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Comment by solardev | Hacker News Reader

I write fiction from time to time for fun, and I've really enjoyed interacting with ChatGPT as a co-author, either having it write the next few events or playing one of the characters. It's absolutely capable of role-playing different characters (I made it into a sentient toaster once), and frankly is often better than most NPC writing currently in games.

There's a few great games writers out there (IMO Chris Avellone) but most of the time it's just filler. Fiction is arguably one of GPTs' strong suits, especially if the game engine can actually turn accidental hallucinations into in-game realities (like if a NPC mentions something not already in game, generate a proxy and turn it into a quest?)

Really excited about the possibilities for emergent creativity here :)

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> Like if a NPC mentions something not already in game, generate a proxy and turn it into a quest?

This does not sound trivial

It absolutely isn't! Yet :) Give it two years.

Ha. Afaict, most triple-a open world games are built on pretty simple engines, and the great majority of quests fit in a relatively small range of formats. Go to town x, find NPC y, go to landmark z, fight some monsters, get the macguffin, bring it back to y.

The need is then to have a database of everything (done!), build a generator for quest steps, and then place the quest requirements back in the game. This sorry of thing has been possible since, oh, I dunno, 1997: Daggerfall.

The whole trick is keeping it from getting too same-y/boring. Current games handle that by leaning on human writing and character modeling for even the minor quests, though the quality standards on the side quests tend to be low, and they get boring anyway. (Which is why I've still never finished Witcher 3...) Adding AI writing in the mix for side quests is a no brainer.

> The whole trick is keeping (side quest design and writing) from getting too same-y/boring

Do you believe an AI trained on human writing can accomplish this key task better than human writers, who themselves _at best_ have a pretty low success rate?

A one-pass attempt probably wouldn't be that impressive, but i wonder about having games run split-second "play tests" of spontaneously generated content using some kind of adversarial network to estimate the player's reaction. Then questlines could be iteratively fine-tuned while in progress, more like what a human DM does.

I think the big advantage an LLM has is that it can respond dynamically to whatever the player decides to do, rather than offering a few pre-determined choices and even then generally funnelling back towards one central path.

It’s funny you mention Witcher 3 as an example of boring side quests when it would be my example for one case where they are actually good and is the only open world game I’ve finished since Morrowind

Is it worth playing? I've picked it up several times and tried to play it for a couple hours, but the skills and spells systems seem so limited and console-like, kinda like how simple Skyrim is compared to Morrowind.

Does it get more involved and customizable later on?

They were fine for the first third to half of the game, but eventually the thin quest engine starts showing pretty badly...

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