In the—as yet—untapped world of integrating AI agents into games in a way that fits seamlessly with the story, utility, balancing, and fun, the coinciding interaction of prompts with each other has exponential downstream ramifications. A series of prompts is all that's needed to give an NPC (non-player character) identity, and how characters' experience can shape their uniqueness would lead to unpredictable results.
In this article I review ideas of how AI-based implementations can affect gameplay—and although simple LLM discussions/dialogue is great by itself—this starts with understanding what the game is actually setting out to accomplish, and explores with newfound perspectives what different genres of games have to offer.
The Search For Meaning
First, would be categorizing what qualitative objectives the game is aiming for. Character development is satisfying, such as becoming more powerful and unlocking new abilities. So is the focus of the game competition, where there is a winner and loser, or best player at a particular skill? Is the main draw of the game to play through an intriguing story, like reading a book? Can something productive be done from a learning/educational or other perspective? Is the task centered around the game world being influenced or improved, and unique to each player, like how they will design houses or build cities?
Adjectives of where AI can improve the game include: interactive, adaptable, immersive, unique, personalized, uncharted, and sharable. NPCs can have and evolve their own goals, opinions, attitudes, expressiveness, traits, motivations, education, and more. And not only the characters can be dynamic, but the natural environment, economic ecosystem, and other game world elements. Unique attributes of NPCs could simply contribute to enlightening/entertaining discussion & interaction, but it would be better to integrate contextual use cases.
Tangible Benefits
Just like AI is used to generate images, video, and voices, it can be used to generate entire items, monsters, levels, or even laws. This may come with all associated 3D models, icons, sound effects, game-specific attributes, and more. If a player overcomes obstacles easily, the game can increase in difficulty, or get easier if they are not making much progress. How far NPCs go from the initial series of prompts, to how interactions with others influence them can make for more native, natural identities.
Whether it be combat, racing, or sports games, competitors can get data on a person's style of play and exploit weaknesses, trying to predict their next move if they simply repeat the same tactics that worked previously. An allied AI companion can benefit from human exposure to imitate the player or offer statistics. Human players can provide free machine learning iterations of original data (that is relevant, real-world, inexpensive, and non-proprietary), and NPCs or game elements can become more valuable or superior.
Implementation concepts:
•Telepathy can involve making what NPCs are thinking readable/audible
•NPCs can exhibit clairvoyance if provided information about future game events
•Avoiding security cameras can prevent the use of AI to adapt to playing style
•Time travel or alternate timelines can be calculated for and predicted
•An NPC guarding entry can ask a riddle, while another NPC may be good at solving
•Uploading books of historical figures & philosophers can incorporate their personas as NPCs
As of this writing, software associated with gaming & creative AI assets includes Skybox AI (3D environment creation & editing for games), AI Dungeon (text-based game & storyline creation), obskur, and Inworld AI.
Summary
Responsive, emergent storytelling could lead to unique & personalized experiences, and the resulting game could provide insight about the player's personality, similar to answering psychological/situational questions and getting feedback. A player could discover a new plot development which leads to a new direction to take the game, and there could be a feature to reference & highlight that on social media, allowing the game to become exponentially more sociable & viral.
Despite the seemingly unrealistic technical impediments associated with the real-time use of LLMs as well as publicity concerns regarding possible exploitations, meteoric advances in AI include addressing the processing utilized to run capable models. The appropriate question to ask as more LLM & open-source features become ubiquitous, has been: what would be the coolest thing you could do with a game? There is a metaverse of possibilities.
