Is It Possible to Build Dramatically Compelling Interactive Digital Entertainment
(in the form, e.g., of computer games)?¹

Selmer Bringsjord
The Minds & Machines Laboratory
Dept. of Philosophy, Psychology & Cognitive Science
Department of Computer Science
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)
Troy NY 12180-3590 USA
selmer@rpi.edu $\bullet$ http://www.rpi.edu/$\sim$brings

2.16.01

Abstract:

Lots of computer games are compelling. E.g., I find even current computerized poker games quite compelling, and I find The Sims downright fascinating; doubtless you have your own favorites. But our planet isn't graced by even one dramatically compelling computer game (or, more generally, one such interactive digital entertainment). The movie T2, Dante's Inferno, Hamlet, Gibson's prophetic Neuromancer, the plays of Ibsen -- these things are dramatically compelling: they succeed in no small part because they offer captivating narrative, and all that that entails (e.g., engaging characters). There is no analogue in the interactive digital arena, alas. Massively multi-player online games are digital, interactive, and entertaining -- but they have zero literary power (which explains why, though T2 engages young kids through at least middle-aged professors, such games are demographically one-dimensional). The same can be said, by my lights, for all other electronic genres.

This state of affairs won't change unless a number of key challenges are conquered; and conquering them will require some seminal advances in the intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and narrative. (E.g., since interactive digital narrative will need to be crafted and massaged as the story is unfolding, computers, not slow-by-comparison humans, will need to be enlisted as at least decent dramatists -- but getting a computer to be a dramatist requires remarkable AI.) In this paper, I discuss one of these challenges for the start of the new millennium: the problem of building dramatically compelling virtual characters. Within this challenge I focus upon one property such characters presumably must have: viz., autonomy.