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Infinite Games?
Anonymous Coward writes "BBC is running a story on how US scientists are working on improving AI - with potential benefits for coming games.
The system, called Liquid Narrative allows to avoid scripted storylines, and finally gives us, the gamers, full freedom to do whatever we want to do. R. Michael Young, the project coordinator, says:
'Game companies are realising that story telling has a lot of potential that has not been tapped yet.'"
Finally computer game story lines are catching up with pen-and-paper RPGs.
Now if the graphics and audio could only improve on my imagination...
Unfortunately, I am not Wil Wheaton
Even the best RPGs I've played for the PC have always felt scripted to me. You're limited in the actions you can take or the things you can say. I suppose this is a constraint of dealing with computers. . . but it's also why old-fashioned pencil-and-paper RPGs are still my favorite. You can come up with something the GM/Storyteller never thought of, pull off your idea, and see the results. Most computer RPGs stifle you at step 2.
!#@%*)anks for hanging up the phone, dear.
but that was before people had run out of ideas pertaining to AI. Today the only problems AI can solve are uninteresting ones.
Not even remotely true. AI faded from the public eye maybe, but there are literally hundreds of interesting projects that are being researched. The field never went away, it just doesn't make it into the mass media.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
I have been playing Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind since December 31, 2002 and I still can't put it down. It is really neat to have this gigantc scenario to explore and there's always many things around to do that have nothing to do with the main quest. I am positive that after a whole month playing that game I have yet to uncover 25% of the map.
If these people could expand on this concept and come up with a Morrowind model that spans across a few continents instead of one, and with maybe 3-5 main quests that are dynamically generated then it would take months to finish it. The problem is that if it takes so long to finish one game, people will buy less games. Same thing as building a car that runs like new for 10 years. The car company wants you to buy a new car every 5.
Pedro
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The Insomniac Coder
Yep, soon the researchers will have made up enough ground to come up with *ELITE*. Greatest game ever, and totally open ended.
We ARE the peat bog soldiers.
I'm joking. I'm not a big gaming person, mostly because I suck at FPS-stuff. I do, however, think that Myst/Riven/Exile/whatever-Mudpie-is-called-now pretty much hit this one on the head. The problem they mention in the article, of infinite storylines, isn't really addressed by the gaming people they interviewed -- the balance has to be between one person or group's 'vision', or telling a story, and the player's receptivity to listen to that storyline. In Deus Ex, the Ion Storm Austin people decided to limit the narrative possibilities around a set two or three paths, and only in the final parts of the game.
OK, so you make a 'game universe' : how is this any different from the mmo games now around?
I'd think this would be more useful to people wanting to develop interactive environment simulations, rather than straight-ahead games : the aquarium as a metaphor probably works between than the FPS idea.
Or maybe I'll just read a book instead.
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Death will come, and will have your eyes
-- Pavese
The Japanese style of RPG (e.g. the Final Fantasy series) treats role-playing in an entirely different way. Rather than creating your own character and playing out that role, you play the role of a predetermined character. For such games, scripted stories are very important. The whole point of the game is really to enjoy the story. Japanese RPGs boil down to basically being interactive stories.
As you say, improved AI and non-scripted stories will advance the Western style of role-playing game. However, I don't think it'll they'll have much of an impact on the traditional Japanese story-driven RPGs.
-Stephen
No AI is ever going to be a substitute for good game design and a good story. The article talks about rebuilding the game world if you kill some important ally or destroy an important object, but that's really only applicable for games like Unreal (that they showcase in the article). Unreal isn't a story; sure, it may have some story cobbled together, but Unreal and most games like it are only good for playing against other people and showcasing graphics cards. Something like Deus Ex is infinitely harder to design, because not only do you have to write a compelling story, but you also have to implement it.
Games like the Quest for Glory series were built around the theory that the player will want to be able to do just about anything, to break just about anything, and to be just about anything. They did this very well. It's not about scripting or AI that can allow the player to do anything; it's about using the story and scripting to guide the player without making them feel like they're being guided. Deus Ex is a good example. There are levels that you have to finish, so it's static in that respect, but the manner in which you finish them is completely up to you, and so you feel like you are in control, even though you're doing exactly what the designers wanted you to for most of the game.
People are easily wowed by the next generation of Unreal, and they certainly are quite impressive and expertly done. But they are also quite forgettable. When the last Quest for Glory game came out in '98, I'll bet you that most people pulled out the first four and re-did them (games from the 80's!) just so they could keep their character. Or if they didn't redo them, they had a dusty old floppy somewhere that had it.
