LOS ANGELES (AP) — For decades, video games have relied on stiff, scripted interactions with non-player characters to guide gamers on their journeys. Improving artificial intelligence technologyGame studios are experimenting Generative AI They help build environments, assist game writers in crafting NPC dialogue, and bring a sense of improvisational spontaneity to video games that was once found only in tabletop role-playing games.
In the multiplayer game Retail Mage, players help run a magical furniture store, serving customers in an effort to earn five-star reviews. As a salesperson (and wizard), you can pick up and examine items or tell the system what you want to do with the products, like dismantling a chair for its parts or ripping out pages from a book to write notes to shoppers.
From gameplay mechanics to content and dialogue creation, player interactions with the shop and surrounding NPCs will be driven by AI rather than pre-determined scripts, giving players more options when it comes to chatting in the shop and using objects.
“We believe generative AI enables new types of gameplay that are more responsive and responsive to players’ creativity, their imaginations, and the stories they want to tell within the fantasy worlds we create,” said Michael Yichao, co-founder of Jam & Tea Studios, the creators of Retail Mage.
The typical NPC experience often leaves something to be desired: a canned interaction with someone to hand over a quest usually features a few chat options and leads to the same conclusion: the player gets the information they need and moves on. With generative AI technology, game developers and AI companies say they aim to create richer experiences that allow for more nuanced relationships with the people and worlds designers build.
If designers can create more lifelike environments and react to player choices in real time, generative AI could also give players more opportunities to go off script and create their own stories.
Tech companies continue to develop AI for games as developers debate whether and how to use AI in their products. Nvidia developed ACE Generative AI is developing technology to bring so-called “digital humans” to life. Inworld AI gives developers a platform to generate behavior and dialogue for NPCs. Gaming company Ubisoft announced last year that it was using its in-house AI tool Ghostwriter to help write dialogue for some NPCs without replacing video game writers.
A report published by Game Developers Conference In a January survey, nearly half of developers surveyed said generative AI tools are currently being used at work, and 31% said they use the tools personally. Developers at indie studios were most likely to use generative AI, with 37% saying they use the technology.
Still, roughly four in five developers said they were concerned about the ethical use of AI. Jam & Tea CEO Carl Kwoh said AI should be used responsibly alongside creators to enhance stories, not replace them.
“The goal has always been, how can we use this tool to create experiences that deepen connections between players,” says Kuo, one of the company’s founders. “Players can tell stories that they couldn’t tell before.”
Using AI to give NPCs infinite lines of dialogue is “definitely a perk,” Yichao said, but “meaningless content is just endless noise.” Jam & Tea is using AI, through Google’s Gemma 2 and Amazon’s own servers, to give NPCs more than just responsiveness, Yichao said. NPCs can locate objects while shopping or respond to other NPCs, giving them “more lifelike responsiveness than a typical scripted encounter.”
“We’ve seen the shopping experience turn into a bit of a dating sim, with players flirting with customers and the NPCs reacting in very realistic ways,” he said. “It’s really fun to see the game respond dynamically to what players bring to the table.”
While demonstrating a conversation with an NPC in “Mecha Break,” a game in which players fight combat machines, Ike Nohl said that NVIDIA has used a small language model to enable the AI ”human” to react faster than before. Using NVIDIA’s AI, players can converse with mechanic Martel and ask her to perform operations such as customizing the color of their mechs.
“Typically, gamers do all these things by navigating menus,” said Nnole, a senior product marketing manager at Nvidia. “Now it’s going to be a much more interactive, much quicker experience.”
Canadian AI company Artificial Agency has developed an engine that allows developers to add AI to every part of a game, not just NPCs, but companions and “overseers” to guide players to content they are missing. The company says that AI can also create tutorials to teach players skills they are missing, helping them enjoy the game more.
“One of the ways we say it is, we put a game designer on the shoulders of everyone who’s playing the game,” says Artificial Agency co-founder Alex Carney, who says the company’s AI engine can be integrated into any stage of the game-development cycle.
Scripting every outcome in a game is tedious and difficult to test, said Artificial Agency CEO Brian Tanner, whose company’s system lets designers take on a more directorial role by providing more detail about characters’ motivations and backgrounds.
“These characters can improvise on the spot depending on what’s actually going on in the game,” Tanner said.
Tanner said it’s easy to fall into the game’s guardrails — that NPCs keep repeating the same phrases no matter how the player interacts with them — but that will change as AI continues to evolve, he added.
“It’s almost like the world is alive and everything is reacting to what’s happening,” he said. “That adds a tremendous amount of realism.”
