[MUD-Dev2] [DESIGN] Multiplayer interactive fiction

[Paolo Piselli]

On 19/3/2007 Mike Rozak wrote:
> For while, I've been saying, "The NPCs are the game!". Well, I finally
> wrote up what I meant. You can find it at
> http://www.mxac.com.au/drt/MIFTheory.htm , as well as attached below
> (but it doesn't come out well with just text).


This sounds very similar to what the Oz Project was trying to do at CMU
about a decade ago, complete with Drama AI.  You should read some of
their academic papers, but here is an overview:
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/oz/web/papers/CMU-CS-97-156.html

I worked for the startup that eventually came out of this project,
Zoesis Studios, and I can speak from experience that they had a very
difficult time balancing the drama manager in the continuum between
open-ended and interesting, so they eventually ditched the drama AI for
a purely character-interaction driven experience.