Even if we had an AI smart enough to behave like a human, we will never have an AI smart enough to be as creative as humans can.
what's so interesting about that?
you can't do anything you want, i tried to do a lot of creative things and most of them didn't work. only the obvious did, like talking to the woman...
it seems to me that all this game is is a database of possible actions, each linked to an outcome. there is no artificial intelligence involved.
the problem with implementing something like this in an interactive 3D environment is obvious. you can't use the same technique employed in AISLE and statically correlate actions with outcomes. there are just too many!
i thought that the article made it fairly clear that the goal of the technologies in question is to examine the actions performed and dynamically update the story. AISLE does nothing of the sort. It reminds me more of oldschool adventure games like king's quest 1 and quest for glory.
the only interesting thing about AISLE, i suppose, could be the input parser. it doesn't seem very sophisticated tho.
Funny you should use that example. A friend and I have recently been playing through old RPGs online via ZSNES. We just finished up FFVI, and Secret of Mana before that. You know what? I still prefer those games to most anything coming out these days, and remain every bit as engrossed as the first time I played it.
Companies are putting a LOT more emphasis on plot nowadays (heh, in fact, Squaresoft is basically putting ALL the emphasis on plot! (see FFX)).
What A terrible example. Not to argue that FFX was lacking in the story department, but all of the post-SNES Final Fantasies seem to flaunt style over substance (with the possible exception being VII). Proof of this lies no further than the upcoming FFX-2, a sequel to FFX staring a John Woo-style gun toting Yuna wearing hot pants with two scantilly clad female companions. What's this about Square still pushing story in the FF series?
How can you seriously complain about that? .. I've got stacks of books collecting dust, but I don't consider that a flaw in the books themselves.
"I've got stacks of games collecting dust.."
Games are just like any other narrative product, like movies or books, you can't just constantly use them and expect to stay entertained. They do, however, lend themselves to re-use, like movies or books, after you've given them time to slip from your mind.
I, for one, am kind of hesitant to say that this kind of automatic storytelling would be a good thing. The really good games, like really good stories, have very enveloping plots. I don't see how an 'automatic' story generator can consistently create an entertaining story line. It might be ok for individualized scenes, but the difficulty in tying all that together into an enjoyable plot seems astronomically difficult.
I think the only infinite game is life.
The problem that 'Liquid Narrative' is addressing goes back at least to George Polti's "36 Dramatic Situations" in the year 1900. My AI faq gives infinitely more perspective than this BBC pap, on the important questions. (It's getting a little stale, but I'm currently revising the timeline with lots of rich resources.)
Ahhh nethack, now there is a game that never ends, just when you think you've seen everything you fall through a trap door into an entirely new type of level. Why can't we have more games like that, I mean the gui versions suck, but good old ascii art still rings true for me.
Ever see a position open at a gaming company for a writer? No, because they don't exist. Game Developers need to realize that writing both narrative and non-narrative storylines is a specialists position.
Hire writers and the games will become much more compelling.
What a poor way to play a role playing game. It seems as if the role you are playing is someone playing an RPG. I'm sure your character walks up to a door and says "sense", or goes into a room and says "detect trap".
Perhaps it is an indication of the skill of the GM, but it is also up to you to role play.
Each side feeds the other. Perhaps if you were to say something like
"Hmm, the door is locked. I look at the handle and lock. Are there any hinges on this side of the door?"
"No"
If you actually do have a magical ability to detect traps, you could say something like:
"I open up my awareness to the chi/feng shui (or whatever genre you are playing in) of the room, does anything seem amiss?"
"Well, the whole room seems kind of off, and the chest in the corner is tickling your awareness more strongly."
However, if you have more of a thief type skill, I would expect you to actually start looking at parts of the room. You might start with:
"I scan the room, looking for anything amiss - cracks in the wall, outcroppings of stone, shelves, niches, darkened areas."
If you actually make an easy detect traps roll, the GM should give you some area to concentrate on, so you can hone your *actual* problem solving skills on the real challenge - the trap.
If not, I would expect you to try and look at individual parts of the room, like the chest, door, walls, floor, ceiling, etc.
I always prefer people to actually *solve* the trap, as opposed to relying on some stupid roll of the dice. Perhaps they can even solve it in a way that I have not thought of, but is reasonable.
I could go on, but hopefully you get the idea.
Unfortunately making games that extend themselves will have some drawbacks for the game industry. If one had to simply buy one game which could evolve as it pleased, instead of buying multiple, specialized games (non-evolving), many game developers would be out a lot of money.
I think that development on this field in the games industry will be hindered, if not stopped (for a while, at least), as the CEO's wouldn't want their salary to go down.