Can AI make video games more immersive? Some studios turn to AI-powered NPCs for more interactions

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LOS ANGELES (AP) – For decades, video games have relied on scripted, stilted interactions with non-player characters to help gamers on their journey. But as artificial intelligence technology improves, game studios are experimenting with generative AI to help build environments, helping game writers create NPC dialogue and giving video games the improvisational spontaneity reserved for tabletop role-playing games.

In the multiplayer game “Retail Mage,” players help open a magical furniture store and help customers in hopes of getting five-star reviews. As a salesperson – and a guide – they can pick up and examine the item or tell the system what they want to do with the product, such as deconstructing a chair for parts or tearing a page from a book to write a note to the shopper.

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The player’s interaction with the store and NPCs around them – from game mechanics to content creation and dialogue – is powered by AI instead of predefined scripts to create more options for talking and using objects in the store.

“We believe generative AI can unlock new games where the world is more responsive and more able to meet players with their creativity and the things they create and the stories they want to tell in the fantasy settings they create,” said Michael Yichao, founder of Jam & Tea Studios, the creator of “Retail Mage.”

The typical NPC experience often leaves something to be desired. Pre-scripted interactions with people intended for questing usually come with several chat options that lead to the same conclusion: the player gets the information they need and continues. Game developers and AI companies say that using generative AI technology, they aim to create richer experiences that allow better relationships with people and the worlds that designers build.

Generative AI can also give players more opportunities to run scripts and create their own stories if designers can create environments that are more alive and can react to player choices in real time.

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Tech companies continue to develop AI for games, even as developers debate how, and whether, they will use AI in their products. Nvidia invented ACE technology to create what it calls “digital humans” with generative AI. Inworld AI provides developers with a platform for generative NPC behavior and dialogue. Game company Ubisoft said last year that it was using Ghostwriter, its in-house AI tool, to help write some NPC dialogue without replacing video game writers.

A report released by the Game Developers Conference in January found that nearly half of developers surveyed said that generative AI tools are currently being used in the workplace, with 31% saying they use such tools. Developers at indie studios are mostly using generative AI, with 37% reporting using the technology.

Still, about four out of five developers say they are concerned about the ethical use of AI. Carl Kwoh, CEO of Jam & Tea, says AI should be used responsibly alongside creators to enhance stories – not to replace them.

“That’s always the goal: How do we use these tools to create experiences that make players more connected?” said Kwoh, who is also one of the company’s founders. “He can tell stories that couldn’t be told before.”

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Using AI to provide NPCs with endless things to do is “definitely a bonus,” Yichao said, but “meaningless content is just endless noise.” That’s why Jam & Teh uses AI – through Google’s Gemma 2 and Amazon’s own servers – to give NPCs the ability to do more than respond, he said. They can search for objects while shopping or respond to other NPCs to add “more life and reactivity than normally written encounters.”

“I have watched players turn our shopping experience into a bit of a dating sim as they flirt with customers and then the NPCs come up with a very real response,” he said. “It’s really exciting to see the game become more dynamic in terms of what players bring to the table.”

Sharing a conversation with NPCs in the game “Mecha BREAK,” where players fight against war machines, Ike Nnole said that Nvidia has made “human” AI respond faster than before using a small language model. Using Nvidia’s AI, players can interact with the mechanic, Martel, by asking him to do things like adjust the color of the mech.

“Normally, gamers would open a menu to do all this,” said Nnole, senior product marketing manager at Nvidia. “Now it can be a more interactive and faster experience.”

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Artificial Agency, a Canadian AI company, is creating an engine that allows developers to bring AI to any part of the game – not just NPCs, but also companions and “supervisory agents” that can direct players to missing content. AI can also create tutorials to teach players missing skills so they can have fun in the game, the company said.

“One of the ways we want to do this is to put game designers on everyone’s shoulders when they’re playing the game,” said Alex Kearney, co-founder of Artificial Agency. The company’s AI engine can be integrated into all stages of a game’s development cycle, he said.

Brian Tanner, CEO of Artificial Agency, said scripting every outcome of the game can be tedious and difficult to test. The system allows designers to act like directors, he says, by telling characters their motivations and backgrounds.

“This character can improvise at a point depending on what is actually happening in the game,” said Tanner.

It’s easy to run into the game’s guardrails, Tanner said, where NPCs keep repeating the same words regardless of how the player interacts with them. But as AI continues to develop, that will change, he added.

“You will feel like the world is alive and like everything is reacting exactly to what is happening,” he said. “It will add incredible realism.”

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