Here's a super quick sketch of how ChatGPT could be merged with an in-game conversation director, basically working as a human-language interface to the underlying system.
Some screenshots with commentary: 🧵
Imagine we had external conversation state machine which drives everything.
It would tell the LLM exactly what to say (but not how to say it), and use it as a kind of "translator" from unconstrained nat lang to specific speech acts like "i want to buy x".
For example:
(Intriguingly the system hallucinated an intent, but we'll roll with it.)
The state machine would move to the next state, tells the LLM what to say, and asks it to parse out communicative intent:
Just using an ML chatbot is going to lead to a couple of problems that players will notice.
1. NPCs need to reflect game state. ChatGPT doesn't know anything about the inner workings of your game!
2. NPCs need to be able to change game state. If you buy a sword... 2/
If you buy a sword, that needs to show up in your inventory, and the corresponding amount of gold needs to be subtracted. Again, not something ChatGPT can do.
3. NPC conversation needs episodic memory. If you insulted the NPC's mother they should remember it next time around. 3/
A lot has been written today about the $GME pump on /r/WallStreetBets from a financial angle.
But I think there's another angle - this it also works as a *multiplayer game* and one with an interesting design.
Don't believe me? Let's look at it structurally!
1/
WSB pump of $GME exhibits a number of gamelike elements: 1. resource mechanics 2. multiplayer social mechanics 3. progression mechanics 4. multi-system interactions 5. prediction complexity, and 6. a powerful player fantasy to tie them together
2/
1. Just by itself, the stock market is an engrossing game (for those who can afford the time and money). It's got a variety of simple resource mechanics (buy / sell stocks), more complex mechanics (buy / sell options), super complex mechanics (would you like some futures?) ... 3/
@MatthewGuz Hi both @MatthewGuz and @onlinealchemist! So just to continue our previous conversation, here's a bit more worked out thread - curious what you'll think!
And I'll number replies so it's easier to deal with, given Twitter's terrible threading 1/
@MatthewGuz@onlinealchemist (And first of all, terribly sorry if I came off as a bit curt in the last thread! I was just trying to reply quickly on a weekend morning, which was probably a tactical error. ;) And then lack of threading made it into a hash.) 2/
@MatthewGuz@onlinealchemist So here's a TLDR: what I think makes games unique is not that players have different experiences (that's trivially shared with other media as you mentioned), but that players have aesthetic experiences of their own agency in the artificial world. 3/
So I started looking into how it works. It's interesting and a good example of how AI tech can produce results that look biased, even when the building blocks don't seem to be. Thread! 1/
We know how it works, because Twitter fortunately published the implementation details here:
... first off: as a *rebuttal*, as such, it's not quite there. The essay takes many of the points previously made by Zuboff and integrates them into its own argument, which is great because they're good points, except it also wants to position itself as a rebuttal. :)
2/
But ignoring the positioning vis-a-vis AoSC, it works great as a standalone piece.
His focus is on monopolies specifically, and how monopoly status is a force multiplier for abuse of surveillance - it's a great observation that needs to be a part of the discussion.
3/