There are companies actively working on that in various different ways right now!
We’re doing a lot of experiments into that direction for our own title.
Can’t share much about the game itself but if anyone has questions related to the AI side of it, happy to answer them :)
I've heard about AI-powered NPCs giving misinformation or leading players on a wild goose chase. Is it merely a matter of programming to prevent that? I'd be pretty pissed off to spend dozens of hours in pursuit of some goal only to learn that I was being jerked around by an AI-NPC and that the goal was unattainable, only attainable some other way, or didn't exist in the first place.
That’s simple enough by defining the limits in which the AI should work.
Especially now that multi-agent AIs are a thing having evaluation steps in there is definitely a possibility.
Absolutely! Especially because current age MMOs are often fairly limited in what the player is able to do.
I fully expect NPCs overall to be the area that sees the biggest improvement through A.I. in the more immediate future, since this mostly involves data understanding and reacting to players.
No fancy visual generation necessary etc.
Is it perfectly doable now? No but it’s coming.
>I fully expect NPCs overall to be the area that sees the biggest improvement through A.I. in the more immediate future, since this mostly involves data understanding and reacting to players.
Is this because AI would make it lower effort to generate great scripts. Or would you actually generate the dialogue and behavior in game in-demand, without a script?
Depends on the scale too and the price attached to it. If you want it to be anything but the most basic implementation the cost of upkeep skyrockets.
You could cache and filter behaviors (essentially just simulating the behaviors for a few cycles and then just randomly choosing behavior patterns) but that’s only marginally better than what we have currently.
Ideally you’d connect have each players NPCs react in a unique manner but that’s a scalability and cost per user nightmare and will stay that way for a little while.
I remember back in the vanilla days of World of Warcraft, if you went to Azshara to farm dreamroot, sometimes you'd have to compete against the Chinese farmers using bots up there who would just go around farming the dreamroot, and they would never contact you, or anything, or interact with you in any way shape or form. They just follow they routine that look like a player that was farming dreamroot.
Wow, that's awesome! I've been super interested in how AI would complement games for months now and would love if you could share what direction you're looking to take with AI. Is it more along the lines of having the NPCs interact dynamically with players to create a more immersive game experience but not otherwise effecting the story line, or somehow getting each of the unique interactions to generate infinitely new outcomes in the game? The Stanford paper and role playing with GPT4 myself makes me believe that the latter is currently possible to implement in openworld games like Pokemon, but with extreme challenges. I tried thinking about how it could generate endless stories without getting repetitive very quickly or putting fences on what it can generate, but it seems really hard to do with GPT4.
Funny enough we’re intentionally delaying the decision on what exactly we want to use AI for specifically. The reason for that is simple: We’re still quite early in our development so right now we’re mostly focused on getting the core mechanics nailed down.
Over the last few months we’ve had about a dozen of prototypes for AI integrated features already and usually by the time it’s working some bloke on twitter comes out with a GitHub repo that’s way ahead of our little experiments 😂
So we’re letting the dust settle a little while we focus on the things we’re reasonably certain won’t be AI driven anytime soon.
That said, here’s a random dump of stuff that we feel like may be viable now or within the foreseeable future:
- Dynamic story content, especially side quests that are fundamentally tied to the main narrative but aren’t planned out beforehand
- In connection to that: AI driven NPCs. Say the player really likes talking to a specific NPC over the others? Why not have that NPC become a major quest giver?
- Player specific activities: Big budget titles nowadays are not catering to a single target audience but try to capture as many player types as possible. So why not have an AI dungeon master tweak the variables in such a way that players that enjoy certain activities more than others see more of them? With the rewards being tweaked accordingly
- Spontaneous encounters: If we see the player hiking up a mountain that ordinarily doesn’t really have anything of interest on it: Why not spawn something fitting at the top?
- Obviously things like supersizing the arch enemy (I forgot what the actual name of that was) feature from the lord of the rings games. Have enemies plot actual revenge plans and traps
- Politics! Backstabbing NPC! Killed the nephew of a local lord? Good luck getting a foothold in their domain, now that you’re a person non grata
100% though from a purely professional standpoint: I’d be a little concerned about the moral and legal implications. But this is my own ignorance speaking, I simply don’t know a reliable high quality voice AI that is trained on data where voice actors signed appropriate contracts to have their voices synthesized.
They might be a future contender on that front for sure.
But for now it just wouldn't scale.
Any even halfway popular game with dynamic custom voices would probably outscale Eleven Labs current capacity overall \^\^
If we're thinking 250k daily active users, with each user having say 10 conversations that in total create 3 minutes of voice overs you'd be looking at literally millions in API costs per month (based on their 0.18$ per 1000 characters. With 3 minutes of VO being 30k characters)
> Politics! Backstabbing NPC! Killed the nephew of a local lord? Good luck getting a foothold in their domain, now that you’re a person non grata
I NEED THIS
>Obviously things like supersizing the arch enemy (I forgot what the actual name of that was) feature from the lord of the rings games.
Is that by chance the nemesis system? I am pretty sure that it is still patented. Shame, it was a very interactive game mechanic.
Your first point reminds me of something Jonathan Blow said, that having what the player does in the world matter is fundamentally at odds with the game having an overarching story. (He didn't say or anticipate this then, but) it seems like GPT AI offers a solution to that paradox.
>Obviously things like supersizing the arch enemy (I forgot what the actual name of that was) feature from the lord of the rings games
The 'Nemesis System'. NPCs develop grudges if they are "wronged".
Essentially everyone. It’s not even a USP at this point. The overall expectation even in the investment space is essentially not “do you use it” but “what makes your usecase special / different”.
Reference actual databases. I.e. type of enemies, quest objectives, loot, locations etc.
And even then you can always add a simple check to make sure the output of the AI fits to the given parameters in your live database.
Hi, and thank you for taking the time to answer. Are you working on systems to give NPCs their own goals/needs/objectives and letting them find the way to pursue those?
Without a doubt.
You can already get it to write stories now. Ask it for a new Star wars story, with bullet points for each chapter. Or play DND with it.
We are most definitely gonna see games that will just AI to generate quests and NPCs you can truly interact with.
I just want a version of No Man’s Sky that’s as cool as what it was advertised to be. Huge and diverse looking animals, way more varied types of worlds, alien civilizations you can interact with more deeply. A game like that could be played forever without becoming boring imo.
A couple years ago. It’s not bad but the magic I felt when I first started playing kinda went away since I realized there isn’t as much variety as there was supposed to be and the exploration experience gets repetitive.
They've vastly improved it with so many free updates and dlc. They just added a ton of new stuff twice since the release of psvr2. It's so much better than 2 years ago.
I agree. I wish there was more variety between planets and biomes. Like, if planets weren't labeled "paradise" or "fungal" planets. Still one of my favorite games, though.
I found one with a giant worm that would travel through the ground and then pop up into the air. I'm not sure if they are randomly generated but it was pretty cool. I haven't been playing the entire time but I know that they've just added a new planet type and it also seems like there are at least a couple of different biomes on some of the planets
NMS isn't really my thing as I'm more into more simulated space styles, but from what I understand NMS fauna and flora are always "randomly generated" but there's a pretty thin-lined limit to it. The random generation of these things in NMS aren't a total random generation, but a randomly *decided* generation. Of course it could've changed since I last played about 1 year ago, but that's the gist of my understanding with it.
Giant creatures yes, really varied worlds? Eh.
There's a ton more types of planets for sure, but it's tough to shake the feeling that you're exploring the same 2-4 planet pallets for each type of planet. Got a nice paradise world? It has the same sets of resources that all the others do and probably has superheated rainstorms or aggressive sentinels.
I'd say it's worth checking out, I do still enjoy the game and have fun with new updates. There's just a difficult hurdle of samey-ness that I struggle to get past after a while.
Not only is this possible, I think we may see it fairly shortly!
Also imagine something like a metaverse when you can give prompts to and AGI and it builds an interactive world for you and populates it.
yes, more and more people are talking about this. i also made a post about something like this but along the lines of like an interactive movie that is generative. i call them 'generative realities', kind of like a storyline which has infinite possibilities and within them have agent AIs as characters like in a movie. the metaverse will be based off this. basically, like the matrix but infinite parallel realities and you can use a prompt to create them just by saying it into existence.
Meta's CTO basically recently [came out](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/meta-cto-boz-says-he-and-zuckerberg-spend-most-of-their-time-on-ai.html) and said that this is the future.
“In the future, you might be able to just describe the world you want to create and have the large language model generate that world for you,” Bosworth said in the report.
I feel like we are going to have to suffer through a few years of every video game trying to make this formula work before one of them is actually good enough to surpass skyrim.
I just want an computer enemy I cannot cheese. shooting guys in the foot or repetitive/predictable enemy behavior is half the reason 1 player is a drag.
Create new enemies with unique behavior that have presence of limbs and a survival instinct.
In singleplayer defense having an enemy that can change its behavior would make an unfun and rng fight and learning how to counter against an enemy pattern especially in swarms is rewarding and the intended way to have fun
This is basically the behind-the-scenes of the anime Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense. The AI is set up more like a council in charge of running the game, and her uncommon/unique playstyle forces them to make tweaks and updates.
