Character: The Next Great Gaming Frontier?
4/24/2009 6:36 PM | 5 Comments | Page 3 of 3
Chris Buecheler
Status: Muthaaaaa ... tell your children not to WALK MY WAY-HUH!
For an example of simulated behavior that works, and works well, we once again need look no further than our
Half-Life 2 heroine.
Episode One quietly debuts a feature that is so minor, it's fully possible many people who played the game never even saw it: When the player shines the flashlight in Alyx's face, in a dark area, she squints her eyes and covers them with her hand. This is a simple feature. It probably took no more than an afternoon to program in. Nonetheless, it represents an important step not in technological terms, but in terms of developer mindset, and it's to Valve's credit that it recognizes this and notes it in its "developer commentary" feature. This gesture humanizes Vance in a way that leagues of scripted sequences can't. No longer is she following an invisible line, gesturing at preset points and speaking preset dialogue. In cinematic terms, Vance is no longer acting; she's reacting.
Them's some right purdy caverns you got, there!
We as gamers crave realism. We want to be dazzled, but more importantly we want to
believe in what we're seeing. When Vance places her hand against an elevator door, and furrows her brow, and tells us to be careful, it's touching ... but it doesn't feel real. When we shine a flashlight in her eyes and she grimaces and pulls her arm up to block the light -- something that
no game character has ever done before -- we see in her the very earliest sparks of sentience. For a brief, simple moment the automaton is set aside, and what we see instead is something human.
If we are to achieve the realism we crave in our games, then the time has come to spend our processor cycles on something more than environmental fidelity. While there will always be an audience for the Marcus Fenixes and Lara Crofts of the world, there is also a growing crowd of gamers who have come to know characters like Alyx Vance, have appreciated that contribution to gaming, and are looking ahead toward the next step in simulated humanity. Time and effort must be spent on technologies like intelligent response systems, dynamic emotional reactions and procedurally generated dialogue. It is time for the next strides to be made in the field of artificial intelligence. Our characters must cease to be scripted, and instead become simulated. Like Pinocchio, they must become real.
With this, games can and will evolve into an art form unlike anything seen before: true virtual worlds, lushly rendered and filled with reactive, compelling characters. Without it, all we're left with is a world that is beautiful but ultimately dead, populated only by robots pretending to be alive.
