[MUD-Dev] believable NPCs (was Natural Language Generation)

[Freeman]

Amanda Walker wrote:

> How many gamers enjoy games because they *don't* have to=20
> interact with anyone?  "Antisocializers," if you will:=20 players
> who are seeking out an playing games precisely=20 because they
> have simple, predictable rules without the=20 emotional and social
> factors that can really mess things up=20 in real life?

Yeah. That is an interesting point.

It also reminds me of "the uncanny valley", the notion that,
perhaps, some people just don't *want* ultra-realistic NPCs.

Here are a couple of links, in case this hasn't come up here before:

  http://www.arclight.net/~pdb/glimpses/valley.html
  http://www.wordspy.com/words/uncannyvalley.asp

And some quotage:

  People generally relate better to animated figures that are
  distinctly outlandish than those that begin to approach the
  ideal. This is a phenomenon known to robotics researchers as "the
  uncanny valley"-that point where a robot is so close to lifelike
  yet still so short of ideal that people become focused on its
  imperfections.=20

  "That's where every neuron is focused on what's wrong with the
  robot, on how its motion is not quite right," said Bruce Blumberg,
  head of the synthetic character program at the MIT Media Lab.
  "The uncanny valley is a very bad place to be."

  -Michael A. Hiltzik, "Synthetic Actors Guild," Los Angeles Times,
  May 8, 2001

Masahiro Mori's study was with regard to appearance and motion, but
I wonder if the same would apply to the appeal of NPC AI.  Meaning,
the appeal would increase as the AI became "more human", but then
sharply plummet ("Man, that's just creepy") until it improved (in
being 'human like') to the point of becoming, again, appealing.

Not that we're anywhere near the
"just-human-enough-to-be-creepy"-stage with AI.

We're probably getting pretty close with the graphics, though.

On a different note, unrelated to that, but related to the topic
overall, some people also *enjoy* that the NPCs conveniently forget
what has gone before, affording players with the opportunity for
"re-runs".  No more strange than my desire to re-watch Unforgiven
about once a month, I suppose.
_______________________________________________
MUD-Dev mailing list
MUD-Dev at kanga.nu
https://www.kanga.nu/lists/listinfo/mud-dev