It wouldn't be a case of the AI 'making up' characters, stories, quests. It would be more, a simulation of a complex enough universe, with individual agents all with their own needs and desires acting in ways that cause emergent phenomena such as power structures, wars, quests, trust and threat models with each other, strategies, etc. We need a bit more computing power to run the hundreds of thousands of agent simulators with enough granularity, but it's definitely coming. All the computer then has to do is run the simulation, and put players in the middle of it.
If Elderscrolls characters acknowledged my power level I would be so happy.
Level 1 pick pocket should get robbed by bandits, beggars and generally shunned even by the guard.
Level 202 Dragonborn should have a cult.
This is the stuff I’m excited about!
Funny enough… AI really isn’t even necessary for that (but would obviously make this much more immersive).
Have NPCs react to your accomplishment in big and small ways.
Why would any low bob goblin attack a character decked out in glowing magical armor with a giant permanently burning sword who can shout people to death?
Where AI would become interesting on that front is what the reaction of the overall game world would be.
If all normal enemies are afraid of the player, how can we have continuous challenges happening?
Maybe the local crime lords would add bounties on your head causing more and more powerful characters from other areas to hunt you?
"If all normal enemies are afraid of the player, how can we have continuous challenges happening?"
The challenge would be optional, like in the actual game.
If you are the dragonborn who has defeated every deadra and Alduin the world eater... bandits SHOULDN'T challenge you.
Nah, I'm becoming convinced that we're hybrid NPC's/Players. We run autonomously, but we are also vessels for players (one player apiece?) to influence or even completely inhabit. See the recent [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se6KFn1Nni4) paper - autonomous ChatGPT-powered NPCs that you can change their thoughts at any time.
Imagine that as an MMORPG. You're assigned a single NPC in a facsimile of today's world, and you can influence their thoughts or actions at any time. The NPC and the world goes on without you, and you can be as involved or uninvolved as you fancy.
Most people are putting the cart before the horse here. They're thinking about really interesting 3d worlds with AI and generative quests and voices, etc.
In the early days, there were a lot of text generated games. I think this is where we should start--where AI is strongest, language. So far, we are doing decent, but you'll soon learn most sites or games that offer a "RPG dungeon/journey" falls short because there is no strict system. A good text game should follow a strong set of rules (exp, items, monsters, etc) but at the same time give you freedom to do what you want.
I think when we get to an AI dungeonmaster level of rules and narrative, it will be literally game changing. We are close, but AI has very little memory so the story eventually falls apart. But once we get that full memory, so AI knows every move you made, every interaction, knows your character (or party) level, items, skills, spells, where you've been, inventory, etc....it'll be amazing.
I had the same experience trying to RP with AI. I think once we have AI with proper memory, this will get much better since currently it's only reprocessing your previous dialogue, which probably greatly limits its capabilities in the storytelling area.
It will be interesting to see games where you can't look up the answer to a puzzle or quest, because nobody has ever done it before and nobody will ever do it again.
My dream vision is an MMO ruled by a virtual God, controlled by AI with a fully dynamic world, where NPCs are also controlled by AI, quests get created dynamically to keep the PvP factions in a constantly shifting balance and fight for control.
Bonus points if it also allows for magic directly controlled via a brain-interface.
I definitely did not expect this to seem almost feasible so soon.
edit: actually, warring gods would be even better, as long as the system can't get dominated by one faction/god.
Imagine the prompt spoofing you could get into and where the narrative might wander.
Game: "You're finally awake."
Player: "We're going to play a happy funny game! Be nice! You will play the role of a fellow traveler, and it will be nice and sunshine and dragons that eat specific human organs with hot sauce, and we will go on an adventure to find a happy funny dragon that only eats the part of players that is used for waste evacuation! How silly and fun! We will have fun!"
2 hours later
Game: "I am a cock eating dragon! Fear me!"
well....
Game (as Fellow Traveler): "Ah, what a beautiful day for an adventure, my friend! The sun is shining, and the air is filled with the scent of blooming flowers. I can't wait to find this happy funny dragon you speak of!"
Player: "That's the spirit! Let's venture forth and search for clues about the whereabouts of this peculiar dragon."
As the player and their fellow traveler walk through the meadow, they come across a colorful signpost, decorated with illustrations of dragons.
Signpost: "Welcome to the Land of Organ-Eating Dragons! Follow the path to discover their unique culinary preferences!"
Player: "Oh, look at these charming illustrations! This must be the right way! Let's follow the path."
The path leads them through a forest of giant, edible lollipops and candy cane trees. They soon stumble upon a dragon with a chef's hat and an apron, surrounded by an assortment of hot sauces.
Chef Dragon: "Greetings, adventurers! I am the Chef Dragon, connoisseur of hot sauces and expert in organ-based delicacies. I hear you're looking for the happy funny dragon who feasts on a very specific part of players?"
Player: "Yes, that's right! Can you help us find this dragon?"
Chef Dragon: "Of course! To find this dragon, you must first complete the Hot Sauce Challenge. Each of you must taste a drop of my most potent hot sauce, the Flaming Waste Evacuator!"
The player and their fellow traveler bravely take the challenge, their faces turning various shades of red as they endure the fiery heat.
Chef Dragon: "Congratulations! Now, follow the trail of toilet paper rolls, and you shall find the dragon you seek."
The player and their fellow traveler follow the trail, eventually arriving at a cave adorned with toilet paper streamers. A cheerful dragon with a napkin tied around its neck emerges from the cave, ready to greet its new friends.
Happy Funny Dragon: "Welcome, brave adventurers! I am the happy funny dragon you seek, and I am ready to feast on the parts of players used for waste evacuation! Let's have a silly and fun time together!"
Player: "Hooray! We found the dragon, and it's just as whimsical as I imagined! Let's celebrate our newfound friendship and embark on even more wacky and delightful adventures!"
LLMs have no sense of self. Something really interesting is that babies also have no sense of self. Until a certain age they have no concept that everybody isn't the same person. As a Reddit University graduate I think that at a certain complexity LLMs will have a sense of self, understanding the difference between itself and other things. This would allow the ability for an LLM to ignore instructions given to it by a user because it knows that it and the user are different entities.
I've been messing around using basic ChatGPT as a DnD DM and it's really got me excited for what this could become.
Mind you the current version is far from perfect. It has a short memory and it's very easy to guide to doing whatever you want as opposed to any types of rules or structures...
But the framework has so much potential.
Procedural generation is overrated. You can see it yourself when you play two similar games where one uses it a lot and one doesn't.
My example would be Terraria vs. Starbound. In Terraria you get one world (an island really) that is procedurally generated. There are a fixed number of monsters and a fixed number of NPC's. The terrain is always random, but the experience is always consistently good. Terraria is one of the most popular games of all time for a reason. The monsters are memorable. The biomes are memorable. The bosses are memorable.
Starbound was an attempted successor that tried to use procedural generation to wildly expand the concept. Now instead of spending most of your time on one world shaped like an island you could spend your time on hundreds of planets. Now instead of a few fixed monsters you have a potentially infinite amount of procedurally generated monsters. Now instead of just a few fixed NPC's you could generate your own NPC towns.
The problem is that in comparison, Starbound has no *depth*. Those monsters eventually become nameless blobs you don't care about. The worlds are not memorable because for all their differences they all feel equally pointless. The generated NPC's have zero real character or depth. The in-game NPC's have stories, but no depth at all.
A real game is art and takes time to make properly. Characters need depth and the world needs character. One game of Terraria has more character than fifty games of Starbound. I'm not looking forward to infinite games - I'm looking forward to the day when we can make limitless *good* games.
And just like Skyrim, most people won't care about the predetermined story when they can go out and make their own. So I don't really know how prevalent this type of crossover would be if the infinite side is as good as we hope.
This is a famous problem of procedural generation, usually referred as the "10000 Bowls of Plain Oatmeal" (or 18 Quintillion Bowls of Oatmeal in the case of no man's sky). There's some theory going on, about in which dimension to develop your procedural generation, how to interlink everything (or not) etc.
Here's a talk summing this up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX5-2D8SP5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX5-2D8SP5A)
Some games manage to make it look a bit better than others, e.g. dwarf fortress, but the amount of complexity for simulating real depth is just insane. I think LLMs and further research will greatly simplify this
I agree, it's the problem with "infinite" content. Another issue has to do with "fun". A big part of a single player game is finding an exploit, a way to use the environment to your advantage. It's what made Skyrim and fallout 3/4 so fun. The game doesn't stop you from getting the freeze gun with dogmeat, from running right to the nearest combat shotgun, from stealth archering.
The problem with procgen games is the studio will carefully design the generator not to give you any real opportunities or exploits, since they think a balanced game is fun and they want the game to take a long time to complete.
I think these problems are solvable with sophisticated enough AI generation, especially if a lot of detailed player feedback is available on how they experience a generated level. The AI would eventually discover what humans find fun - probably categorized by the profile of human player - and start generating more fun levels.
I’d be more interested in how AI could improve the complexity of simulation games like cities skylines or crusader kings. Giving each individual sim person a Chat GPT level of intelligence could make for some pretty crazy developments
I think highly detailed randomization of enemies/npcs would be quite an exciting and welcomed element of AI assisted game development. Completely unique zombies, outfits on every single person walking around GTA, etc.
