9 ms·

This seems very pessimistic to me. For a linear storyline, highly dynamic NPCs are likely not going to add to the experience, that is correct. There are however

by Hugsun 2y ago

This seems very pessimistic to me. For a linear storyline, highly dynamic NPCs are likely not going to add to the experience, that is correct. There are however other ways of creating interesting narratives. A good example is dwarf fortress where the narratives are created very dynamically and the player is free to interact with them as they want. LLMs could add immensely to these types of games.

jncfhnb 2y ago
Still no. Your dwarves fundamentally have nothing interesting to say. It might be minority amusing that a bot can say “hey I just caused a lava flow and I feel bad about it”. But it’s not better. Dwarf fortress creates great stories because YOU are filling in the blanks. It would be MUCH WORSE if you could no longer fill in the blanks because some ai keeps breaking your head canon.
- squigz 2y ago
  > Your dwarves fundamentally have nothing interesting to say. This can be said about all NPCs, yet we bother to script them, and I would hope nobody would suggest we just remove NPC dialogue.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    I disagree that scripted NPCs have nothing to say. You have a few basic types: * NPCs that don’t want to speak and usually offer a dismissive comment or a single repeating phrase. Fine candidates to LLM so long as this pattern doesn’t change. But also, who really cares? * important NPCs with specific written dialogue. Don’t even THINK about gambling with your story’s self consistency by giving these guys agency * the limited townsfolk type that has a small bit of something say. Like a typical Baldurs gate NPC. These people are fun to talk to because they “might” have something relevant or fun to say. Usually you don’t have to say anything. They just want to share things with you. It would be very tedious to chat with these people if they were infinite wells of lore and nothingness to be probed with written language.
    - gaganyaan 2y ago
      I think what you're not getting is that there won't be a "your story". The player will create their own story in cooperation with the LLM. It won't be for every game, but think about games like Skyrim or BotW, where people ignore the main quest and have tons of fun doing whatever the hell they want. Game devs will still provide structure, "this big baddie is trying to do X, there's this mysterious treasure over here". But the guard rails will be gone, and there will be a real world to explore, not just cutscenes to sit through.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        BotW is an intensely well designed world with careful level planning. You can’t unlock the guard rails without making the general story completely arbitrary. It’s just not possible.
        gaganyaan 2y ago
        > general story completely arbitrary That's the exact promise. BotW has a main story, but it's not where the real fun is. The game devs will still write some overarching plot for people that want that, but you can just ignore that and live your own story. There will also be a lot of fun in seeing how far you can stretch the original story to its breaking point, like how people enjoy breaking Skyrim with too many mods. Testing the limits is the fun. "What if I defeated Ganon by taming an army of crabs?"
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        Breaking games with shitty mods can be fun in the sense of dicking around but it quickly gets boring and frankly seems completely unrelated to trying to make actual good experiences with an LLM. BotW’s appeal is not the story. It’s definitely not the dialogue. It’s about exploring a carefully planned world full of goodies. Not a shitty LLM procedurally generated one that goes forever. And DEFINITELY not a run time generated one.
        2y ago
  - bccdee 2y ago
