Game Writing and Narrative in the Future - Professional Techniques for Video Game Writing - page 176

the core abilities of a human DM. Described in terms of a feature set, this hypo-
thetical game system—let's call it the Game Story Generation System, or GSGS for
short—would incorporate the following abilities.

• Create and name new NPCs, and place them appropriately in the gameworld.

• Control the fully realized, dynamic behavior of game characters.

• Write realistic-sounding and appropriate character dialog, on the fly, in re-

sponse to player actions or world conditions.

•

Generate audio speech that sounds realistic and can appropriately express emo-
tion and emphasize certain words for meaning.

•

Recognize player speech and decode it for meaning, with back-ups in place for
knowledge gaps.

•

Story-checking that compares the current narrative flow against optimal nar-
rative structures and can guide NPCs and world events to move the story in
structurally sound directions.

Of course, the technology to pull off some of these requirements is pretty far down
the road, while others exist in at least a crude form already.
Create and populate the world. Large teams of developers have proven again and
again that they are capable of creating massive worlds for players. The best examples
are in the MMOs, which need to be large enough to avoid feeling claustrophobic to
thousands of players at a time.
A space this large should be big enough to contain potential for a seemingly
infinite number of adventures. Additionally, dungeon-like spaces could be generated
on the fly, much like the maps in the venerable X-COM turn-based strategy games.
Programmatically generating new NPCs with unique names, looks, and person-
alities would also be within today's existing technology.
NPC behavior. The artificial intelligence (AI) programming behind many of today's
video game enemies and NPCs seems fairly rudimentary when compared with the
capabilities of a human DM. AI motivations are usually quite simple (i.e., follow the
player, aim at the player, attack the player) and lack the finesse that a live human is
able to infuse into a character.
AI programming in general seems to have hit a brick wall in the past several
decades, with the once seemingly attainable goal of creating machines that think like
a human having settled, according to Wired magazine, into “a long AI winter of
shrunken budgets and general indifference.� 1
It's difficult to predict how long it could take for AI programming to rise from
this extended plateau and be applied to gaming at the level required to fully realize
this feature. However, it seems safe to assume it is not just around the corner.

1 Wired 15.10, Geekipedia insert, 9.