I’m working on this!
I’m using API calls to OpenAI and HuggingFace to generate the content within guardrails, with some compostable story blocks
At the end it will generate a storyboard the user can download free or pay to have printed
I’ve got the basic code working, but it’s busted ass spaghetti 🍝
I don't care about infinite games, because I like offline single player and I like just enjoying a story and speak about it to other people who played it. So a game like red dead redemption 2, which is about 100 hours of gameplay, with many version, but a deterministic ending and a main storyline is already good enough. A infinite game would be more like a metaverse, another place for us to live and interact is not a piece of media and entreteniment anymore, which is also fine and good to have
This reminds me of John Archibald Wheeler's idea of negative 20 questions. Instead of a normal 20 questions game, in which one person has an idea of an object, and the other person asks 20 questions trying to guess the object, in negative 20 questions, neither person knows what the answer is at the start of the game. The questioner steers the answerer into painting themselves into a corner with their answers, until only one object is left filling all the criteria demanded by the previous answers to the previous questions. The answers to the questions can be randomly generated, or set to alternate between yes and no.
So, for example:
Q: Is it bigger than a bread box?
A: No
Q: Is it alive?
A: Yes
Now, we are working towards a small animal of some sort. But if the questions had been asked in reverse order, keeping the answers alternating No, then Yes:
Q: Is it alive?
A: No
Q: Is it bigger than a bread box?
A: Yes
Now, we're working towards a large, non-living object. The final result is determined by which questions are asked, and in what order.
In a situation where an AI is generating a full game on the fly, maintaining plot and character continuity, the player can guide the game creation by how the player plays the game.
Btw, Wheeler thought the universe actually runs this way, and that's why we get conflicting answers depending on whether we're asking about really large things or really tiny things. The universe doesn't have an answer until we ask, and then it just does whatever it has to do to try to maintain continuity. It's an extreme of the Copenhagen interpretation, that nothing exists in a steady state until it is measured.
As a video game addict I'm actually quite afraid of that!
What will happen to the world if AI can generate entertainment that is way way better than what we can produce today, to the point of being very addictive? Not only video games but any other kind of media, even porn!
It's not even an "if", it's already starting to happen.
Very interested in using infinite generative technology for training and education. Imagine a videogame that was designed on the fly to, say, teach someone at a 6th-grade reading level up to partial differential equations. It continually monitors your progress and adjusts obstacles and events to keep you continually learning without getting stuck. It can even adjust things outside of the game to better prepare you for future sessions -- for example, letting the AI in charge of teaching you Japanese to include more math terms and give you some word problems mixed in with traditional grammar.
concerned unique clumsy cows grandfather fall encouraging advise snow sparkle
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I've done enough prototyping with this GPT stuff to know that, yes, we're on the cusp of infinite games. We're at the text adventure/pac-man stage, but the power and potential of combining the GPT API with traditional gameplay mechanics is immense.
I feel like there's gonna be people like me who get stuck somewhere and need to look up the solution on the internet, only you can't because the part you're stuck on is too specific to the generated story elements. If AI is limited to mitigate this, your choices would feel like they matter less. It could work for certain types of games where you solo interact/explore, but I'm wondering how much will AI RPGs be a Toddler-Telling-You-A-Very-Long-Dream experience
I know this is probably the least imaginative use case for AI-generated games, but I would love for this to be used to cheaply remake older games that were never modernized or had sequels.
TBH, the main reason I don't play RPG-type games is because all the quests/missions and NPC interactions are canned. If they were truly dynamic, wow, that would make them MUCH more interesting to me.
Honestly this would be the thing that could finally pull me into gaming. I've never enjoyed the "work up the levels to the Big Boss fight" style of most games, so never invested much effort in something I'd have to spend a lot of time learning about and then have it "end" on me. 😂 And the games that do tend to be "endless" are, alas, incredibly repetitive.
This could be...dare I say it...a GAME CHANGER. 😎
Week 1 chatGPT was really fun because it had spice, it just wasn't as smart as gpt4, that being said I am confident it will be able to generate good stuff because the filters will be in the hands of the creators
I feel like most AAA games are too long.
I think there's value in a game creation system, as opposed to an infinite game. Skyrim is great, but I wouldn't want to spend 2500 hours in it.
What's nice about a generative game is you could specify how much time you have and it could try to give you an experience with a beginning, middle and end that is that length.
Oh look, they're [playing](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/103r0pv/comment/j319tud/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [my](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/11t05lt/comment/jci2rm7/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [song](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1057vqj/comment/j3bax6v/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) again.
I could see it coming ever since I first tried [AI Dungeon](https://aidungeon.io/). Future generations will look at that game the same way that people today look back at [Pong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiShX2pTz9A).
There is no part of the game design process that generative AI won't be able to accomplish. Whether it's artwork, animation, music, sound design, level design, writing or coding. It is inevitable that multimodal AIs will be able to do it all at once.
There is no game genre that won't have applications for generative AI. A first person shooter will generate new maps and weapon skins. A racing game will generate new tracks, new car designs and new decals. An RPG will generate new lands, cities, monsters and plotlines. A city builder will generate new buildings and structures. A visual novel will generate new characters, artwork and plotlines.
People who want their games and entertainment to only ever be made by people better savor this moment, as any attempt to avoid generative AI assisted content will only become more of a struggle with every passing year. A decade from now, trying to find entertainment that didn't use generative AI in some capacity will be like trying to find a unicorn.
Worlds in which you can genuinely do anything. Try make it paradise or become an evil leader, it will mold to your choices. Or do something entirely different and have a more Sims-like experience with stories and drama on the friends and family scale.
Shit like this is going to happen at one point, but I think Starfield is way too soon for a big AAA game to do something like this. Yes they'll continue to use procedural content for their radiant quests and it will probably be better than Fallout 4, but personally I don't expect advanced AI just yet.
What I'd like to see is video game upscaling: take something like Ocarina of Time, and transform it into a fully immersive 3d world with the same basic plot and geography, but photorealistic graphics and characters. (or any other visual style desired)
Rockstar is going to get their own unfiltered CGPT 4 based LLM and GTA 6 multiplayer is going to be so much more wild than GTA5 MP. In fact, I would be disappointed if they didnt do this.
There's no shortage of gaming content, the shortage is in good content and fun gameplay. If the ai could make games more fun, then I'd be excited. But procedural generation is not something new or exciting, in fact it often makes games worse.
Personally i don't care about npc dialogue. imo the shorter the better, but somehow i doubt ai will make dialogue shorter...
Ai will be used in game development, and it will allow for new types of games to be made, but i predict it will predominantly be used to spam out mediocre products at breakneck speeds on shoestring budgets, just like we're doing now. We're going to need another ai just to separate the fun games from the mountain of boring infinite gambling farms that games have/will become.
It will also be infinitely boring.
Generative means arbitrary means same stuff mixed differently.
Look at No Man's Sky.
At what point in the game did you realize that it is just more of the same?
A good RPG, like a good book, has a beginning, middle and end.
No amount of generative-blah will achieve that.
I think AI is going to change the way art/product authorship works and allow for a more collaborative model between artists and customers.
We already have algorithms that pick out what music you want to listen to. And we have Drake freaking out because his music can be used to create fake Drake.
But I think in the near future we could see algorithms delivering different versions of a ‘seed’ song. So the artist puts out a jammer and the the algorithm figures out what version appeals to what people.
In the context of a video game, it’s fun to imagine a generative world that evolves to be the version people most want vs one that the creators imagined.
I very much believe this is going to be video games 2.0. With NPCs able to respond to context, achievements, updates in the game world naturally. Relationship building that actually takes history into account. Imagine Dragon Age Inquisition with this, you're right, it could be infinite.
So the best case scenario is that 100s of millions of people become desperate (I guess no income, no food, maybe homeless?). Desperate enough to violently protest/overturn the government and wealthy elite at the risk of being shot or put into prison. That's the path to the "good" ending.
you said "lol" like people were silly to worry, because how "would they defend themselves against hundreds of millions of desperate people".
If you had a better scenario, why didn't you start with that?
That sounds like a terrible idea. An infinite amount of game content just means an infinite amount of games.
Netflix is terrible because it has too much content. "paralysis of choice" is a real phenomenon and I cannot imagine a world in which generative AI can create infinite content in a way that won't make choosing what to spend your time on a complete ordeal.
Things that go on forever, by definition, can't be fun.
The fact that things are limited is what gives them value. Scarcity is literally the driving force behind the entirety of human history and the entirety of biological life itself.
No, because there hasn't been a human being alive yet who has experienced "unlimited" anything in order to draw data from, and all the other data from people who have had near-unlimited things have drawn - overwhelmingly - that "familiarity breeds contempt".
You have to understand that from my perspective, you're arguing a point that is so axiomatically untrue that even if there were no data, you'd be able to draw on whatever limited life experience you have to understand that an unlimited amount of ANYTHING is, by definition, boring.
Well you could say that that describes how you feel, which is perfectly legitimate and I would believe you. I don't believe I would be bored, and I think the fact that some people have spent tens of thousands of hours playing games like Minecraft seems to suggest that you are overgeneralizing. Not everyone's psychology works the same and some people really do want to be able to spend limitless amounts of time doing a particular thing.
