AI for Writers

International Game Developers Association

See this New York Times article, "Redefining the Power of the Gamer":

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/07/arts/07arti.html?pagewanted=print

Excerpt:

"This is the future of video games. In their modern riff on "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" Walter was the only human. Grace and Trip were virtual characters powered by advanced artificial intelligence techniques, which allowed them to change their emotional state in fairly complicated ways in response to the conversational English being typed in by the human player.

It was one version of the future here this past week at the first Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Digital Entertainment conference. It is a future where games are driven as strongly by characters as combat, where games are as much soap opera as shooting gallery and as much free-form construction set as destruction arena."

Most AI lectures at GDC are tech-centric. "AI for Writers" could be an updated version of that college chestnut "Physics for Poets." Intelligent AI is coming: this could mean great things for the craft of interactive writing. Also, this session could be a point of contact for writers and programmers - two groups that rarely, if ever, work together.