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I dunno. Games that try to tell an interesting story, the real arty stuff, all that might not be able to use it well. But Minecraft with good NPC’s, all the o

I dunno. Games that try to tell an interesting story, the real arty stuff, all that might not be able to use it well. But Minecraft with good NPC’s, all the open world stuff, that seems like it could be really fun and cool. How much time did people spend actually engaging with the deep and thoughtful narrative in Skyrim? And how much did they spend just enjoying the world? The latter could be really enhanced with an AI DM, in the medium-term, I bet.

itishappy 2y ago
> How much time did people spend actually engaging with the deep and thoughtful narrative in Skyrim? And how much did they spend just enjoying the world? Ah, but the world of Skyrim is itself the deep and thoughtful narrative. It has been painstakingly crafted to give the characters, locations, and history meaning and interest. Only the barest minimum amount of freedom is then sprinkled on top in the form of player agency. The consistency is what makes it so interesting! For an AI generated story, you'll need to find a way to ensure everything stays coherent. If I convince a random farmer that it's in his best interest to try to kill the king or marry the mayor's daughter, but come back the next week to find him contentedly plowing his field again, my immersion is broken and my day is ruined! I suspect that giving this level of freedom to NPCs will make crafting a stable (playable) world difficult to impossible.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Yeah, I think the AI can’t be the simulation. There needs to be a conventional game under it. If you convince the farmer to go kill the king right this instant, the AI could order that pawn to go try and do it, combat mechanics happen, and then you have a dead farmer, a slightly bruised guard, and an empty farm. I mean, we have lots of fun in much dumber worlds, where the peak of NPC design is bots that walk from their jobs to their homes at certain times of day. And maybe something slightly more advanced will fall into an uncanny valley (we probably don’t have the technology to simulate an AI farmer following your advice to take part in a grand conspiracy to kill the king).
  - itishappy 2y ago
    Agreed! My fear is too much NPC agency will lead to exactly what we see in the real world: conflict. Great, that's the interesting bit! I just worry that without careful planning we'll be facing an NPC battle-royale, and an empty map isn't a particularly fun one.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Of course, it is a high bar that most game companies could get nowhere near, but Dwarf Fortress already makes an interesting world dynamically. Maybe an LLM could be dropped into that world to give it some characters.
    - gs17 2y ago
      With current LLMs, I'd worry about the opposite. ChatGPT and Dungeons always ends up with it insisting problems be solved non-violently.
- itishappy 2y ago
  Thought of a better example: The Underdark. Stumbling into the Underdark by accident is an amazing feeling, because it's obviously an important location from a quest that you don't have yet! Exposition and intrigue, how fun! I can't imagine a way to do this nicely with generative AI. If I thoroughly explore the king's palace before sending in my farmer-come-assassin friend, how will it know that the gallows are to be an important location later?
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Maybe while humans are designing the map, we could flag some interesting landmarks, and then if the NPCs engage with them somehow, info about them could be built into their prompts. Maybe Skyrim was a bad example because it is too designed. But like, Minecraft barely has a plot, and it was really popular. Maybe we can add, like, a couple good characters to open world survival crafting games. We don’t have to skip straight to simulating whole cities.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - chrisnolet 2y ago
    So firstly, I think there’s a sliding scale here, between structured narrative and hands-off emergent storytelling. If we assume something in the middle: While we might not be able to predict that you’ll encourage the farmer to (try to) overthrow the king, we might predict that you’ll try something of that sort. Maybe you enlist a guard for an inside job, or perhaps you do it yourself! But if we want to plan for it, we can plant the seeds, and then nudge the GPT to weave the threads of our story together when it happens. Interestingly, because GPT requires so little prompting for relatively intricate story lines, (yes, really), you can probably add an ungodly number of these semi-scripted moments. I think they would be absolutely magical. I think all of that would add up to a world that feels alive, with deep world building and many ‘surprising but inevitable’ moments – and the potential for some great emergent storytelling along the way. I’m very excited for it!
jncfhnb 2y ago
It would be hot garbage. Skyrim and basically all games are held together by suspension of disbelief which is reinforced by the player not doing things that they can’t do. If you give the player the agency to do anything they want then that suspension of disbelief disappears. You are now playing a juggling act of having the AI able to converse but limited in its mechanical agency to do the things that it talks about even if it makes 100% sense or 0% sense. Every time that limit is hit, the game feels broken. Every time the game breaks its happy path because the player was, even accidentally, problem solving in a way that broke the plot, the game becomes broken. Forget AI. Just think about simple things. Like plot critical NPCs. Most games either don’t let you attack them or cause you to lose if you attack them. That’s good. It just makes sense. Yeah it’s great that some RPGs proudly demonstrate that the plot can go forward with every character dead but that’s absolute shit for most plots. The constraints are very helpful.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  I disagree; it wouldn’t be hot garbage, just a different game. I don’t really enjoy video-game narratives in general anyway. That sort of content is there for people who want it, but I don’t (I know where the books and movies are if I want a well written plot). Skyrim was probably a bad example because it is a game for people who like that kind of stuff. But I still managed to have fun running around, killing bandits, doing dungeons, and avoiding the plot. I’d rather have something like Mount and Blade with janky LLM run AI. Dwarf Fortress, etc. Lots of open-world games have this sort of setup where plots seem to 2-3 node long semi-random graphs. Maybe an LLM can connect those nodes haphazardly and produce filler text to justify the connections.
  - jncfhnb 2y ago
    It would still be bad for largely the same reasons. At best you could have some read only output generated on top of the game state. But interactive AI conversations that drive game state? Recipe for disaster
    - bee_rider 2y ago