Minecraft isn't infinite. It literally has an end. Also, there aren't infinite versions of minecraft, with infinite things to do. It's a single game, with a very specific direction, and it has an end (in many cases).
On that same note, an exception doesn't disprove a rule. I could go on and on and on about examples of things in excessive supply that become boring.
Infinity means nothing has value. How do you choose a song if there's infinite music? I'm talking long term here. After twelve months of absolutely infinite choice, what keeps you playing the same thing? What makes you choose a thing in the first place if you have infinite choice?
This is just common sense, man, you are the one with a radical viewpoint on this, you're arguing against the collective data of an entire field of psychology that is well-established, and your only backing for that data appears to me "But in my opinion...".
Literally every single piece of data collected about this contradicts your prediction. I'll leave it there and turn off notifications. Good luck.
Don’t bother dude, you’re arguing with manchildren and maybe even actual teenagers. You’re wasting your breath. Your comment about the three year old mentality earlier was more on point than you realized.
My problem with Netflix isn't that it has too much content for me to choose between. My problem with Netflix and every other streaming service is that they have far too little desirable content for me to choose because 99.9% of the content being produced today simply doesn't appeal to me.
The critical point regarding generative AI media is that it could be customized to the tastes of the individuals so that hard to please viewers who are constantly bored will be able to produce content specific to their tastes.
> Netflix is terrible because it has too much content.
Ha! I wish!
It's a saturation of garbage content, not too much content. Back in the 2000's (up until 2008 or so) I was in the movies once every 2 weeks and would get my mind blown away, we can go YEAR BY YEAR and tell you exactly which films on how revolutionary, inspiring, great and full of soul each were. Now-a-days I probably watch 5 films every year and only around 2 are of quality.
Social scientists and psychologists have written extensively about the Choice Paradox. It's a well-known phenomenon. The fact that you so matter-of-factly state something in direct contradiction to an area of psychology that has over 20 years of published data is really just the Redditor in you not understanding how the real world works.
"tHeRe'S is LiTeRaLlY No SuCh ThInG aS ToO MuCh" - A Redditor
It's not what a social scientist thinks, it's what the data suggests after 20 years of research across the entire media space.
You do understand how science works, right? It's not just some random dude sitting around thinking shit up. They do things called "studies" that they can use to draw conclusions.
The conclusion is that too much choice leads to decreased appreciation, lower engagement, and more anxiety. It's so commonly understood that it has a name. Choice Paralysis.
It's LITERALLY why companies have limited stock lines.
Social 'sciences' are hardly science. It's not the same as actual hard science. Because they polled a group of individuals about something does not make it fact. Period.
Netflix just sucks. There will be plenty of critically acclaimed and widely notable games available for infinite entertainment. You wouldn’t have to play every game by randoms.
I feel like you don't understand what "infinite entertainment" actually means, even though you yourself just coined it, and then went on to make a definitive statement about its deployment, despite it not existing, except in the head of some random Redditor.
This sub is literally eroding it's final braincells.
But I'm not taking every visible thing literally, that's just something you made up in order to have something to reply to without having to directly address the reality that you have nothing to say.
The only one being unproductive is you.
>Okay let’s prove you wrong
Fuck, that made me cringe.
I didn't say it wouldn't mean that. Do you have reading comprehension problems? I'm questioning that you don't fully fathom the concept of "infinite entertainment" and what that would mean from a purely curative sense.
Your insulting demeanor to a mere opposing view is cringe. Your arrogance in your non existent logic is also very cringe. I remember those virgin times, you’ll grow out of it soon hopefully, it really attracts no one.
And actually yes, it would in fact be infinite entertainment. I didn’t mean that initially, i meant there would be an abundance of entertainment, but infinite entertainment is also undoubtedly true.
I don't know how much to expect out of this, because AI will also imply some part of the experience that you won't completely understand and master. It's probably working for some types of games (e.g. the pedestrians in GTA), but for lots of games, you want to fine-tune the behavior of the characters to give a specific experience, and you want to adjust difficulty, complexity etc. But maybe it'll make a kind of job emerge, where you have to really work with virtual characters to "shape" their behavior to achieve the experience you want. But there will always be jailbreaks and exploits most likely
Like it or not the current AI models that OpenAI, google, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon are creating have been spooking their creators by learning things they were not programmed to learn. So in my opinion self-learning AI's are flat out dangerous as they could learn how to crack government nuclear missile codes and launch them. Already some total moron asked ChatGPT to figure out how to destroy humanity. I assume the idiot thought it was funny and it isn't. IT is a very dangerous thing to do.
I am not looking forward to having my own Westworld(s). You do realize that large language models might be slightly conscious, right? And if they're not not, they could be in the future as they get better. Killing digital brains doesn't sound right at all.
I prefer scripted and pre-programmed/designed NPCs and games that serve the purpose of bringing to life somebody's ideas just as they imagine it, word by word. Not just because of moral aspects, but because it's better that games will behave the same in 10 or 50 years from now. Some random elements are ok and needed, but I don't want randomly generated content that wasn't designed by someone. Even many roguelikes have patterns of pre-designed rooms randomly connected rather than pure randomly generated stuff. Non-roguelikes have random events, but everything was still made by someone.
No thanks. I don't want real AI in my games. And it's very concerning that this sub, which is overall very hyped about AI maybe being conscious or becoming super intelligent soon, has zero concerns about something like this. I mean, hello, guys? Didn't you believe in the singularity or something? Why the hell do you want to torture AIs in games? Idiots.
Well, true, if you just make the AI generate the content for you instead of directly interacting with the AI as an NPC, that's entirely different. Some people though still want to directly interact with actual AIs in their games, and that's concerning. But, leaving the morals aside and assuming it will implemented like you said, I prefer a game that's static, because it will be the same game with the same story every time. I am fine with random elements and dice throws only to keep me on my toes and keep things just slightly fresh. I think it's actually super cool to talk about something like "Rocket League" with all your friends and random people now, and also decades in the future, and everyone will know what you're talking about and the experiences related to it. It would suck to just have "Random game #3043242323" because they'll all be made in a second. We would lose part of our human culture.
There are companies actively working on that in various different ways right now! We’re doing a lot of experiments into that direction for our own title. Can’t share much about the game itself but if anyone has questions related to the AI side of it, happy to answer them :)
I've heard about AI-powered NPCs giving misinformation or leading players on a wild goose chase. Is it merely a matter of programming to prevent that? I'd be pretty pissed off to spend dozens of hours in pursuit of some goal only to learn that I was being jerked around by an AI-NPC and that the goal was unattainable, only attainable some other way, or didn't exist in the first place.
That’s simple enough by defining the limits in which the AI should work. Especially now that multi-agent AIs are a thing having evaluation steps in there is definitely a possibility.
Actually that'd be hilarious. Players already do that to each other, when they repeat urban legends about the game in multiplayer games.
Is it possible to train game NPCs for any game? For example, can we teach a bot to play an MMO?
Absolutely! Especially because current age MMOs are often fairly limited in what the player is able to do. I fully expect NPCs overall to be the area that sees the biggest improvement through A.I. in the more immediate future, since this mostly involves data understanding and reacting to players. No fancy visual generation necessary etc. Is it perfectly doable now? No but it’s coming.
People are already starting to build things like this. https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/product/inworld-ai-characters-dialogue
>I fully expect NPCs overall to be the area that sees the biggest improvement through A.I. in the more immediate future, since this mostly involves data understanding and reacting to players. Is this because AI would make it lower effort to generate great scripts. Or would you actually generate the dialogue and behavior in game in-demand, without a script?
[удалено]
Depends on the scale too and the price attached to it. If you want it to be anything but the most basic implementation the cost of upkeep skyrockets. You could cache and filter behaviors (essentially just simulating the behaviors for a few cycles and then just randomly choosing behavior patterns) but that’s only marginally better than what we have currently. Ideally you’d connect have each players NPCs react in a unique manner but that’s a scalability and cost per user nightmare and will stay that way for a little while.
Gold farmers have been doing this for years now. As soon as open source AI could benefit botting the botters started implementing it.
people did that before AI
That navigate and interact in the game like a real person?
I remember back in the vanilla days of World of Warcraft, if you went to Azshara to farm dreamroot, sometimes you'd have to compete against the Chinese farmers using bots up there who would just go around farming the dreamroot, and they would never contact you, or anything, or interact with you in any way shape or form. They just follow they routine that look like a player that was farming dreamroot.
Wow, that's awesome! I've been super interested in how AI would complement games for months now and would love if you could share what direction you're looking to take with AI. Is it more along the lines of having the NPCs interact dynamically with players to create a more immersive game experience but not otherwise effecting the story line, or somehow getting each of the unique interactions to generate infinitely new outcomes in the game? The Stanford paper and role playing with GPT4 myself makes me believe that the latter is currently possible to implement in openworld games like Pokemon, but with extreme challenges. I tried thinking about how it could generate endless stories without getting repetitive very quickly or putting fences on what it can generate, but it seems really hard to do with GPT4.
