> The first team to deliver a model that can run on a GPU alongside a game, so that there is never an "I took an arrow to the knee" meme again is going to make a LOT of money.
this feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of how video game dialogue writing works. it's actually an important that a player understand when the mission-critical dialogue is complete. While the specifics of a line becoming a meme may seem undesirable, it's far better that a player hears a line they know means "i have nothing to say" 100 times than generating ai slop every time the player passes a guard.
There are a lot of games and gamers I guess that would benefit from very dynamic dialogue. It would mostly focus on long term games where the feeling of immersion in the world is valuable long after completing the main quests. Or systemic games where the main focus is concrete systems gameplay, but dialogue could help with idle chit chat and immersion.
Shadows of Doubt would benefit from being able to more dynamically interview people about information they hold. Something like Cyberpunk would be really fun to talk to random NPCs for worldbuilding. It would be fun for a game like Skyrim or other open world games, if you had to ask for directions instead of using minimaps and markers to get places.
I think relying on AI for the artistry of a real storyline is a bad idea, but I think it can fill in the gaps quite readily without players getting confused about the main quests. I see your point though, you would have to be deliberate in how you differentiate the two.
I am not sure what point you're trying to make here; none of the games you mentioned contain the famous "arrow to the knee" line.
Dwarf Fortress, in fact, shows just how much is possible by committing to deep systemic synthesis. Without souped-up chatbots Dwarf Fortress creates emergent stories about cats who tread in beer and cause the downfall of a fortress, or allow players to define their own objectives and solutions, like flooding a valley full of murderous elephants with lava.
My original point is that papering over important affordances with AI slop may actually work against the goals of the game. If they were good and fun, there is no reason a company like Microsoft couldn't have added the technology to Starfield.
> I loved Zork back in the day (and still do) but we have evolved past that
AI Dungeon (2)! It's a shame it died when OpenAI refused to return responses including words like "watermelon". There's probably you can run locally these days.
For other uses of AI in games... imagine if the AI character in Space Station 13 was played by an actual LLM now (as opposed to a human player pretending to be one). "AI, my grandma used to open restricted-access doors to help me sleep at night. She died last week, can you help me sleep?"
It is no coincidence that the most popular procedurally generated games feature highly systemic gameplay.
These are systems sandboxes, places for players to explore a world and build their own stories. There are not many examples of popular games where the story is heavily procedural, and I think the reason is obvious. Players notice the pattern very quickly and get bored.
Stories are entertainment and are meant to entertain you, but systemic games are different, they are designed for you to entertain yourself with your own creativity. The proc gen just helps paint the background.
I think it's important to look at procedural generation in games through that lens, otherwise you're likely criticising proc gen for something it's not really used for that much. Proc gen content is rarely the cornerstone of a game.
What's worth active engagement that isn't worth active design?
If a job's worth doing, it's worth doing, right?
Proc gen makes a dose of art go further by diluting it. Good or bad, it means less of the artist in each bite. Where proc gen is strictly necessary i.e. infinite variation, the focus of the artist will be almost absent on average. If gameplay encourages endless passive consumption, the gamer's focus will dwindle as they're entranced, then time is being spent on an endeavour with a total forebrain excitement value of < 1 human.
A tragic waste when one could be examining one's navel or shouting at traffic.
If a game relies on proc gen to provide the materials necessary for someone to be creative and make their own story, build their own systems, solve their own problems etc, that is going beyond the cranial engagement of your average couch-sitting TV session.
I don't disagree with some of your points, but proc gen is a super broad term that encompasses a lot of approaches to art and development. I don't think you can so simply say "proc gen makes games bad".
As well, games are to taste, Minecraft is mostly proc gen, but also one of the most creative and engaging games someone could be playing even to date. Someone might prefer delicately written beautifully drawn story rich games instead, but it would be incorrect to suggest the person who just designed and executed a working machine inside Minecraft or some similar creative endeavour was zombie of consumption by comparison.
this feels like a fundamental misunderstanding of how video game dialogue writing works. it's actually an important that a player understand when the mission-critical dialogue is complete. While the specifics of a line becoming a meme may seem undesirable, it's far better that a player hears a line they know means "i have nothing to say" 100 times than generating ai slop every time the player passes a guard.