5 lines of generated results + 5 seconds in clicking either the 'approve' or 'reject' button): That in of itself is at least a 10x increase in available topic queries for NPCs.
the_af 4y ago
While I agree that violence in videogames is the "easy way out", the default mode of interaction that unimaginative designers reach for, I disagree this is because of limitations in AI. Game design has a lot of tools in its toolbox. "Emerging play", "intelligent actors", etc, are only some, but not even the most important factors for interesting gameplay that is nonviolent. AI is not the be all, end all of game design. Not even close to it.
- teamonkey 4y ago
  > While I agree that violence in videogames is the "easy way out", the default mode of interaction that unimaginative designers reach for, I disagree this is because of limitations in AI. You have an obstacle in your way. You use your skills to aim the crosshairs correctly and pull the trigger at the correct time. If successful, you are rewarded with the obstacle being removed. Then the loop repeats for just long enough so that you don't feel fatigued. It's a power fantasy and satisfying when balanced so that it's just within your reach. Mapping it to guns, combat and violence is definitely the easy way to do things. Also one that sells a lot. If you think about it, though, a similar loop exists pretty much anywhere there is a challenge in a game, violent or otherwise. You can turn that loop into a social skills challenge, but it's generally easy to see through those to the rules behind them, making them feel mechanical and hollow. That's one area where AI may be able to help, it's hard to tell.
  - the_af 4y ago
    This is an interesting conversation! I agree with your characterization of the mechanisms for violence in videogames, and I also agree that if you abstract them a bit, they generalize beyond just violence. Where I disagree is in your assumption that there is a similar loop "anywhere there is a challenge in a game". Deduction-based games aren't like this (e.g. Return of Obra Dinn). Puzzles aren't like this. Boardgame-like videogames aren't like this. Traditional point-and-click adventures aren't like this (they suffer from other problems though, beyond the scope of this conversation). Portal 1/2 are not like this in its core gameplay elements. Story-heavy, on-rails games aren't like this (though only because there is barely any gameplay to them -- and let me be clear that I think "movie-like" games are a game design dead end). I do enjoy mindless fun and I'm not against violent games; I just think they are the easy way out for game designers. But I think ultimately making a "good" game goes beyond replacing shooting with some magic silver bullet (AI or whatever): ultimately you need good game design, there's no escaping this. I don't think it's a coincidence the games I find more engaging are those that break the mold somehow, even when there's no "novel" gameplay element to them. Molleindustria's "Every Day the Same Dream" moved me profoundly, but there's no real tech breakthrough in it. It's just a bog standard Flash game. I do think AI could be successfully employed in text adventures, or games where conversation with an "agent" was a core gameplay element. Imagine being able to Voigt-Kampf a replicant in an hypothetical Blade Runner game! (no, not Westwood's, which had a sucky VK implementation).
Hendrikto 4y ago
> AI Dungeon, reveal that there will soon be new methods of maintaining a coherent story in a simulated game. Somewhat coherent, for a few paragraphs. Still impressive.
sukruh 4y ago
For what it's worth telling GPT-4 you want it to simulate a text adventure game that lets the user enter their actions and dialogue, and pasting the setting and some characters works much better than AI Dungeon did when I tried it last year. GPT-4's context size is much larger, and when it starts to misbehave, you can just remind it how the game works and it's good to go again. I'm sorry or you're welcome.

localplume 4y ago

[dead]

hackernewds 4y ago

Exactly! I'm excited for NPC to act like AI, and have full fledged conversations. Now, if they're allowed to have previous memories of their interactions of not could be interesting, since that is currently banned by ClosedAI

atchoo 4y ago
I fear how buggy that could make future games. Some essential NPC interaction gets stuck in a weird loop / starts speaking Chinese / gets triggered into a Tay like paranoid Nazi rant while adamently denying the existence of the key it is holding that it's meant to give to the player to progress.
- x-complexity 4y ago
  At worst, it's going to lead to a "is this a good NPC response" pipeline, where the model spits out lines based on its given prompt, and each one is approved by a proofreader. The minutes of time spending on thinking up what an NPC would say is now (about 10 seconds of speedreading 5 lines of generated results + 5 seconds in clicking either the 'approve' or 'reject' button): That in of itself is at least a 10x increase in available topic queries for NPCs.

the_af 4y ago

While I agree that violence in videogames is the "easy way out", the default mode of interaction that unimaginative designers reach for, I disagree this is because of limitations in AI. Game design has a lot of tools in its toolbox. "Emerging play", "intelligent actors", etc, are only some, but not even the most important factors for interesting gameplay that is nonviolent. AI is not the be all, end all of game design. Not even close to it.

teamonkey 4y ago
> While I agree that violence in videogames is the "easy way out", the default mode of interaction that unimaginative designers reach for, I disagree this is because of limitations in AI. You have an obstacle in your way. You use your skills to aim the crosshairs correctly and pull the trigger at the correct time. If successful, you are rewarded with the obstacle being removed. Then the loop repeats for just long enough so that you don't feel fatigued. It's a power fantasy and satisfying when balanced so that it's just within your reach. Mapping it to guns, combat and violence is definitely the easy way to do things. Also one that sells a lot. If you think about it, though, a similar loop exists pretty much anywhere there is a challenge in a game, violent or otherwise. You can turn that loop into a social skills challenge, but it's generally easy to see through those to the rules behind them, making them feel mechanical and hollow. That's one area where AI may be able to help, it's hard to tell.
- the_af 4y ago
  This is an interesting conversation! I agree with your characterization of the mechanisms for violence in videogames, and I also agree that if you abstract them a bit, they generalize beyond just violence. Where I disagree is in your assumption that there is a similar loop "anywhere there is a challenge in a game". Deduction-based games aren't like this (e.g. Return of Obra Dinn). Puzzles aren't like this. Boardgame-like videogames aren't like this. Traditional point-and-click adventures aren't like this (they suffer from other problems though, beyond the scope of this conversation). Portal 1/2 are not like this in its core gameplay elements. Story-heavy, on-rails games aren't like this (though only because there is barely any gameplay to them -- and let me be clear that I think "movie-like" games are a game design dead end). I do enjoy mindless fun and I'm not against violent games; I just think they are the easy way out for game designers. But I think ultimately making a "good" game goes beyond replacing shooting with some magic silver bullet (AI or whatever): ultimately you need good game design, there's no escaping this. I don't think it's a coincidence the games I find more engaging are those that break the mold somehow, even when there's no "novel" gameplay element to them. Molleindustria's "Every Day the Same Dream" moved me profoundly, but there's no real tech breakthrough in it. It's just a bog standard Flash game. I do think AI could be successfully employed in text adventures, or games where conversation with an "agent" was a core gameplay element. Imagine being able to Voigt-Kampf a replicant in an hypothetical Blade Runner game! (no, not Westwood's, which had a sucky VK implementation).

Hendrikto 4y ago

> AI Dungeon, reveal that there will soon be new methods of maintaining a coherent story in a simulated game. Somewhat coherent, for a few paragraphs. Still impressive.

sukruh 4y ago

For what it's worth telling GPT-4 you want it to simulate a text adventure game that lets the user enter their actions and dialogue, and pasting the setting and some characters works much better than AI Dungeon did when I tried it last year. GPT-4's context size is much larger, and when it starts to misbehave, you can just remind it how the game works and it's good to go again. I'm sorry or you're welcome.