Predictions about the future of any technology are difficult to make. Bill Gate’s statement that “256k of memory is all anyone will ever need”, or Ken Olsen’s “There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home” shows what a fools errand it can be.
However, there’s nothing wrong with a little conjecture, so today’s question is “Where will gaming be in 20 years?”
Of course, graphics will get an awful lot better as graphics hardware improves, but what about the game themselves? What will be the next big step? So hardware aside (such as VR Headsets, holographic displays etc), what will we be playing in 20 years?
Personally, I think the biggest step forward will be in artificial intelligence.
Half Life was a major step forward in gaming AI. for the first time, rather than just stand still and shoot, enemy characters would work together as a team, support and warn each other, and perform tactical maneuvers such as flushing you from behind cover with grenades.
The most recent major step forward was with Oblivion. What
Basically each NPC was given a set of ‘personality traits’ that governed how they act, as well as a series of wants and needs. For example, a hungry character might go and buy food, or depending on their morality rating, just steal it. If they chose to steal and got caught, the character they stole from would decide whether to run screaming for guards, or attack and kill the thief themselves.
The point is, none of that is actually scripted. Different personalities interact, and not even the programmers can predict what the outcome will be.
There are hundreds of Oblivion AI stories, but here’s one of my favorites:
During testing, the programmers discovered that on a certain quest, one of the NPC’s you needed to talk to, a ‘skooma’ dealer, (Skooma is an in-game drug) was always dead by the time the player reached him.
Doing a little investigating, they discovered that many of the town citizens where getting hooked on skooma and selling everything they had to support their habit. Eventually they ran out of money and killed the dealer in an attempt to get their ‘fix’. Again, none of this was scripted.
In the future, I see this idea becoming a lot more advanced, with game world populated by thousands of artificially intelligent characters, with randomly generated personalities. In other words, you become a single entity in a world of thousands, rather than a character on a linear, scripted quest.
This opens a lot of gaming possibilities.
Let’s say it’s 2027, and we’re playing the latest in the Elder Scrolls series.
You’re walking through a forest, when suddenly you’re confronted by a small group of bandits. However, rather than being faced with a scripted conversation, where the bandit’s says a pre-scripted speech and you pick your responses from a list, the character talks to you by a sophisticated speech-generation program with the NPC’s conversation being generated ‘on the fly’ based on the character’s ‘personality’.
You respond through your microphone, where speech recognition technology listens to what you say, and translates it to the NPC.
Now you have endless possibilities. You could attempt to convince the bandit you’re actually a powerful mage and get him to back off, or convince him you’re the ‘bait’ in a trap, and there are actually 10 hunters hidden in the trees ready to release a storm of arrows in their direction at your signal (unless they all lie down on the ground and let you take their weapons that is.)
It gives the player total freedom. For example, in Oblivion, there is a quest where you have to visit each town and convince each ruler to send aid to Bruma (a town under siege). In the game you convince them to do this by completing a number of “fetch” quests…but with a sophisticated enough AI system, you could simply try and talk them into it, threaten, or complete a quest for them…but rather than being scripted, again, it would be generated ‘on the fly’.
There could also be the option of simply visiting a bunch of taverns, buying everyone drinks and getting them fired up enough to help you defeat your enemies.
This would also give games unlimited replay value. You could be given an overall objective, but how you achieve it would be left entirely up to you.
So, picture this. You’re playing the latest Role Playing Game. You’re given a huge world. There are politics, opposing factions, feuds and alliances. Characters are pre-set into groups, but just like in real life, these characters can be convinced, bribed, threatened or seduced. Personalities range from the fiercely loyal, to the disgruntled ‘only here because they need the money’ characters.
You can pick a side or remain neutral. Then you do whatever you like. Ask the local guard for a job and work your way up the ranks, offer your services as a spy (while also being a double agent), find a group of like minded individuals and burn down buildings of enemies of your choice.
You can choose to get your hands dirty and do things yourself, or convince, threaten or pay people to do them for you.
So, your game experience could go like this:
You’re new to the game, and walk into a local tavern and overhear someone complaining loudly that a local corrupt city guard keeps shaking them down. So you walk over and tell them to meet you somewhere later. Then, depending on your demeanor and the NPC’s personality, the NPC decides whether to meet you or not.
If they do, you offer to ‘remove’ that pesky city guard for a small fee. (Then, depending on the NPC’s morality rating, they either agree, suggest something less drastic, or are horrified and run screaming). But, let’s assume they take you up on it.
You take out the guard and collect your money. Over time, doing similar ‘jobs’, you gain a reputation as an assassin and start to make lots of cash. Then, you hire talented people to work for you. Before you know it, you’re in control of a large network of shadowy assassins, people fear you, but you also show a legitimate likeable face to the public at large.
Then, you either offer your services to the people in power, or take them out. Of course, unlike in today’s games where taking out the head of the opposing army is just an objective, in this game, you have to worry about who will take their place, or if the instability caused by the sudden removal of a world leader would be detrimental to your ‘interests’ in that area.
Of course, then you also have to worry about spies in your ranks, or an ambitious second-in-command trying to take over. Do you try to keep your employees happy? Control them through fear? Kill one out of hand as an example to the others? Or try create a situation where having you in power is preferable to removing you?
The beauty, and the “Holy Grail” of this type of gaming is the total freedom it offers. Join a local guild and become a sword for hire, join the army and work your way up the ranks, start blacksmithing and make a tidy profit selling arms, amass large amounts of wealth through fair means or foul and become a puppet-master, manipulating the world from behind closed doors…or get a job serving drinks at a bar. It’s up to you.
You could play this type of game on as big or small scale as you like. Become a major player in the local mercantile arena, or become a major player on the world stage.
“Sandbox” games are becoming more popular, the only thing holding them back is that they, at present, can only offer the illusion of freedom. Sufficiently sophisticated AI would allow the player true freedom. A game world where you’re free to choose your own path.
Of course, right now, this sounds hopelessly far-fetched and unlikely. But considering we got from ‘Pong’ to ‘Oblivion’ in 25 years, is gaming advancing to this level in another 20 years time really that unlikely?
No comments:
Post a Comment