I have a feeling it would start to feel like noise pretty quickly. We already have games that use procedural generation extensively to create endless "variety", but the patterns become noticeable almost immediately (every planet in No Mans Sky, for example). Not to say I would mind if every NPC said something slightly different instead of hearing the same 10 pre-recorded lines, but it feels like this wouldn't have much impact.
I guess I could see the benefit if the NPCs changed their dialogue based on the player's actions in the game. It would be fun to hear townsfolk talking about things that I was doing, or events that I was involved with or directly caused. It would still be the same kind of noise, but it would be a fun way of making the player feel like part of the world.
I think the real test here is whether or not you can make the interactions of patrons in a tavern actually worth spending 5 hours in like you would a pub in real life.
If people can have real genuine fun at the bar shooting the shit with the patrons and playing bar games then you could actually add a layer of depth and immersion to open world games. You would need to change the entire pacing of the games of course to something more like Kingdom Come, but it could work if you implement it right.
I don't have much faith in the techbros knowing how human interactions should look and feel and how real people with emotions enjoy their time with one another though.
The pacing issue is the major one here however. As you increase immersion in these games you also must decrease the pacing down to an actual real life pacing. This is an issue when it comes to travel however, which is less fun.
I can get a paragraph or two into talking with ChatGPT before I start to get bored of how often it’s just rephrasing what I’ve already said. It was more fun without the guard rails that turn every other message into a disclaimer.
It was more fun without the guard rails that turn every other message into a disclaimer.
:100-com: completely agree. But the technology doesn't have to be chatgpt. Others without its limitations will appear. I think the kind of thing I'm talking about could emerge.
worth spending 5 hours in like you would a pub in real life.
That's asking way too much. I think the farthest you can, and should, go with this is having idle background chatter that's being generated. Just simple, low risk stuff like talking about the weather, or mentioning significant recent events based on keywords.
These language models aren't people. It doesn't think. Trying to make it simulate an entire bar full of people for hours and have it pass the turing test isn't going to work, but you might be able to get it to do simple conversations between NPCs, and contextually appropriate generated answers to natural language questions from the player.
But it'd be more "How do I get to X landmark" or "What happened to Y NPC?" than having detailed conversations for hours.
If you used it judiciously and were realistic about it's limits I think it could be cool. Being able to ask random NPCs "How do I get to Castle Doom" and get novel responses in natural language each time could be cool. Using it as a way to inject backstory without having the character read tons of books could be cool. Using it to make NPCs have novel background chatter could be cool. It doesn't have to be flawless, just good enough, and you can, or at least should, significantly limit the scope of it's responses. Have your writers build a big document with information the NPCs should "know" and get the language model to work from that.
Absolutely. A lot of those suggestions I would consider to be over and above merely "endless flavor text", which to me implied taking more or less the current way of doing flavor text and throwing AI at it. I think you still have to structure it and design the parts into a coherent experience, or else it'll be perceived more or less the same way as static flavor text. I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing, I just think we'd get used to it pretty quickly.
I have a feeling it would start to feel like noise pretty quickly. We already have games that use procedural generation extensively to create endless "variety", but the patterns become noticeable almost immediately (every planet in No Mans Sky, for example). Not to say I would mind if every NPC said something slightly different instead of hearing the same 10 pre-recorded lines, but it feels like this wouldn't have much impact.
I guess I could see the benefit if the NPCs changed their dialogue based on the player's actions in the game. It would be fun to hear townsfolk talking about things that I was doing, or events that I was involved with or directly caused. It would still be the same kind of noise, but it would be a fun way of making the player feel like part of the world.
I think the real test here is whether or not you can make the interactions of patrons in a tavern actually worth spending 5 hours in like you would a pub in real life.
If people can have real genuine fun at the bar shooting the shit with the patrons and playing bar games then you could actually add a layer of depth and immersion to open world games. You would need to change the entire pacing of the games of course to something more like Kingdom Come, but it could work if you implement it right.
I don't have much faith in the techbros knowing how human interactions should look and feel and how real people with emotions enjoy their time with one another though.
The pacing issue is the major one here however. As you increase immersion in these games you also must decrease the pacing down to an actual real life pacing. This is an issue when it comes to travel however, which is less fun.
I can get a paragraph or two into talking with ChatGPT before I start to get bored of how often it’s just rephrasing what I’ve already said. It was more fun without the guard rails that turn every other message into a disclaimer.
:100-com: completely agree. But the technology doesn't have to be chatgpt. Others without its limitations will appear. I think the kind of thing I'm talking about could emerge.
It may help that everyone in there is meant to be drunk
That's asking way too much. I think the farthest you can, and should, go with this is having idle background chatter that's being generated. Just simple, low risk stuff like talking about the weather, or mentioning significant recent events based on keywords.
These language models aren't people. It doesn't think. Trying to make it simulate an entire bar full of people for hours and have it pass the turing test isn't going to work, but you might be able to get it to do simple conversations between NPCs, and contextually appropriate generated answers to natural language questions from the player.
But it'd be more "How do I get to X landmark" or "What happened to Y NPC?" than having detailed conversations for hours.
If you used it judiciously and were realistic about it's limits I think it could be cool. Being able to ask random NPCs "How do I get to Castle Doom" and get novel responses in natural language each time could be cool. Using it as a way to inject backstory without having the character read tons of books could be cool. Using it to make NPCs have novel background chatter could be cool. It doesn't have to be flawless, just good enough, and you can, or at least should, significantly limit the scope of it's responses. Have your writers build a big document with information the NPCs should "know" and get the language model to work from that.
Absolutely. A lot of those suggestions I would consider to be over and above merely "endless flavor text", which to me implied taking more or less the current way of doing flavor text and throwing AI at it. I think you still have to structure it and design the parts into a coherent experience, or else it'll be perceived more or less the same way as static flavor text. I don't think that would necessarily be a bad thing, I just think we'd get used to it pretty quickly.