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

[J C Lawrence]

On Sat, 22 May 2004 20:12:45 -0500
Michael Sellers <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:

> IMO, looking at this as a NLP/NLG problem is very much like confusing
> grammar with semantics.  "Green ideas sleep furiously" is a
> grammatically correct sentence, but one without meaning; someone who
> utters that in conversation isn't believably intelligent.  In the same
> way, NPCs that can converse freely but without significant semantic
> content are hardly believable -- and it's these that get in the way of
> gameplay, as you say; they quickly remind you that you're not really
> interacting with a world, but with a shallow stupid program.

> Believable characters OTOH -- with or without NLG -- will make
> gameplay much more immersive and consequential.  Imagine asking a
> tavern keeper NPC for info on where to buy good weapons.  Consider how
> his responses might differ based on whether he's seen you before,
> whether you tipped well last time, whether and how he's heard other
> NPCs (and PCs) talk about you, and, say, whether he heard you were
> flirting heavily with the blacksmith's daughter (whom he happens to be
> in love with), or were the one to save her from ruffians.  This goes
> way beyond script- or knowledge-based responses, but provides much
> more interesting player-related context for even the simplest
> menu-driven interactions.

I'm not convinced.

Many text MUDs had two modes: long descriptions and short descriptions.
The standard practice was for players to turn on long descriptions only
when exploring a new area, but to otherwise play with the faster and
more efficient short descriptions (even if they were on fast
connections).  This was true even on the games that dynamically
generated or customised the long descriptions.  As such they sacrificed
emotive richness and presentation quality for goal efficiency.  There
are/were (partial) exceptions like Raph's Legend where long descriptions
were often structurally necessary for effective ongoing play, but I'd
argue that they're contrived examples where necessary datacomms were
inlined with the long descriptions to enforce long descriptions rather
than being a quality explicitly selected by players.

Coming from the other side the ideal form would be to have capable
actresses and actors taking the roles of NPCs with solid character
definitions etc.  The (only) reason we don't due this is that the
economics are prohibitive.  Ergo, we try and simulate humanity through
computation in the form of NPCs.  I don't see that the simulation has
intrinsic value.

At root the problem would seem to be a dichotomy in player goals;
parallel to the description length field choices: the tourists who are
there for the experience/ride, and the achievers (only partly
Bartle-sense) who are there to accomplish named and known goals.
Tourists seem to correlate highly with high socialiser quotients, and to
a large extent play for the turgid feedback loops of human emotion and
reaction among the players as set against the game backdrop/scenery.
(cf roleplaying) Conversely, in the most extreme form the GoP players
like the thematic flavour (cf spice in food), but the shortest route to
the cheese comes first and drives visible motivation and activity.
Between such audiences the rich NPC characters are scenery for the
social tourists, acting more as catalysts and stage props for the human
interactions they seek, and for the GoP players the rich NPCs are
annoyingly detailed and complex barriers in forming their optimised
route to the cheese.  This latter is especially true in the case of
treadmills where repetition plays such a large role.

Its very easy to get hooked up in the concept of a virtual world.  The
intellectual delight and attraction of such concepts are huge.
Engineers especially take an almost masturbatory intellectual delight in
trying to assemble a virtual world which fully simulates everything from
the physics models to the social structures, societies and individuals
in them.  "But of course that's also what the whole world wants!  Isn't
it just obvious?  Its just so cool!  Look, there are real NPC people
with real believable NPC relationships and prejudices, and real clouds
in the sky and real deer in the fields that breed and have real baby
deer!"  The very definition of engineer-toy cool!  The intellectual
attraction is huge.  The problem is that I've yet to see players that
actually want that as revealed by the choices they make as players.
Sure, they may say they want that, and reviewers in magazines may
comment admiringly on those points, but I haven't watched a player yet
who actually played in a manner which functionally showed that they
valued that detail and verisimilitude and would make choices which would
maximise those values at the cost of others.  Instead we seem to either
have scenery for human relations (deer == cute forest scene for acting),
or targets for goal acquisition (deer == kill == food and XP).

  Perhaps Nicole Lazarro can comment on the player observations here?

Note, this doesn't meant that players will turn off the rich content.
Heck no.  I'm not talking about graphics quality or music, or other
ambiance items.  I'm referring specifically to simulated identities
(humans, AI, etc).  I haven't seen a case where a player, given a
choice, doesn't effectively short circuit the expensive AI into either a
cute scenery or vending machine structure.

Or, perhaps more simply:

  From the player perspective in terms of the actual goals that player
  can be _seen_ to pursue (social, cultural, in-game, etc), what is the
  actual function of an NPC?

If form follows function, then NPCs should be defined by the value
systems they satisfy for players.  Not the value systems we think
players have, or the value systems that we think are cute, fuzzy,
attractive, neat etc, but the ones that actually generate and maintain
player value and interest.

--
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.

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