Screencap of generative agent simulation — playable here
Last week I wrote about the game developer who incorporated ChatGPT into his NPC-to-player conversations in his virtual world; now comes an experiment with "generative agents" — AI-powered NPCs, who talk with each other:
In the experiment, the researchers placed 25 generative agents within a virtual world resembling a sandbox video game, similar to The Sims. Each agent was assigned a unique background and participated in a two-day simulation. The study observed various remarkable behaviors:
One agent planned a party, informed several friends who then invited others, and collectively they coordinated the event.
Another agent decided to run for mayor, sparking organic discussions about their campaign and political stances among the community. Different agents held varying opinions on this candidate.
Some agents retained memories with human-like embellishments, occasionally imagining additional details or interpreting events with their own perspective.
Developed by AI researchers at Stanford (read their academic paper here), some enthusiasts are effusive about the implications, declaring, "Entire virtual worlds could be populated with these agents, producing emergent behaviors."
Definitely eventually, on some level — but the practical applications are still pretty challenging:
"First," veteran game designer Damion Schubert tells me, "we're at the very infancy of this kind of technology. Both the technology and game designers' capacity to work with it and shape it are going to be very different even six months from now than it is now.
"Second, every game is a different design, and what you need NPCs to do in every game is very different. Chat GPT today could probably make NPCs that spewed out random dialogue and light worldbuilding facts, but it's a longer walk to, for example, have NPCs be at a Bioware Companion-level of intelligence. But there's a lot of room between those extremes!"
Damion, as it happens, was lead designer of Bioware's Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO.
I've been excited about GPT-powered NPCs for quite awhile, but thinking about actual multi-user virtual worlds I actually play and enjoy, not to mention single-player sandbox worlds like Skyrim, it's difficult to imagine autonomous agents wandering around on their own devices without it becoming a vexing traffic jam. Like, what happens when the town blacksmith who's supposed to upgrade your broadsword decides that he'd rather become a master of interpretive dance?
Damion again:
"At the end of the day, what you want AI to do is to provide a compelling and cohesive experience to the end user.
"As an example, you want background NPCs to not have stories that stampede over or feel more epic than the ones that are core to the story, and you want to be sure the core story is parse-able. You want NPCs to move realistically through the town – or perhaps more importantly, not move in ridiculously unrealistic ways. You want fights to be balanced and challenging but also interesting and winnable if the player brings their A-game.
"That's not nothing! But at the same time, nothing I said sounds like it would be hard to train an AI to keep in consideration."
With the current technology, the best consumer-level applications for generative agents may be in single-player simulations like The Sims, Dwarf Fortress, or (to pick an upcoming title), Rod Humble's Life by You. In games like that, you actually do want highly zany NPCs bumping into each other in unpredictable ways.
For other games, generative AI chat could still be a fun value-add.
"For game dev's its a matter of harnessing the positive side of that kind of thing while making sure the NPCs don’t all decide to go on strike or something, or whatever other emergent thing they could do that’s not necessarily desirable," as Matt Mihály puts it. (Matt, by the way, is the dev who first connected NPCs to ChatGPT.)
"I mean, even as just flavor, it'd be fun, to me at least, to have AI NPCs in even things like FPS games saying original/non-scripted things to me occasionally. Using this for atmosphere is an easy win for a lot of games I think."
Damion concurs on that theme:
"I think the technology is very well-suited to create background noise (such as NPCs that recite the lore and talk like innkeepers) and not so well-suited to stuff that results in player activity (i.e. designing quests and whatnot) because if you do it will all feel super generic. But filling out a large world is exactly the sort of stuff that game designers frequently look to automate."
Me, I can't wait to write about swordsmiths suddenly showing up in tutus.
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Wagner James Au / New World Notes 
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