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

[Mathieu Castelli]

 "Freeman, Jeff" wrote:

> No, they are counterexamples to the claim that it is cost
> prohibitive to hire actors to work in Disney World, smaller
> amusement parks or even themed restaurants.

Amid those election years talks of outsourcing, and being a great
fan of the content creation model depicted in "Diamond Age", the
actors question can be financially summed by: how many players can I
entertain for how long with X dollars with either coders time or
story tellers/human NPCs.

Now, why not have animation centers the way call centers are made ?
I know the idea has been thrown around before on this list, but it
makes sense to bring it back in this discussion, if only for the
financial case.  You could say that the language, fluency in
english, is something that will limit the potential size of poor
countries population to hire, but the MMO world itself could be made
so that it would make sense that the NPC would have a
basic/'strange" english. Also, those NPC would learn player lingua
at the contact of players ! For once, the world would truly change
under the influence of players :)

I also love the idea of african youth entertaining rich white people
with a creative ability maybe more intact in a society where those
"animators" as kids had nothing but their imagination to entertain
themselves in the complete absence of media. And it certainly beats
call centers for them, though the recent posts of Ms Le Craft should
make me think twice about
this. :)

Mathieu Castelli
Newt Games
What we do:
http://www.wired.com/news/games/0,2101,63011,00.html?tw=wn_culthead_11
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