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

[Michael Sellers]

JC Lawrence wrote:
> John Buehler <johnbue at msn.com> wrote:

>> As allies, they become the social context in which the players
>> operate. They decide to build a town here, dig a well there,
>> clear this land, war on that guild, put out that forest fire,
>> etc. And they need help.  The players have a purpose, a meaning,
>> for their gameplay.

> This rankles me with the question:

>   Why are they necessarily NPCs?  Why aren't they other players?

They might be players.  But this is a lot harder to pull off, or at
least it's a different form of gaming.

> Is there some special quality to NPCs that make them more
> attractive or in fact more functional for such operations than
> other humans (players, GMs, or human-driven NPCs)?

Yes - among them things like NPCs don't grief other players, they
don't get into "playing against the designers", etc.  They exist in
the world, and can thus be made to have value for the players in the
world.

>> As enemies, they become more difficult to predict.  They make
>> plans of conquest.  Intelligence suggests planning.  That
>> planning can be spotted and interpreted by the players, providing
>> them with more complex scenarios for combat.  Instead of
>> 'pulling' a steady stream of monsters, players can manage and
>> react to what the NPC monsters are doing.  It gives purpose and
>> meaning to gameplay.

> Absolutely, but again, is this an improvement over other
> humans/players,

Yes.  Most players -- and this is just most *hard-core* players mind
you, forgetting the other 99.5% of the population -- do not react
well to PvP-only worlds.  Having smart monsters/enemies (beyond just
cheating with extra info or a gazillion hit points) adds meaningful
variability, and thus adds to the players' meaningful choices.

I remember in playing Doom quickly figuring out the radius for the
monster's trigger areas.  If you stood just outside of that, you
could pick them off individually.  As each one fell, those standing
right beside him didn't notice a thing.  They were stupid and blind.
This was fun the first couple of times, but then was just boring.
And, amazingly enough, monsters and NPCs have hardly progressed from
that low level of reactivity and intelligence in the past ten years.

> Not so long ago the big cry was to simulate a "real world" with
> "real behaviour" and "real physics" with everything simulated
> "just the way it would happen if it were REALLY REAL!".  It was
> going to be great.  Then we found out we were producing games not
> simulations.  My sense is that we are heading into a similar
> dichotomy with NPCs.  The great cry is that "NPCs need to be more
> real!", "NPCs need to be believable!" ,

Don't conflate those two; they're not at all the same.  And that's a
key point.  It's possible and preferable for NPCs to be believable
without having to take on the (unnecessary, IMO) burden of being
realistic.

> "NPCs should have Real People Personalities(tm) and Simulated Real
> Emotions(tm)!"  We have similar sounding supporting logic
> statements being made for why such RealPeopleNPCs(tm) are such a
> Good Idea, heavily salted with personal belief and (excuse me) arm
> waving claims of, "It will be great!"  I don't buy it.  The
> arguments seem to equate to:

It's arm-waving only if you ignore the emotional engagement provided
by animated characters in movies, and more to the point by even
minimally intelligent/emotive characters in games.  I've already
mentioned several examples of this, including the biggest of them
all (if also the most steadfastly ignored in the core gamer market),
The Sims.  People like this *because* the characters are emotionally
engaging.

>   It would be great if we did it with people, so if we can do it
>   with software that is "Just Like People" (for some non-Turing
>   definition of "Just like People") it will be just as good if not
>   better, and cheaper too!

> Uhh, yeah.  Given the roles that NPCs fill I don't see that the
> first assertion of, "It would be great if we did it with people"
> has been demonstrated and instead see considerable suggestion that
> it is in fact an article of unsupported faith that doesn't sound
> right.  Then again, perhaps I am just being a curmudgeon as Mike
> Sellers so politely suggests.

Well, this go-round does remind me eerily of 1982 and color screens
as I mentioned before, or 1994 when we were talking about MUDs going
graphical (more graphical than say Regenesis and more game than
Worldschat).  Lots of people didn't buy these as being worthwhile
(or even possible).  It was a lot of arm-waving.  Okay.  The proof
is inevitably in the pudding.

Mike Sellers
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