    There's an idea in game design called "negative possibility space." If your player walks to the end of a long hallway and it's a dead end, or they shimmy up a narrow ledge to the top of a building only to find nothing, they'll be disappointed. So either stick something interesting there, or block it off. This applies to NPC dialogue too. If an NPC can be spoken to, they should have something interesting to say. If they don't, you shouldn't be able to talk to them. Giving a chatbot brain to an NPC who would otherwise only get a single generic line to say creates an infinite amount of negative possibility space. A player can waste a literally infinite amount of time probing a chatbot NPC for narratively interesting details, and all they'll get is chatbot slop. Now it doesn't matter if you put something interesting at the end of the hallway: You've wasted so much of the player's time now that they no longer trust you to. They assume you're just wasting their time. You teach your players to be cynical and incurious and to engage with your work as little as possible, because in their experience it's mostly meaningless. For this reason, I consider the integration of chatbots into video games to fundamentally anti-artistic. It actively pushes players away from the work such that they get less out of it. Nobody wants this, actually. It sucks.
    - gaganyaan 2y ago
      > A player can waste a literally infinite amount of time probing a chatbot NPC for narratively interesting details, and all they'll get is chatbot slop. I would phrase that as "A player can have an infinite amount of fun creating an immersive world with the LLM". Any details you want will be narratively interesting, because the LLM will work them into the narrative as necessary. There's no end of the hallway, the hallway leads to everything. The ultimate sandbox game.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
        The ultimate sandbox is way less fun than a nicely curated sandbox
        gaganyaan 2y ago
        For you. Minecraft wouldn't be a huge success if everyone shared your taste
- Hugsun 2y ago
  In my eyes, Dwarf fortresses interesting stories emerge from the events that happen within the game. It doesn't require any blank filling, although it doesn't suffer if you do it either. > ai keeps breaking your head canon. We must be fundamentally different types of people. I can't imagine even having this thought. If I'm playing a game that has characters, I'm not going to make up some facts about them and be upset when I talk to them and those made up facts turn out to be wrong. This is the only interpretation of your words that I can think of. Feel free to confirm it or deny.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    You’ve never intuited that two characters are friends? Or perhaps that guy holding a ton of cheese is the cheese guy? Or that an event was emotionally meaningful to them? I don’t know what you’re hoping to talk to these dwarves about. I’m not saying I would be “upset” if the head canon wasn’t actualized. I’m saying I would be underwhelmed because the generic LLM content is nearly guaranteed by this other thing that I stated as a premise I found interesting or amusing.
    - gaganyaan 2y ago
      If you intuit that two characters are friends, and then something happens that makes it seem like they're not friends, you'll say "Hey, I thought you two were friends", and the LLM will realize what you're going for, and then come up with something like "Oh we were but now we're fighting". The LLM's role will very much a "yes, and" improv role that will let you guide your own personal story. Or have it push back on you if you want. "What? You thought we were friends? No, I was just doing my duties". What I want to talk about with the dwarves is everything, and LLMs will deliver in spades. I want to ask the lowly NPC what life is like working hard in the mines. Then I want to decide to recruit him on my quest because I like his backstory and personality. Then I'll watch as he levels up with me, in a way that could never be scripted by the game creators. That's just one small way that LLMs will provide a far superior gameplay experience.
      - jncfhnb 2y ago
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  You seem to view the only way computer games can be enjoyable is aa tightly-scripted near-movies. And that's certainly one model, but hardly (even without LLMs) the only model that has proven enjoyable. LLMs potentially (I think they’ve got a wat to go before this is really viable, but the potential is there) open up new styles of conputer gaming.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    It’s not really new. It’s just a social role play without the social aspect. Which is worse. Games don’t need to be near movies but they should have an either a cohesive plot or no plot. A shitty made up on the fly plot is just not going to work