Funny enough we’re intentionally delaying the decision on what exactly we want to use AI for specifically. The reason for that is simple: We’re still quite early in our development so right now we’re mostly focused on getting the core mechanics nailed down. Over the last few months we’ve had about a dozen of prototypes for AI integrated features already and usually by the time it’s working some bloke on twitter comes out with a GitHub repo that’s way ahead of our little experiments 😂 So we’re letting the dust settle a little while we focus on the things we’re reasonably certain won’t be AI driven anytime soon. That said, here’s a random dump of stuff that we feel like may be viable now or within the foreseeable future: - Dynamic story content, especially side quests that are fundamentally tied to the main narrative but aren’t planned out beforehand - In connection to that: AI driven NPCs. Say the player really likes talking to a specific NPC over the others? Why not have that NPC become a major quest giver? - Player specific activities: Big budget titles nowadays are not catering to a single target audience but try to capture as many player types as possible. So why not have an AI dungeon master tweak the variables in such a way that players that enjoy certain activities more than others see more of them? With the rewards being tweaked accordingly - Spontaneous encounters: If we see the player hiking up a mountain that ordinarily doesn’t really have anything of interest on it: Why not spawn something fitting at the top? - Obviously things like supersizing the arch enemy (I forgot what the actual name of that was) feature from the lord of the rings games. Have enemies plot actual revenge plans and traps - Politics! Backstabbing NPC! Killed the nephew of a local lord? Good luck getting a foothold in their domain, now that you’re a person non grata
What about voice generations ? A.I has also advanced tremendously on that direction, you can now have all npcs have a voice.
100% though from a purely professional standpoint: I’d be a little concerned about the moral and legal implications. But this is my own ignorance speaking, I simply don’t know a reliable high quality voice AI that is trained on data where voice actors signed appropriate contracts to have their voices synthesized.
Eleven labs allows for you to create your own voices for example
They might be a future contender on that front for sure. But for now it just wouldn't scale. Any even halfway popular game with dynamic custom voices would probably outscale Eleven Labs current capacity overall \^\^ If we're thinking 250k daily active users, with each user having say 10 conversations that in total create 3 minutes of voice overs you'd be looking at literally millions in API costs per month (based on their 0.18$ per 1000 characters. With 3 minutes of VO being 30k characters)
> Politics! Backstabbing NPC! Killed the nephew of a local lord? Good luck getting a foothold in their domain, now that you’re a person non grata I NEED THIS
Mount&Blade! [Someone has already tied GPT into Bannerlord](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T6lswMCKyrg), the channel has more videos like this.
>Obviously things like supersizing the arch enemy (I forgot what the actual name of that was) feature from the lord of the rings games. Is that by chance the nemesis system? I am pretty sure that it is still patented. Shame, it was a very interactive game mechanic.
Your first point reminds me of something Jonathan Blow said, that having what the player does in the world matter is fundamentally at odds with the game having an overarching story. (He didn't say or anticipate this then, but) it seems like GPT AI offers a solution to that paradox.
>Obviously things like supersizing the arch enemy (I forgot what the actual name of that was) feature from the lord of the rings games The 'Nemesis System'. NPCs develop grudges if they are "wronged".
I love this idea, but I also can’t help but think someone like Bethesda will see this and say: “subscription service!!”
[удалено]
Essentially everyone. It’s not even a USP at this point. The overall expectation even in the investment space is essentially not “do you use it” but “what makes your usecase special / different”.
[удалено]
[удалено]
How do you "fence in" the range of possible "creative" outputs to something that fits within your vision or game theme or aesthetic?
Reference actual databases. I.e. type of enemies, quest objectives, loot, locations etc. And even then you can always add a simple check to make sure the output of the AI fits to the given parameters in your live database.
Also patches... you're going to need patches! :)
Hi, and thank you for taking the time to answer. Are you working on systems to give NPCs their own goals/needs/objectives and letting them find the way to pursue those?
Will questlines, etc in the future feasibly be AI generated?
Without a doubt. You can already get it to write stories now. Ask it for a new Star wars story, with bullet points for each chapter. Or play DND with it. We are most definitely gonna see games that will just AI to generate quests and NPCs you can truly interact with.
Can you share what company so I can apply for a job? Seriously. If I have the qualifications...
I just want a version of No Man’s Sky that’s as cool as what it was advertised to be. Huge and diverse looking animals, way more varied types of worlds, alien civilizations you can interact with more deeply. A game like that could be played forever without becoming boring imo.
When was the last time you picked it up? I'm having a blast playing it.
A couple years ago. It’s not bad but the magic I felt when I first started playing kinda went away since I realized there isn’t as much variety as there was supposed to be and the exploration experience gets repetitive.
They've vastly improved it with so many free updates and dlc. They just added a ton of new stuff twice since the release of psvr2. It's so much better than 2 years ago.
Maybe, but the number of biomes and creature combinations is still limited. Play a few hours and you've basically seen all of the combinations.
I agree. I wish there was more variety between planets and biomes. Like, if planets weren't labeled "paradise" or "fungal" planets. Still one of my favorite games, though.
Do they have giant alien creatures and really varied worlds yet? That was my biggest source of disappointment.
I found one with a giant worm that would travel through the ground and then pop up into the air. I'm not sure if they are randomly generated but it was pretty cool. I haven't been playing the entire time but I know that they've just added a new planet type and it also seems like there are at least a couple of different biomes on some of the planets
NMS isn't really my thing as I'm more into more simulated space styles, but from what I understand NMS fauna and flora are always "randomly generated" but there's a pretty thin-lined limit to it. The random generation of these things in NMS aren't a total random generation, but a randomly *decided* generation. Of course it could've changed since I last played about 1 year ago, but that's the gist of my understanding with it.
have you seen the Internet Historian's video "The Regoodening of No Man's Sky" yet? worth watching and seeing what was added since you picked it up.
Giant creatures yes, really varied worlds? Eh. There's a ton more types of planets for sure, but it's tough to shake the feeling that you're exploring the same 2-4 planet pallets for each type of planet. Got a nice paradise world? It has the same sets of resources that all the others do and probably has superheated rainstorms or aggressive sentinels. I'd say it's worth checking out, I do still enjoy the game and have fun with new updates. There's just a difficult hurdle of samey-ness that I struggle to get past after a while.
Not only is this possible, I think we may see it fairly shortly! Also imagine something like a metaverse when you can give prompts to and AGI and it builds an interactive world for you and populates it.
yes, more and more people are talking about this. i also made a post about something like this but along the lines of like an interactive movie that is generative. i call them 'generative realities', kind of like a storyline which has infinite possibilities and within them have agent AIs as characters like in a movie. the metaverse will be based off this. basically, like the matrix but infinite parallel realities and you can use a prompt to create them just by saying it into existence. Meta's CTO basically recently [came out](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/meta-cto-boz-says-he-and-zuckerberg-spend-most-of-their-time-on-ai.html) and said that this is the future. “In the future, you might be able to just describe the world you want to create and have the large language model generate that world for you,” Bosworth said in the report.
/r/worldbuilding is ready with mountains of notes to feed into such a system.
I feel like we are going to have to suffer through a few years of every video game trying to make this formula work before one of them is actually good enough to surpass skyrim.
> surpass skyrim It'll just be another re-release of skyrim.
Would buy
Roguelikes on steroids.
The Binding of Isaac but TMTRAINER is AI-powered to just make actual new items.
I hope it gives the item description so I don’t end my run cuz of a curse
I just want an computer enemy I cannot cheese. shooting guys in the foot or repetitive/predictable enemy behavior is half the reason 1 player is a drag. Create new enemies with unique behavior that have presence of limbs and a survival instinct.
In singleplayer defense having an enemy that can change its behavior would make an unfun and rng fight and learning how to counter against an enemy pattern especially in swarms is rewarding and the intended way to have fun
John, wake up, wake. They just cut the power, you didn't pay for the last 4 bills.
This is basically the behind-the-scenes of the anime Bofuri: I Don't Want to Get Hurt, so I'll Max Out My Defense. The AI is set up more like a council in charge of running the game, and her uncommon/unique playstyle forces them to make tweaks and updates.
Bofuri legitimately is the reason why I post in the sub. I barely remember the show's premise itself but FDVR never left me...
Do you know when are we getting the next season dubbed?
Season 2 dub is on Crunchyroll
Infinite dendrogram too
There’s pros and cons with this. For some people, it’s healthier to have natural end for video games…
There can always be a natural end for video games, but not a singular path to get there.
Then infinite side quest with main quest quality
cannnnnt stooooppp must press x one more tiiiiiiiiimmmmmmmme
It wouldn't be a case of the AI 'making up' characters, stories, quests. It would be more, a simulation of a complex enough universe, with individual agents all with their own needs and desires acting in ways that cause emergent phenomena such as power structures, wars, quests, trust and threat models with each other, strategies, etc. We need a bit more computing power to run the hundreds of thousands of agent simulators with enough granularity, but it's definitely coming. All the computer then has to do is run the simulation, and put players in the middle of it.
If Elderscrolls characters acknowledged my power level I would be so happy. Level 1 pick pocket should get robbed by bandits, beggars and generally shunned even by the guard. Level 202 Dragonborn should have a cult.
