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

[J C Lawrence]

On Wed, 26 May 2004 13:45:44 -0400 
Leland Hulbert <Hulbert> wrote:

> And yet, it seems to work for Disney.  I don't recall which one of our
> regular posters likes to point out equivalences between MMOGs and
> theme parks, but this one just glares out at me.  Disney hires
> thousands of beginner actors, gives them a role to play, and sets them
> loose on their cusotmers.  And having been to Disneyworld and
> Dinseyland, I never saw them out of character.  As you say, the
> temptation may be there, but I have to assume that it is fairly easy
> to weed out, since we've never seen the "Goofy goes on a Rampage"
> headline.  And it should be relatively simple to assure that these
> actors are recorded, so that any truly disruptive out-of-character
> actions can be disciplined.

This assumes that the pseudo-NPCs are the (likely) problem, rather than
the other way around.  This is odd, given how much of our time is spent
dealing with the opposite case in the form of griefers.

There's a considerable different in the environment that Disney
character actors operate in and the environment in our games.  The
salient difference is probably the disinhibiting aspects of VR, not as
regards the pseudo-NPC to the players, but the players to each other and
to the pseudo-NPC.

At a functional level the Disney actors are operating within an
extremely well defined and heavily reinforced social context.  The
stanchions are partly cultural, partly social, partly legal, and to an
additional large part, based on the mechanics of anti-exhibitionism and
thus privacy.  And best of all, all of this is expressed and endlessly
reinforced by the entire structure of the theme park from the smiling
tickets-takers at the gate, to the flags along the walkways as you
leave, and the behaviour of every other patron and guest you see while
there.  Those structures can't be as well relied on in virtual
environments.  The cultural context is far less well defined and even
harder to define, the social context doesn't have the reinforcing
structures of physical presence, personal space, and anti-exhibitionism
to rely on, and the legal aspects are wobbly from the get-go.  Its
probably possible, but I suspect it would require an astounding effort
in terms of social engineering of the space, social context, and
individual feedback loops for the players.

--
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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