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[JEMC]

HoloDust said:

JEMC said:

We've been hearing devs talking about the AI of their NPCs for years, and now they have the tools for it. But it will still ask for a lot of work from the devs, giving them a personality and a story and a whole lot more, and because of that I don't expect a lot of games to really shine in that aspect. My guess is that most will do the bare minimum and call it a day.

Still, those narrative LEGOs and n+1 will have a place, as the devs will have to create the stories and boundaries for the player and the NPCs. AI will help with that, hopefully, but it won't replace them.

Oh, I don't know - we already have games that are letting NPCs do whatever they want (according to their motivations) and that reflects in gameworld. Dwarf Fortress being prime example. City 20, upcoming survival RPG being another. So if you figure out how to make plot triggers, let the systemic world just exist, throw player into it and let them achieve goals in any way they want, while interacting with that systemic world and AI NPCs, it would be quite different than any notion of classic game design so far. And eventually add an AI Game Master, and you have radically different experiences than what we're used to in video games.

Not saying classically designed games won't still be viable path to take, but with such NPCs, all of the sudden you have much different view toward designing everything. Pretty similar to what I once said in some BotW discussion - if you make a game where axe can chop wood (and that means ALL wood), and make all doors wooden, then your view on the game design needs to be quite different than in game where axe can chop only some wood and all doors are artificially impervious to it.

What you said, "games that are letting NPCs do whatever they want (according to their motivations)" is what I meant by motivation and story/background given to the NPC, etc. Those things will still need to be put in place by devs to follow the story they want to create in the game and to make sure the player experiences the game the way they want. That's where the n+1 or whatever they want to use to describe it comes into play.

The AI Game Master isn't something I see happening anytime soon, and maybe never at all in some games (why would a game like DOOM need that, for example?).

And now that you mention the axe and wood/doors, I'd love to see AI used to create more interactive worlds. How many times has any of us wanted to enter huts, houses, stores or whatever in a game but we can't because the devs only designed the outside? How cool would it be to let AI design the interiors of all those places in a way that makes sense and doesn't repeat, freeing devs to do the rest of the work. It's one of the few good things AC: Unity had, the option to enter through some houses or buildings as a shortcut, making the city feel more real.