I was at the Paris Game AI Conference last week (www.gameaiconf.com) and had a great time yet again. Speaking to all types of AI programmers is always fun.

One thing that I kept getting asked was “what are you working on at Namaste” and everytime I had to stop and think how to describe what we are making. Not that it’s hard to tell what we’re making once you see it, it’s actually pretty easy to understand. But the terms we might use to describe what it is, have been co-opted to mean something else. We are working on a game that involves social interaction with AI characters. Every time I thought “social AI based games” it would just remind me that now “social” means “facebook”. We are NOT working on a game for facebook, even though I personally see nothing wrong with that and I’m sure we’ll make the game available via facebook in some form eventually.

I’m actually obsessed with the notion that I can help make characters come alive. Much like an animator would do for film, I think as a programmer I can help (along with our artists) make a character that is alive in an interactive way. The focus for me, is to create an online world where I can enjoy the company of other players, but where I can also feel part of a larger world. Where the characters that inhabit the world are not just dumb pawns to be used to sell items or to collect quests. Where each and every character has a tale to tell, has a life and a background, loves, hates, goals and drives.

There are already plenty of games that allow people to do the typical MMORPG thing. Plenty of combat and action oriented worlds, where grinding and item collection is a key part of the world. I’m just not that interested in creating one of those. Honestly, I prefer the action mechanics of a first person shooter to the typical item quest style action of an RPG. What I’m more interested in, is the ability to actually feel like the world is allowing me to play a role. That I’m part of a story and can explore the world while the story unfolds, where the drama of the world evolves over time and where the mechanics of play in the world are less about accruing items and more about social play. Which I guess is why I’m here working for Namaste.

You’re probably at this point thinking “second life”, but you shouldn’t be thinking that. Social play can mean a lot of things, we can have many interesting mechanics that work beyond just “hit X with Y” all the time. If anything, you should think of Minecraft and its simple mechanics and the amazing potential when you combine them, or the sims where you can interact with the characters in the world. The possibilities for making a deep and interesting world, full of rich characters that are capable of working towards their own motivations drives me. This is a big experiement for us, in that we really don’t know what the end result will be. We know the aesthetics we are aiming for and we know the technical aspects, but as a game design? Well, nobody has done any of the things we are working on before, so its all new and open to change. I can say that I will do my best to make sure that players in our world feel that sense of awe that many of us felt when we started playing our first MMO (mine was everquest).

Anyway, I’ll blog more about the guts of the AI system as the product takes shape. I’ll also maybe talk about some of the things we want to do in the longer term.

Phil.