by Hugsun 2y ago

jncfhnb 2y ago

Still no. Your dwarves fundamentally have nothing interesting to say. It might be minority amusing that a bot can say “hey I just caused a lava flow and I feel bad about it”. But it’s not better. Dwarf fortress creates great stories because YOU are filling in the blanks. It would be MUCH WORSE if you could no longer fill in the blanks because some ai keeps breaking your head canon.

squigz 2y ago
> Your dwarves fundamentally have nothing interesting to say. This can be said about all NPCs, yet we bother to script them, and I would hope nobody would suggest we just remove NPC dialogue.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  I disagree that scripted NPCs have nothing to say. You have a few basic types: * NPCs that don’t want to speak and usually offer a dismissive comment or a single repeating phrase. Fine candidates to LLM so long as this pattern doesn’t change. But also, who really cares? * important NPCs with specific written dialogue. Don’t even THINK about gambling with your story’s self consistency by giving these guys agency * the limited townsfolk type that has a small bit of something say. Like a typical Baldurs gate NPC. These people are fun to talk to because they “might” have something relevant or fun to say. Usually you don’t have to say anything. They just want to share things with you. It would be very tedious to chat with these people if they were infinite wells of lore and nothingness to be probed with written language.
  - gaganyaan 2y ago
    I think what you're not getting is that there won't be a "your story". The player will create their own story in cooperation with the LLM. It won't be for every game, but think about games like Skyrim or BotW, where people ignore the main quest and have tons of fun doing whatever the hell they want. Game devs will still provide structure, "this big baddie is trying to do X, there's this mysterious treasure over here". But the guard rails will be gone, and there will be a real world to explore, not just cutscenes to sit through.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      BotW is an intensely well designed world with careful level planning. You can’t unlock the guard rails without making the general story completely arbitrary. It’s just not possible.
      - gaganyaan 2y ago
        > general story completely arbitrary That's the exact promise. BotW has a main story, but it's not where the real fun is. The game devs will still write some overarching plot for people that want that, but you can just ignore that and live your own story. There will also be a lot of fun in seeing how far you can stretch the original story to its breaking point, like how people enjoy breaking Skyrim with too many mods. Testing the limits is the fun. "What if I defeated Ganon by taming an army of crabs?"
        jncfhnb 2y ago
        Breaking games with shitty mods can be fun in the sense of dicking around but it quickly gets boring and frankly seems completely unrelated to trying to make actual good experiences with an LLM. BotW’s appeal is not the story. It’s definitely not the dialogue. It’s about exploring a carefully planned world full of goodies. Not a shitty LLM procedurally generated one that goes forever. And DEFINITELY not a run time generated one.
        2y ago
- bccdee 2y ago
  There's an idea in game design called "negative possibility space." If your player walks to the end of a long hallway and it's a dead end, or they shimmy up a narrow ledge to the top of a building only to find nothing, they'll be disappointed. So either stick something interesting there, or block it off. This applies to NPC dialogue too. If an NPC can be spoken to, they should have something interesting to say. If they don't, you shouldn't be able to talk to them. Giving a chatbot brain to an NPC who would otherwise only get a single generic line to say creates an infinite amount of negative possibility space. A player can waste a literally infinite amount of time probing a chatbot NPC for narratively interesting details, and all they'll get is chatbot slop. Now it doesn't matter if you put something interesting at the end of the hallway: You've wasted so much of the player's time now that they no longer trust you to. They assume you're just wasting their time. You teach your players to be cynical and incurious and to engage with your work as little as possible, because in their experience it's mostly meaningless. For this reason, I consider the integration of chatbots into video games to fundamentally anti-artistic. It actively pushes players away from the work such that they get less out of it. Nobody wants this, actually. It sucks.
  - gaganyaan 2y ago
    > A player can waste a literally infinite amount of time probing a chatbot NPC for narratively interesting details, and all they'll get is chatbot slop. I would phrase that as "A player can have an infinite amount of fun creating an immersive world with the LLM". Any details you want will be narratively interesting, because the LLM will work them into the narrative as necessary. There's no end of the hallway, the hallway leads to everything. The ultimate sandbox game.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
      The ultimate sandbox is way less fun than a nicely curated sandbox
      - gaganyaan 2y ago
        For you. Minecraft wouldn't be a huge success if everyone shared your taste
Hugsun 2y ago
In my eyes, Dwarf fortresses interesting stories emerge from the events that happen within the game. It doesn't require any blank filling, although it doesn't suffer if you do it either. > ai keeps breaking your head canon. We must be fundamentally different types of people. I can't imagine even having this thought. If I'm playing a game that has characters, I'm not going to make up some facts about them and be upset when I talk to them and those made up facts turn out to be wrong. This is the only interpretation of your words that I can think of. Feel free to confirm it or deny.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  You’ve never intuited that two characters are friends? Or perhaps that guy holding a ton of cheese is the cheese guy? Or that an event was emotionally meaningful to them? I don’t know what you’re hoping to talk to these dwarves about. I’m not saying I would be “upset” if the head canon wasn’t actualized. I’m saying I would be underwhelmed because the generic LLM content is nearly guaranteed by this other thing that I stated as a premise I found interesting or amusing.
  - gaganyaan 2y ago
    If you intuit that two characters are friends, and then something happens that makes it seem like they're not friends, you'll say "Hey, I thought you two were friends", and the LLM will realize what you're going for, and then come up with something like "Oh we were but now we're fighting". The LLM's role will very much a "yes, and" improv role that will let you guide your own personal story. Or have it push back on you if you want. "What? You thought we were friends? No, I was just doing my duties". What I want to talk about with the dwarves is everything, and LLMs will deliver in spades. I want to ask the lowly NPC what life is like working hard in the mines. Then I want to decide to recruit him on my quest because I like his backstory and personality. Then I'll watch as he levels up with me, in a way that could never be scripted by the game creators. That's just one small way that LLMs will provide a far superior gameplay experience.
    - jncfhnb 2y ago
dragonwriter 2y ago
You seem to view the only way computer games can be enjoyable is aa tightly-scripted near-movies. And that's certainly one model, but hardly (even without LLMs) the only model that has proven enjoyable. LLMs potentially (I think they’ve got a wat to go before this is really viable, but the potential is there) open up new styles of conputer gaming.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  It’s not really new. It’s just a social role play without the social aspect. Which is worse. Games don’t need to be near movies but they should have an either a cohesive plot or no plot. A shitty made up on the fly plot is just not going to work