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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 n
by 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 agoThe ultimate sandbox is way less fun than a nicely curated sandbox
- gaganyaan 2y agoFor you. Minecraft wouldn't be a huge success if everyone shared your taste
- jncfhnb 2y agoMinecraft has extensive structure and curation to its experience. It’s main draw is also typically sharing YOUR creations with other people.
- gaganyaan 2y agoThe main draw for LLM-powered sandbox games will be sharing YOUR stories with other people. There will also be extensive structure and curation to these games. It will just be elements that you can play with as you see fit, much like Minecraft.
- jncfhnb 2y agoYour examples of LLM integration is wildly inconsistent across your comments. I don’t believe you have an actual vision.
- gaganyaan 2y agoI think you're confused about curation and unlimited freedom being possible? Those are not at odds with each other. Game devs will provide a world that they enjoy creating stories in. They'll playtest characters and write their backstories and whatnot. Then they'll hand that curated world over to the players. The players are then free to experience the world "as intended", or create their own new ways of making stories in that world.
- bccdee 2y agoMinecraft doesn't have an LLM in it. Here's why Minecraft works: It's an ecosystem full of carefully-designed areas and resources (biomes fine-tuned to generate specific types of landscape, enemies with focus-tested behaviours, items with particular abilities) which combine to form a sandbox where players can exercise ingenuity and build projects that satisfy their creative vision. Where does generative AI fit into this? Should it be generating an infinite variety of dull and unoriginal items that don't do anything cool? Should it be building derivative-looking houses for players to ignore or burn down so that they can build their own houses in their place? LLM-generated slop has no place in games. It is an obstacle to having a good time.
- bccdee 2y agoLLMs are boring, though. Have you actually tried going to ChatGPT and asking it to tell you a story? It isn't entertaining. It isn't interesting. It's a waste of time. Anything interesting will have to be provided by the player (as in a sandbox game) or by the designer (as in a conventional game), and at that point you've just ruined a perfectly good game by introducing an LLM to slather boring slop all over the interesting stuff the player or the designer has tried to do.