itishappy 2y ago

> How much time did people spend actually engaging with the deep and thoughtful narrative in Skyrim? And how much did they spend just enjoying the world? Ah, but the world of Skyrim is itself the deep and thoughtful narrative. It has been painstakingly crafted to give the characters, locations, and history meaning and interest. Only the barest minimum amount of freedom is then sprinkled on top in the form of player agency. The consistency is what makes it so interesting! For an AI generated story, you'll need to find a way to ensure everything stays coherent. If I convince a random farmer that it's in his best interest to try to kill the king or marry the mayor's daughter, but come back the next week to find him contentedly plowing his field again, my immersion is broken and my day is ruined! I suspect that giving this level of freedom to NPCs will make crafting a stable (playable) world difficult to impossible.

bee_rider 2y ago
Yeah, I think the AI can’t be the simulation. There needs to be a conventional game under it. If you convince the farmer to go kill the king right this instant, the AI could order that pawn to go try and do it, combat mechanics happen, and then you have a dead farmer, a slightly bruised guard, and an empty farm. I mean, we have lots of fun in much dumber worlds, where the peak of NPC design is bots that walk from their jobs to their homes at certain times of day. And maybe something slightly more advanced will fall into an uncanny valley (we probably don’t have the technology to simulate an AI farmer following your advice to take part in a grand conspiracy to kill the king).
- itishappy 2y ago
  Agreed! My fear is too much NPC agency will lead to exactly what we see in the real world: conflict. Great, that's the interesting bit! I just worry that without careful planning we'll be facing an NPC battle-royale, and an empty map isn't a particularly fun one.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Of course, it is a high bar that most game companies could get nowhere near, but Dwarf Fortress already makes an interesting world dynamically. Maybe an LLM could be dropped into that world to give it some characters.
  - gs17 2y ago
    With current LLMs, I'd worry about the opposite. ChatGPT and Dungeons always ends up with it insisting problems be solved non-violently.
itishappy 2y ago
Thought of a better example: The Underdark. Stumbling into the Underdark by accident is an amazing feeling, because it's obviously an important location from a quest that you don't have yet! Exposition and intrigue, how fun! I can't imagine a way to do this nicely with generative AI. If I thoroughly explore the king's palace before sending in my farmer-come-assassin friend, how will it know that the gallows are to be an important location later?
- bee_rider 2y ago
  Maybe while humans are designing the map, we could flag some interesting landmarks, and then if the NPCs engage with them somehow, info about them could be built into their prompts. Maybe Skyrim was a bad example because it is too designed. But like, Minecraft barely has a plot, and it was really popular. Maybe we can add, like, a couple good characters to open world survival crafting games. We don’t have to skip straight to simulating whole cities.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- chrisnolet 2y ago
  So firstly, I think there’s a sliding scale here, between structured narrative and hands-off emergent storytelling. If we assume something in the middle: While we might not be able to predict that you’ll encourage the farmer to (try to) overthrow the king, we might predict that you’ll try something of that sort. Maybe you enlist a guard for an inside job, or perhaps you do it yourself! But if we want to plan for it, we can plant the seeds, and then nudge the GPT to weave the threads of our story together when it happens. Interestingly, because GPT requires so little prompting for relatively intricate story lines, (yes, really), you can probably add an ungodly number of these semi-scripted moments. I think they would be absolutely magical. I think all of that would add up to a world that feels alive, with deep world building and many ‘surprising but inevitable’ moments – and the potential for some great emergent storytelling along the way. I’m very excited for it!

jncfhnb 2y ago

It would be hot garbage. Skyrim and basically all games are held together by suspension of disbelief which is reinforced by the player not doing things that they can’t do. If you give the player the agency to do anything they want then that suspension of disbelief disappears. You are now playing a juggling act of having the AI able to converse but limited in its mechanical agency to do the things that it talks about even if it makes 100% sense or 0% sense. Every time that limit is hit, the game feels broken. Every time the game breaks its happy path because the player was, even accidentally, problem solving in a way that broke the plot, the game becomes broken. Forget AI. Just think about simple things. Like plot critical NPCs. Most games either don’t let you attack them or cause you to lose if you attack them. That’s good. It just makes sense. Yeah it’s great that some RPGs proudly demonstrate that the plot can go forward with every character dead but that’s absolute shit for most plots. The constraints are very helpful.

bee_rider 2y ago
I disagree; it wouldn’t be hot garbage, just a different game. I don’t really enjoy video-game narratives in general anyway. That sort of content is there for people who want it, but I don’t (I know where the books and movies are if I want a well written plot). Skyrim was probably a bad example because it is a game for people who like that kind of stuff. But I still managed to have fun running around, killing bandits, doing dungeons, and avoiding the plot. I’d rather have something like Mount and Blade with janky LLM run AI. Dwarf Fortress, etc. Lots of open-world games have this sort of setup where plots seem to 2-3 node long semi-random graphs. Maybe an LLM can connect those nodes haphazardly and produce filler text to justify the connections.
- jncfhnb 2y ago
  It would still be bad for largely the same reasons. At best you could have some read only output generated on top of the game state. But interactive AI conversations that drive game state? Recipe for disaster
  - bee_rider 2y ago