32 | New Scientist | 16 November 2019
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OBSIDIANENTE
RT
AINMENT
,^ INC.Jacob Aron is New Scientist’s
deputy news editor. He has
been playing video games
for 25 years, but still isn’t
very good at them. Follow
him on Twitter @jjaronEVERY couple of weeks, my friends
and I gather to imagine the future.
Well, a future: we play a tabletop
role-playing game (TTRPG)
adapted from Carbon 2185 that is
set in a cyberpunk, post-Brexit
London where corporations run
everything. Think Dungeons &
Dragons meets Blade Runner
meets an unending howl at
the current state of the UK.
Recently, our team was tasked
with infiltrating a factory, planting
a virus to erase crucial data and
getting out undetected. I play as
Reginald Archibald Thistlewaite,
a mash-up of Sherlock Holmes and
UK politician Jacob Rees-Mogg. I
have designed him to be persuasive
and charismatic, so I decided to talk
my way in, posing as an inspector.
With a few lucky rolls of the
dice, I was able to convince the
factory manager that a robot
uprising was imminent, and
only by accessing his computer
could we ensure his safety. The
mission went off without a hitch.
What was so thrilling is that all
of this was completely unplanned.
Since TTRPGs take place largely in
your shared imagination, almostanything can happen. One player,
the dungeon master, takes on the
task of running the game world,
depicting non-player characters
and adapting to whatever the
players throw at them.
Video games can’t do this, as
your options are preprogrammed
by developers, but some have
more choices than others. I havebeen playing The Outer Worlds,
which casts you as an escapee
from a colonist ship in the
Halcyon star system, where
corporations run everything.
Hey, that sounds familiar...
The game is utterly gorgeous,
full of amazing space vistas and
weird alien worlds, but what
really strikes me are the dialogue
options. Most games give you
choices that boil down to “yes”
or “no”, but The Outer Worlds opts
for much deeper conversations.When anything can happen The Outer Worlds shows how video games
are moving towards matching the imagination and flexibility of tabletop
role-playing games. But a true AI would be much more fun, says Jacob Aron“ For video games to
truly match tabletop
role-playing games,
they need to get
intelligent”Games
The Outer Worlds
PC, PlayStation 4 and
Xbox One
Obsidian EntertainmentAI Dungeon
Online at aidungeon.io
Nick WaltonSo far, my favourite moment
involved taking one of my
companions, an engineer named
Parvati, for a drink in a space
station bar. She had received a
romantic poem from a woman she
was attracted to, but as an asexual
person, she wasn’t interested in
physical advances. Thanks to my
conversational skills, I convinced
her to pursue the relationship on
her terms, while steering her away
from getting too drunk.
Later, I met a shopkeeper
who was forced to wear a giant
moon mask by the corporation
he worked for. I pestered him
about how the mask felt, and his
responses became increasingly
hilarious – and desperate – as he
tried to bring the conversation
back to me buying something.
Of course, for video games to
truly match TTRPGs, they need
to get intelligent. I am excited by
the promise of AI Dungeon, an AI-
generated text adventure based
on the Elon Musk-backed GPT-2 AI.
This hit the headlines earlier this
year for being “too dangerous”
to release to the public. That
is obvious hyperbole, but it
can generate pretty convincing
text from a short prompt.
Nick Walton, the creator of
AI Dungeon, sets up a handful of
initial scenarios and actions, then
lets the AI fill in the blanks. It is
mostly nonsense, but passable
nonsense – you can play and have
fun. AI Dungeon will only get more
advanced as computing power
grows and we feed in ever-larger
data sets. Think of the thousands
of hours of TTRPG sessions on
YouTube that are yet to be mined.
I wouldn’t stop meeting my friends,
but an AI dungeon master could
be the ultimate video game. ❚The Outer Worlds
has amazing vistas –
and deep dialogueThe games column