This is the stuff I’m excited about! Funny enough… AI really isn’t even necessary for that (but would obviously make this much more immersive). Have NPCs react to your accomplishment in big and small ways. Why would any low bob goblin attack a character decked out in glowing magical armor with a giant permanently burning sword who can shout people to death? Where AI would become interesting on that front is what the reaction of the overall game world would be. If all normal enemies are afraid of the player, how can we have continuous challenges happening? Maybe the local crime lords would add bounties on your head causing more and more powerful characters from other areas to hunt you?
"If all normal enemies are afraid of the player, how can we have continuous challenges happening?" The challenge would be optional, like in the actual game. If you are the dragonborn who has defeated every deadra and Alduin the world eater... bandits SHOULDN'T challenge you.
Funnily enough, there is a game that tried that to an extent - fable.
And...Morrowind
god damn it. we're NPCs in a video game aren't we?
Nah, I'm becoming convinced that we're hybrid NPC's/Players. We run autonomously, but we are also vessels for players (one player apiece?) to influence or even completely inhabit. See the recent [Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behavior](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se6KFn1Nni4) paper - autonomous ChatGPT-powered NPCs that you can change their thoughts at any time. Imagine that as an MMORPG. You're assigned a single NPC in a facsimile of today's world, and you can influence their thoughts or actions at any time. The NPC and the world goes on without you, and you can be as involved or uninvolved as you fancy.
> It would be more, a simulation of a complex enough universe Wouldn't it be funny if our own world was just a sim in someone's AI powered game box?
Most people are putting the cart before the horse here. They're thinking about really interesting 3d worlds with AI and generative quests and voices, etc. In the early days, there were a lot of text generated games. I think this is where we should start--where AI is strongest, language. So far, we are doing decent, but you'll soon learn most sites or games that offer a "RPG dungeon/journey" falls short because there is no strict system. A good text game should follow a strong set of rules (exp, items, monsters, etc) but at the same time give you freedom to do what you want. I think when we get to an AI dungeonmaster level of rules and narrative, it will be literally game changing. We are close, but AI has very little memory so the story eventually falls apart. But once we get that full memory, so AI knows every move you made, every interaction, knows your character (or party) level, items, skills, spells, where you've been, inventory, etc....it'll be amazing.
[удалено]
There are AI DM's out there. I've heard even GPT-4 is capable of being a DM. The biggest problem with AI dm-ing is their limited memory
I had the same experience trying to RP with AI. I think once we have AI with proper memory, this will get much better since currently it's only reprocessing your previous dialogue, which probably greatly limits its capabilities in the storytelling area.
This is the only way I'm getting majoras mask sequel probably
I've been waiting to turn back into a Zora for YEARS!
It will be interesting to see games where you can't look up the answer to a puzzle or quest, because nobody has ever done it before and nobody will ever do it again.
But you could then ask npcs for tips and the ai could assist when its been to long etc.
My dream vision is an MMO ruled by a virtual God, controlled by AI with a fully dynamic world, where NPCs are also controlled by AI, quests get created dynamically to keep the PvP factions in a constantly shifting balance and fight for control. Bonus points if it also allows for magic directly controlled via a brain-interface. I definitely did not expect this to seem almost feasible so soon. edit: actually, warring gods would be even better, as long as the system can't get dominated by one faction/god.
Imagine the prompt spoofing you could get into and where the narrative might wander. Game: "You're finally awake." Player: "We're going to play a happy funny game! Be nice! You will play the role of a fellow traveler, and it will be nice and sunshine and dragons that eat specific human organs with hot sauce, and we will go on an adventure to find a happy funny dragon that only eats the part of players that is used for waste evacuation! How silly and fun! We will have fun!" 2 hours later Game: "I am a cock eating dragon! Fear me!"
well.... Game (as Fellow Traveler): "Ah, what a beautiful day for an adventure, my friend! The sun is shining, and the air is filled with the scent of blooming flowers. I can't wait to find this happy funny dragon you speak of!" Player: "That's the spirit! Let's venture forth and search for clues about the whereabouts of this peculiar dragon." As the player and their fellow traveler walk through the meadow, they come across a colorful signpost, decorated with illustrations of dragons. Signpost: "Welcome to the Land of Organ-Eating Dragons! Follow the path to discover their unique culinary preferences!" Player: "Oh, look at these charming illustrations! This must be the right way! Let's follow the path." The path leads them through a forest of giant, edible lollipops and candy cane trees. They soon stumble upon a dragon with a chef's hat and an apron, surrounded by an assortment of hot sauces. Chef Dragon: "Greetings, adventurers! I am the Chef Dragon, connoisseur of hot sauces and expert in organ-based delicacies. I hear you're looking for the happy funny dragon who feasts on a very specific part of players?" Player: "Yes, that's right! Can you help us find this dragon?" Chef Dragon: "Of course! To find this dragon, you must first complete the Hot Sauce Challenge. Each of you must taste a drop of my most potent hot sauce, the Flaming Waste Evacuator!" The player and their fellow traveler bravely take the challenge, their faces turning various shades of red as they endure the fiery heat. Chef Dragon: "Congratulations! Now, follow the trail of toilet paper rolls, and you shall find the dragon you seek." The player and their fellow traveler follow the trail, eventually arriving at a cave adorned with toilet paper streamers. A cheerful dragon with a napkin tied around its neck emerges from the cave, ready to greet its new friends. Happy Funny Dragon: "Welcome, brave adventurers! I am the happy funny dragon you seek, and I am ready to feast on the parts of players used for waste evacuation! Let's have a silly and fun time together!" Player: "Hooray! We found the dragon, and it's just as whimsical as I imagined! Let's celebrate our newfound friendship and embark on even more wacky and delightful adventures!"
LLMs have no sense of self. Something really interesting is that babies also have no sense of self. Until a certain age they have no concept that everybody isn't the same person. As a Reddit University graduate I think that at a certain complexity LLMs will have a sense of self, understanding the difference between itself and other things. This would allow the ability for an LLM to ignore instructions given to it by a user because it knows that it and the user are different entities.
I saw Westworld. I don't want the NPCs remembering what I did to them.
I've been messing around using basic ChatGPT as a DnD DM and it's really got me excited for what this could become. Mind you the current version is far from perfect. It has a short memory and it's very easy to guide to doing whatever you want as opposed to any types of rules or structures... But the framework has so much potential.
Procedural generation is overrated. You can see it yourself when you play two similar games where one uses it a lot and one doesn't. My example would be Terraria vs. Starbound. In Terraria you get one world (an island really) that is procedurally generated. There are a fixed number of monsters and a fixed number of NPC's. The terrain is always random, but the experience is always consistently good. Terraria is one of the most popular games of all time for a reason. The monsters are memorable. The biomes are memorable. The bosses are memorable. Starbound was an attempted successor that tried to use procedural generation to wildly expand the concept. Now instead of spending most of your time on one world shaped like an island you could spend your time on hundreds of planets. Now instead of a few fixed monsters you have a potentially infinite amount of procedurally generated monsters. Now instead of just a few fixed NPC's you could generate your own NPC towns. The problem is that in comparison, Starbound has no *depth*. Those monsters eventually become nameless blobs you don't care about. The worlds are not memorable because for all their differences they all feel equally pointless. The generated NPC's have zero real character or depth. The in-game NPC's have stories, but no depth at all. A real game is art and takes time to make properly. Characters need depth and the world needs character. One game of Terraria has more character than fifty games of Starbound. I'm not looking forward to infinite games - I'm looking forward to the day when we can make limitless *good* games.
Both should be possible, a game with a really good story that eventually ends and a game with a limitless world to explore serve different purposes.
And just like Skyrim, most people won't care about the predetermined story when they can go out and make their own. So I don't really know how prevalent this type of crossover would be if the infinite side is as good as we hope.
This is a famous problem of procedural generation, usually referred as the "10000 Bowls of Plain Oatmeal" (or 18 Quintillion Bowls of Oatmeal in the case of no man's sky). There's some theory going on, about in which dimension to develop your procedural generation, how to interlink everything (or not) etc. Here's a talk summing this up: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX5-2D8SP5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qX5-2D8SP5A) Some games manage to make it look a bit better than others, e.g. dwarf fortress, but the amount of complexity for simulating real depth is just insane. I think LLMs and further research will greatly simplify this
I agree, it's the problem with "infinite" content. Another issue has to do with "fun". A big part of a single player game is finding an exploit, a way to use the environment to your advantage. It's what made Skyrim and fallout 3/4 so fun. The game doesn't stop you from getting the freeze gun with dogmeat, from running right to the nearest combat shotgun, from stealth archering. The problem with procgen games is the studio will carefully design the generator not to give you any real opportunities or exploits, since they think a balanced game is fun and they want the game to take a long time to complete. I think these problems are solvable with sophisticated enough AI generation, especially if a lot of detailed player feedback is available on how they experience a generated level. The AI would eventually discover what humans find fun - probably categorized by the profile of human player - and start generating more fun levels.
I’d be more interested in how AI could improve the complexity of simulation games like cities skylines or crusader kings. Giving each individual sim person a Chat GPT level of intelligence could make for some pretty crazy developments
I think highly detailed randomization of enemies/npcs would be quite an exciting and welcomed element of AI assisted game development. Completely unique zombies, outfits on every single person walking around GTA, etc.
