IA from AI: Intelligent Advice from Artificial Intelligence?

IA from AI: Intelligent Advice from Artificial Intelligence?

(Note: I define acronyms the first time I use them since I can’t know exactly who my audience is.  I know that you know them all, of course)

I was delighted the first time I played a 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate) game that included “advisors.”  I think it was Civilization 2, and, playing the game for the first time, I liked the humor and diversion of the video clips of my council members giving their advice about priorities and about each other.  I was looking forward to hearing their suggestions about strategy, since I basically didn’t know what I was doing.

Civ 2 Advisors

After the first set of turns, as I was reeling from barbarians’ attacks, I asked my military advisor what I should do.  “Give me more soldiers!” he said.  Uh, okay; seemed kind of obvious, but it was basically good advice. 

Next, I was running afoul of a couple of neighboring countries, so I asked my foreign affairs counselor for some suggestions.  “Sharpen our diplomacy!” she said.  Hmm.  Maybe I should ask my military advisor for some more military ideas: “Our men need better weapons!” he growled.

It quickly became obvious that my councilors, however funny and engaging, weren’t going to be offering strategies that I had not already figured out from my early turns.  Most of their advice boiled down to: “Do more stuff in my specialty area!” and did not take into account my inability to do so when I didn’t have the resources, or the relevance when I was doing just fine in that particular part of the game.  I’ve played hundreds of hours of the various Civs since then, but I have been on the lookout for a game with advisors who give better advice. 

Before going into what “better” advice might look and sound like, I should mention some other means that games use to convey suggestions to players—although this is hardly an exhaustive list.

Other Advice Systems:

Hint Screens

Some games use “hints” or “tips” screens.  In X-Com Enemy Within for example (great game!) a hint screen appears during one of the turn cycles of the game.  But, while it recycles what appear to be 15 or 20 perfectly good tips, they contain information and warnings that I had pretty much figured out on my own after a minimal amount of game time, and they were not connected to my immediate situation.  Plus, for me, repetition often breaks suspension of disbelief since it becomes obvious that a computer program is mindlessly recycling the same 10 or 20 comments or actions or whatever.  What gameplay breaks suspension of disbelief and what tips are useful at which point is subjective, of course.

Advice Through Dialogue Choices and None-Player Characters (NPCs)

Another kind of advice system, found in many Role Playing Games (RPGs) goes like this:

A castle guard says: “Halt! Who goes there?”  The player is then presented with a choice of replies such as:

Just having a list of choices tells you what you can say in a situation with the particular character you’re speaking with—which is a lot more information than a player used to get in text adventures like the Zork series where you had to guess which verbs or nouns would “work.” Also helpful is seeing that the choices contain several silly or bizarre options, plus one which seems likely to be the best one at this point.  This will be familiar to anyone who has had multiple choice questions on a test: being able to eliminate most or all of the other choices so you can make an educated guess can help point you in the right direction. 

And of course, sometimes there are NPCs that just offer advice directly: “I don’t think we ought to follow the witch at this point, master, it may well be a trap!”

My Game:

What’s the Problem?

The reason I’m going on about this is because I’m developing a video game that leans heavily on the interplay between the advisors and the player.  The player is the president of United States and must make decisions involving war or peace, and also determine how to respond to a first contact with an alien civilization (in my game world, public office can get pretty busy..). 

Presidents, of course, can’t possibly be experts in all the issues they must deal with.  They have to rely on verbal and written reports and advice, and they also have to decide who they should trust and which reports to believe—especially when they get totally opposite advice from different experts or from several trusted advisors.  So what I’m doing here is both listing what I want to see in a game with useful, plot-related advice, and thinking out loud about the advice issue I have to deal with and hoping that someone else may find this useful for their game(s).

Fun, Fun, Fun

Having read and listened to a lot of stuff about game development (not to mention the hundreds of video games I’ve played over the last 35 years, I know that any game play, no matter how realistic or innovative or clever, shouldn’t be in the game unless it is fun—or at least, engaging or interesting.  And reading reports or listening to advisors sounds pretty dull and not much fun. 

On the other hand, many movies—especially the spy film and other action/adventure films--contain decision-making which can be very compelling because the hero is trying to figure out who is a friend and who an enemy, or how to stop a villain who seems to have thought of everything.  Science Fiction and Horror movies (if they are good) often have the viewer silently yelling at the protagonist: “No!  Bad choice!  Don’t do that!”

Actually, having the main character confronted with a decision or a series of decisions and then face the consequences is a standard plot device in a lot of fiction, whatever the media. So, bottom line: having a character confronted with dilemmas and having to choose among various options is a time-honored plot device, and trying to figure out what decision to make can be exciting.

NEXT INSTALLMENT:

What kind of advice/advisor-related game play might players actually find fun or engaging?  And, how do I integrate advice/advising with other game play elements?  Stay tuned for the next thrill-packed installment, both of you!