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

[John Buehler]

Jeff Freeman writes:
> From: Amanda Walker

> ...and stand in front of the tea-cups shouting "Looking for group!"

> See?  Different.

Perhaps in their current incarnation.  Charge $60 a head to play
your immersive and enjoyable game for 8 hours and you won't find
anyone yelling "Looking for group!" in your game either.  That's
because the visit to your game is a significant experience, to be
planned with friends - instead of a throw-away hobbiest drive-by
thing to do when bored.

I believe that the MMORPG is headed to "Dream Park" status, with
virtual reality and AI NPCs.  The folks up in the control room at
"Dream Park" won't be quite as active in keeping one group of
players busy because of the AI.  It made for good reading to think
that an eccentric genius would be manically controlling a bunch of
NPCs to entertain the players, but it's not the sort of thing that
scales to support 10,000 players.

In the meantime, so long as the developers and publishers of games
don't do much to make the game experience something memorable and
personal, players will treat it with the throw-away attitude that it
is presented with.

Just like carnies undoubtedly did.  Bring in the suckers.

JB
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