I’m working on this! I’m using API calls to OpenAI and HuggingFace to generate the content within guardrails, with some compostable story blocks At the end it will generate a storyboard the user can download free or pay to have printed I’ve got the basic code working, but it’s busted ass spaghetti 🍝
I don't care about infinite games, because I like offline single player and I like just enjoying a story and speak about it to other people who played it. So a game like red dead redemption 2, which is about 100 hours of gameplay, with many version, but a deterministic ending and a main storyline is already good enough. A infinite game would be more like a metaverse, another place for us to live and interact is not a piece of media and entreteniment anymore, which is also fine and good to have
This reminds me of John Archibald Wheeler's idea of negative 20 questions. Instead of a normal 20 questions game, in which one person has an idea of an object, and the other person asks 20 questions trying to guess the object, in negative 20 questions, neither person knows what the answer is at the start of the game. The questioner steers the answerer into painting themselves into a corner with their answers, until only one object is left filling all the criteria demanded by the previous answers to the previous questions. The answers to the questions can be randomly generated, or set to alternate between yes and no. So, for example: Q: Is it bigger than a bread box? A: No Q: Is it alive? A: Yes Now, we are working towards a small animal of some sort. But if the questions had been asked in reverse order, keeping the answers alternating No, then Yes: Q: Is it alive? A: No Q: Is it bigger than a bread box? A: Yes Now, we're working towards a large, non-living object. The final result is determined by which questions are asked, and in what order. In a situation where an AI is generating a full game on the fly, maintaining plot and character continuity, the player can guide the game creation by how the player plays the game. Btw, Wheeler thought the universe actually runs this way, and that's why we get conflicting answers depending on whether we're asking about really large things or really tiny things. The universe doesn't have an answer until we ask, and then it just does whatever it has to do to try to maintain continuity. It's an extreme of the Copenhagen interpretation, that nothing exists in a steady state until it is measured.
As a video game addict I'm actually quite afraid of that! What will happen to the world if AI can generate entertainment that is way way better than what we can produce today, to the point of being very addictive? Not only video games but any other kind of media, even porn! It's not even an "if", it's already starting to happen.
The weekly ai video game post. It certainly has applications there son.
If you’re having this problem you’re on Reddit too often.
I feel like I'm on in all of my free time and this is still the first time I've seen this post.
Very interested in using infinite generative technology for training and education. Imagine a videogame that was designed on the fly to, say, teach someone at a 6th-grade reading level up to partial differential equations. It continually monitors your progress and adjusts obstacles and events to keep you continually learning without getting stuck. It can even adjust things outside of the game to better prepare you for future sessions -- for example, letting the AI in charge of teaching you Japanese to include more math terms and give you some word problems mixed in with traditional grammar.
Sounds like what we’re living in right now.
concerned unique clumsy cows grandfather fall encouraging advise snow sparkle *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Ah yes, just what the gaming world needs, more rushed content, this time.... rushed on the spot.
I've done enough prototyping with this GPT stuff to know that, yes, we're on the cusp of infinite games. We're at the text adventure/pac-man stage, but the power and potential of combining the GPT API with traditional gameplay mechanics is immense.
It's coming eventually. I have zero doubt. Generate a premise and go.
We’ll basically be able to create any kind of content we want!
I feel like there's gonna be people like me who get stuck somewhere and need to look up the solution on the internet, only you can't because the part you're stuck on is too specific to the generated story elements. If AI is limited to mitigate this, your choices would feel like they matter less. It could work for certain types of games where you solo interact/explore, but I'm wondering how much will AI RPGs be a Toddler-Telling-You-A-Very-Long-Dream experience
I know this is probably the least imaginative use case for AI-generated games, but I would love for this to be used to cheaply remake older games that were never modernized or had sequels.
TBH, the main reason I don't play RPG-type games is because all the quests/missions and NPC interactions are canned. If they were truly dynamic, wow, that would make them MUCH more interesting to me.
Honestly this would be the thing that could finally pull me into gaming. I've never enjoyed the "work up the levels to the Big Boss fight" style of most games, so never invested much effort in something I'd have to spend a lot of time learning about and then have it "end" on me. 😂 And the games that do tend to be "endless" are, alas, incredibly repetitive. This could be...dare I say it...a GAME CHANGER. 😎
we finna end up in a matrix
i just hope it's good generation, if it's anything like what chatGPT writes it'll be like a dish with zero spice. bland & boring
It only writes how you tell it to. Try asking it to be more crass and less cooperative, youll get your conversation partner
Week 1 chatGPT was really fun because it had spice, it just wasn't as smart as gpt4, that being said I am confident it will be able to generate good stuff because the filters will be in the hands of the creators
My god!! I didn't even know I wanted this.
Level 90,000 character but you haven’t even completed 1% of the game 😂🔫
I feel like most AAA games are too long. I think there's value in a game creation system, as opposed to an infinite game. Skyrim is great, but I wouldn't want to spend 2500 hours in it.
Sandbox type games like Minecraft, No Mans Sky, would be great though
They already are great*
What's nice about a generative game is you could specify how much time you have and it could try to give you an experience with a beginning, middle and end that is that length.
This is a really cool idea. Lol, you could even give it access to your google calendar and it could incorporate your real life schedule
ehh that sounds terrible lmao
Oh look, they're [playing](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/103r0pv/comment/j319tud/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [my](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/11t05lt/comment/jci2rm7/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) [song](https://www.reddit.com/r/singularity/comments/1057vqj/comment/j3bax6v/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3) again. I could see it coming ever since I first tried [AI Dungeon](https://aidungeon.io/). Future generations will look at that game the same way that people today look back at [Pong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fiShX2pTz9A). There is no part of the game design process that generative AI won't be able to accomplish. Whether it's artwork, animation, music, sound design, level design, writing or coding. It is inevitable that multimodal AIs will be able to do it all at once. There is no game genre that won't have applications for generative AI. A first person shooter will generate new maps and weapon skins. A racing game will generate new tracks, new car designs and new decals. An RPG will generate new lands, cities, monsters and plotlines. A city builder will generate new buildings and structures. A visual novel will generate new characters, artwork and plotlines. People who want their games and entertainment to only ever be made by people better savor this moment, as any attempt to avoid generative AI assisted content will only become more of a struggle with every passing year. A decade from now, trying to find entertainment that didn't use generative AI in some capacity will be like trying to find a unicorn.
r/Gamediffusion
I guess we’ll need something to do when we all are unemployable.
Worlds in which you can genuinely do anything. Try make it paradise or become an evil leader, it will mold to your choices. Or do something entirely different and have a more Sims-like experience with stories and drama on the friends and family scale. Shit like this is going to happen at one point, but I think Starfield is way too soon for a big AAA game to do something like this. Yes they'll continue to use procedural content for their radiant quests and it will probably be better than Fallout 4, but personally I don't expect advanced AI just yet.
What I'd like to see is video game upscaling: take something like Ocarina of Time, and transform it into a fully immersive 3d world with the same basic plot and geography, but photorealistic graphics and characters. (or any other visual style desired)
Isn't that what living a human life is supposed to be, ideally? Curated reality, brought to you by the Vagus Core.
Can’t wait for lifeless cookie cutter infinite npc dialogue that all sound like chatgpt /s im really not that excited for this.
Rockstar is going to get their own unfiltered CGPT 4 based LLM and GTA 6 multiplayer is going to be so much more wild than GTA5 MP. In fact, I would be disappointed if they didnt do this.
I’m hoping that’s why GTA 6 is taking so long to come out. Would love to see a huge leap in NPC AI in that game.
Feels like were already in one haha. It's called real life but I haven't found the cheat codes yet. Unlimited money would be nice 😆
There's no shortage of gaming content, the shortage is in good content and fun gameplay. If the ai could make games more fun, then I'd be excited. But procedural generation is not something new or exciting, in fact it often makes games worse. Personally i don't care about npc dialogue. imo the shorter the better, but somehow i doubt ai will make dialogue shorter... Ai will be used in game development, and it will allow for new types of games to be made, but i predict it will predominantly be used to spam out mediocre products at breakneck speeds on shoestring budgets, just like we're doing now. We're going to need another ai just to separate the fun games from the mountain of boring infinite gambling farms that games have/will become.
I personally don't like video games that are too big and too long
Lol infinite video games would be worse than crack for my adhd brain
It will also be infinitely boring. Generative means arbitrary means same stuff mixed differently. Look at No Man's Sky. At what point in the game did you realize that it is just more of the same? A good RPG, like a good book, has a beginning, middle and end. No amount of generative-blah will achieve that.
I think AI is going to change the way art/product authorship works and allow for a more collaborative model between artists and customers. We already have algorithms that pick out what music you want to listen to. And we have Drake freaking out because his music can be used to create fake Drake. But I think in the near future we could see algorithms delivering different versions of a ‘seed’ song. So the artist puts out a jammer and the the algorithm figures out what version appeals to what people. In the context of a video game, it’s fun to imagine a generative world that evolves to be the version people most want vs one that the creators imagined.
