NPCs, AI...

 And we

Have you ever wondered what goes on in the vapid mind of one of those NPCs you see strolling the streets of Los Santos, or holed up in the Inn during the worst storm nights over in Skyrim- or even what bounces around the heads of every character you aren't currently controlling in the Sims? Probably not, because the directions of AI NPCs has been a talking point in video game marketing for a good many years now whenever developers want to hype up all the effort that went into making their game as 'intelligent' as possible. The GTA NPCs are placed dynamically as you travel about, given appropriate AI packages depending on where they are in location on the map and what that specific NPC would be feasibly doing (i.e.  Mountain climbers will be Map Navigating, whilst beach folk will be relaxing on the sand.) Skyrim NPCs follow specific daily AI packages weaved to simulate a daily cycle of waking up, doing their important tasks for the day and then going back to sleep in their beds. And the Sims operate in the same way only with a basic AI that allows them to react to stimulae that the player feeds them.

It's all very heavily catered and orchestrated by the system designers, because games have yet to reach that state of development where they slide off the gangly rails and become free to slot in rampant learning AI that does whatever it wants. Most games would fall apart in a matter of a week under that sort of unfiltered access. Still, it's the job of NPC programmers to create the illusion of a breathing world in order to heighten player's immersion with the world, which in turn will help sell the story, or the action or pretty much whatever it is that needs to be fed to the player to make the game work. AI NPC work is a recipie of subtlety and balance. Nothing sticks out quite like a world with utterly braindead AI who refuse to function in way that we see as 'normal' or 'logical' for the human observer.

But personally, I can't fully shake from my mind the idea of a fully autonomous AI NPC controlled world as being that perfect endgame for the development of non player characters. Think about it- a world where the characters think and react and learn from what you do so that they can act on that information later. If you threaten an NPC with a gun one day, they'll spread that information and people avoid that part of the city for fear of what will happen to them. Or assault one shop keeper and they'll remember you the next time you come in. Currently such systems can be feigned through heavily scripted reaction scripts which you'll find in more extravagant open world titles. To push it that one step further all you need to do is map out a list of actions within an AI's range, throw a learning algorithm on the thing and call it a day! What a world that would be..

Of course, the toss-up would probably be system performance hits. Even with the basic puppets we have in most games today, the sheer power it takes to render those little guided AI silly-string people often grates most games down to a crawl. Drive around Night City in Cyberpunk and unless you're rocking those several thousand dollar systems you'll notice whenever you cross a congested part of the city. (What few there actually are, that is. Night City is surprisingly sparse outside of the centre city, I've noticed.) Perhaps we're not yet at the point of hardware where games can keep the AI minds of NPC's constantly evolving, taking on new information and forgetting irrelevant stuff, all around the core player's game. Unless... heck, that could have made for a revolutionary Stadia game if Google had anything resembling a back-bone in their bodies.

What if I told you, however, that there's an hidden hour between days called the "Dark Hour" wherein- wait, what were we talking about? Ahem- what I meant to say was: What if I told you that these suppositions about AI powered NPCs no longer exist purely within the imaginaries of our spongey minds! And we thank the overpaid and underworked researchers at Standford University for this, through their research paper entitled "Generative Agents: Interactive Simulacra of Human Behaviour" Always it's the Standford peeps that go on this bizarre little escapades pushing certain questions that no one really wanted to go ahead and answer, and everyone knows and then getting a good ear-worm into the news. Could still use some help naming the things, though.

Explained in laymen's terms from the perspective of another laymen (look up the paper yourself for a detailed analysis) what we have here is a simple world of sprites and characters imbued with life through an AI architecture, giving the algorithms necessary tools to learn new pieces of information. The set is actually very similar to how Bethesda handle their open worlds, with NPCs being given daily routines to wake up, do their necessaries, go back home and- if they get to that point- even throw parties. (So this is what Sims get up to when I'm not there turning them into abject monsters on society.) The researchers powered up their NPCs, or 'Agents, with personalities' and set them off to play about their lives.

And just like the spongey human race, these Agents pretty much immediately fell to gossiping and spreading rumours like wildfires and having very basic conversations back and forth as powered by an AI speech algorithm in a vein similar to ChatGPT. It's basic, but it's a very interesting look into the way that these separate agents interact with one another in a manner that appears vaguely life-like until you actually read the contents of these conversations and die of synthetic boredom. But you know that isn't going to stop an inherent idea thief like Ubisoft, who are absolutely in the process of building the next Watch_Dogs game entirely around that singular idea, with the rest of the actual gameplay loop being an absolute after thought they don't even consider until the final 6 months, resulting in another absolute disaster of a game. I swear, I'm like the Ubisoft whisperer; I'm in their heads!

Though the paper was more interested in the generative models of AI, displaying their ability to create something arguably similar to personally driven intent when given enough stimuli- obviously my interest starts and stops at the gaming application. I can't imagine big epic fantasy stories like Skyrim or Starfield benefitting much- but The Sims? Heck, half the problem with those games of late has been how robotic all the non players feel- give them the opportunity to act like other players and you'll add a whole new dimension to the world. Heck, you could turn The Sims into a competitive race for success with enough tweaking - just build The Sims 5 with an AI backbone like this and the sky is the limit! Finally, an AI story that doesn't sound like the end of the world embodied! (About time...)