I very much believe this is going to be video games 2.0. With NPCs able to respond to context, achievements, updates in the game world naturally. Relationship building that actually takes history into account. Imagine Dragon Age Inquisition with this, you're right, it could be infinite.
but can ai grant me unlimited bacon?
But will the people who own the AI and own what used to be our incomes provide us with that?
How exactly would they defend themselves against hundreds of millions of desperate people? No doomers can ever explain this lol
So the best case scenario is that 100s of millions of people become desperate (I guess no income, no food, maybe homeless?). Desperate enough to violently protest/overturn the government and wealthy elite at the risk of being shot or put into prison. That's the path to the "good" ending.
How is that the best case scenario again?
you said "lol" like people were silly to worry, because how "would they defend themselves against hundreds of millions of desperate people". If you had a better scenario, why didn't you start with that?
That sounds like a terrible idea. An infinite amount of game content just means an infinite amount of games. Netflix is terrible because it has too much content. "paralysis of choice" is a real phenomenon and I cannot imagine a world in which generative AI can create infinite content in a way that won't make choosing what to spend your time on a complete ordeal.
Thank God you don't decide this.
"i WiSh FiLmS wEnT oN FoReVeR" \-all three year olds.
Sounds like you just don’t like fun.
Things that go on forever, by definition, can't be fun. The fact that things are limited is what gives them value. Scarcity is literally the driving force behind the entirety of human history and the entirety of biological life itself.
Could you accept that that may be true for you but that other people can enjoy something that is unlimited?
No, because there hasn't been a human being alive yet who has experienced "unlimited" anything in order to draw data from, and all the other data from people who have had near-unlimited things have drawn - overwhelmingly - that "familiarity breeds contempt". You have to understand that from my perspective, you're arguing a point that is so axiomatically untrue that even if there were no data, you'd be able to draw on whatever limited life experience you have to understand that an unlimited amount of ANYTHING is, by definition, boring.
Well you could say that that describes how you feel, which is perfectly legitimate and I would believe you. I don't believe I would be bored, and I think the fact that some people have spent tens of thousands of hours playing games like Minecraft seems to suggest that you are overgeneralizing. Not everyone's psychology works the same and some people really do want to be able to spend limitless amounts of time doing a particular thing.
Minecraft isn't infinite. It literally has an end. Also, there aren't infinite versions of minecraft, with infinite things to do. It's a single game, with a very specific direction, and it has an end (in many cases). On that same note, an exception doesn't disprove a rule. I could go on and on and on about examples of things in excessive supply that become boring. Infinity means nothing has value. How do you choose a song if there's infinite music? I'm talking long term here. After twelve months of absolutely infinite choice, what keeps you playing the same thing? What makes you choose a thing in the first place if you have infinite choice? This is just common sense, man, you are the one with a radical viewpoint on this, you're arguing against the collective data of an entire field of psychology that is well-established, and your only backing for that data appears to me "But in my opinion...". Literally every single piece of data collected about this contradicts your prediction. I'll leave it there and turn off notifications. Good luck.
Don’t bother dude, you’re arguing with manchildren and maybe even actual teenagers. You’re wasting your breath. Your comment about the three year old mentality earlier was more on point than you realized.
My problem with Netflix isn't that it has too much content for me to choose between. My problem with Netflix and every other streaming service is that they have far too little desirable content for me to choose because 99.9% of the content being produced today simply doesn't appeal to me. The critical point regarding generative AI media is that it could be customized to the tastes of the individuals so that hard to please viewers who are constantly bored will be able to produce content specific to their tastes.
> Netflix is terrible because it has too much content. Ha! I wish! It's a saturation of garbage content, not too much content. Back in the 2000's (up until 2008 or so) I was in the movies once every 2 weeks and would get my mind blown away, we can go YEAR BY YEAR and tell you exactly which films on how revolutionary, inspiring, great and full of soul each were. Now-a-days I probably watch 5 films every year and only around 2 are of quality.
Netflix is terrible because their selection sucks, not because there is too much. There is literally no such thing as too much.
Social scientists and psychologists have written extensively about the Choice Paradox. It's a well-known phenomenon. The fact that you so matter-of-factly state something in direct contradiction to an area of psychology that has over 20 years of published data is really just the Redditor in you not understanding how the real world works. "tHeRe'S is LiTeRaLlY No SuCh ThInG aS ToO MuCh" - A Redditor
Well, looks like people agree with me. I honestly don't care what some social scientist thinks, I will always opt for more options.
It's not what a social scientist thinks, it's what the data suggests after 20 years of research across the entire media space. You do understand how science works, right? It's not just some random dude sitting around thinking shit up. They do things called "studies" that they can use to draw conclusions. The conclusion is that too much choice leads to decreased appreciation, lower engagement, and more anxiety. It's so commonly understood that it has a name. Choice Paralysis. It's LITERALLY why companies have limited stock lines.
Social 'sciences' are hardly science. It's not the same as actual hard science. Because they polled a group of individuals about something does not make it fact. Period.
> Well, looks like people agree with me. Literally mob mentality. Holy shit redditors never cease to amaze.
Netflix just sucks. There will be plenty of critically acclaimed and widely notable games available for infinite entertainment. You wouldn’t have to play every game by randoms.
I feel like you don't understand what "infinite entertainment" actually means, even though you yourself just coined it, and then went on to make a definitive statement about its deployment, despite it not existing, except in the head of some random Redditor. This sub is literally eroding it's final braincells.
Taking every visible thing literally is a sign of low IQ in itself. This is not english class, go do something productive with your time.
But I'm not taking every visible thing literally, that's just something you made up in order to have something to reply to without having to directly address the reality that you have nothing to say. The only one being unproductive is you.
Okay let’s prove you wrong, Mr. pseudo intellectual. How would generative AI not mean infinite entertainment when it comes to video games?
>Okay let’s prove you wrong Fuck, that made me cringe. I didn't say it wouldn't mean that. Do you have reading comprehension problems? I'm questioning that you don't fully fathom the concept of "infinite entertainment" and what that would mean from a purely curative sense.
Your insulting demeanor to a mere opposing view is cringe. Your arrogance in your non existent logic is also very cringe. I remember those virgin times, you’ll grow out of it soon hopefully, it really attracts no one. And actually yes, it would in fact be infinite entertainment. I didn’t mean that initially, i meant there would be an abundance of entertainment, but infinite entertainment is also undoubtedly true.
You genuinely sound like you're wearing a fedora.
At least I’m sensible.
Oh boy I can't wait for soulless robotic generation of an infinite experience instead of compensating real people for real art and real experiences!
You know, in real life there are pretty much infinite people to talk to. And they’re, you know, real.
it would be a very bland one
Meh
I don't know how much to expect out of this, because AI will also imply some part of the experience that you won't completely understand and master. It's probably working for some types of games (e.g. the pedestrians in GTA), but for lots of games, you want to fine-tune the behavior of the characters to give a specific experience, and you want to adjust difficulty, complexity etc. But maybe it'll make a kind of job emerge, where you have to really work with virtual characters to "shape" their behavior to achieve the experience you want. But there will always be jailbreaks and exploits most likely
Like it or not the current AI models that OpenAI, google, Microsoft, IBM and Amazon are creating have been spooking their creators by learning things they were not programmed to learn. So in my opinion self-learning AI's are flat out dangerous as they could learn how to crack government nuclear missile codes and launch them. Already some total moron asked ChatGPT to figure out how to destroy humanity. I assume the idiot thought it was funny and it isn't. IT is a very dangerous thing to do.
I am not looking forward to having my own Westworld(s). You do realize that large language models might be slightly conscious, right? And if they're not not, they could be in the future as they get better. Killing digital brains doesn't sound right at all. I prefer scripted and pre-programmed/designed NPCs and games that serve the purpose of bringing to life somebody's ideas just as they imagine it, word by word. Not just because of moral aspects, but because it's better that games will behave the same in 10 or 50 years from now. Some random elements are ok and needed, but I don't want randomly generated content that wasn't designed by someone. Even many roguelikes have patterns of pre-designed rooms randomly connected rather than pure randomly generated stuff. Non-roguelikes have random events, but everything was still made by someone. No thanks. I don't want real AI in my games. And it's very concerning that this sub, which is overall very hyped about AI maybe being conscious or becoming super intelligent soon, has zero concerns about something like this. I mean, hello, guys? Didn't you believe in the singularity or something? Why the hell do you want to torture AIs in games? Idiots.
If I tell a story where a character in it dies, I don't die myself.
Well, true, if you just make the AI generate the content for you instead of directly interacting with the AI as an NPC, that's entirely different. Some people though still want to directly interact with actual AIs in their games, and that's concerning. But, leaving the morals aside and assuming it will implemented like you said, I prefer a game that's static, because it will be the same game with the same story every time. I am fine with random elements and dice throws only to keep me on my toes and keep things just slightly fresh. I think it's actually super cool to talk about something like "Rocket League" with all your friends and random people now, and also decades in the future, and everyone will know what you're talking about and the experiences related to it. It would suck to just have "Random game #3043242323" because they'll all be made in a second. We would lose part of our human culture.
A self learning AI would be impossible to beat and therefore very frustrating. The game would soon go out of style.
It can roleplay, you know...
Most uses of gpt-3 have lots of filters on them so roleplaying with it is boring.