[forrestthewoods]

> For example, video game space has already been trying to create AI-powered NPCs, world generation and story-telling (e.g. Inworld AI).

Current AI isn't even close to good enough for video game NPCs and related. We're several breakthroughs away from that being possible at any cost. Those breakthroughs might happen in 3 years, or they might not happen in 10. Hard to predict.

[Tiberium]

Are you sure? Models like Claude 3.5 Sonnet are both good at writing and instructions, as long as you set some guardrails for the model, they can be great NPCs.

[forrestthewoods]

> Are you sure?

Absolutely.

Current LLMs have insufficient world state. Imagine a game like Stardew Valley. It's got a town with 30 NPCs or some such. They all have personalities and the player builds a relationship with them over time. Current LLMs can't do that. They hallucinate waaaaaaay too much. You can't reliably define and evolve relationships. Amongst many other short comings.

I'm super pro AI and use ChatGPT all the time for programming. So I'm not being an AI hater. But I am a gamedev and I can say that what exists today simply isn't good enough.

[Tiberium]

But you're saying that you want a single model to handle all NPCs and the whole world. Of course this isn't possible currently. But using a separate model with separate context for each character is. Also, if you use ChatGPT for programming, try Claude 3.5 Sonnet - it's really better than GPT-4o for programming.

[forrestthewoods]

> But you're saying that you want a single model to handle all NPCs and the whole world.

No, I did not say that at all. I didn't specify how the LLMs may or may not be structure. I'm saying that current LLMs - and yes I've used Claude 3.5 Sonnet - are insufficient. There is no existence proof that they're sufficient.

LLMs are great. They aren't great enough for video game NPC. Not yet. Further innovation is needed. You're free to disagree. I can't prove a dispositive. But there is no working example.

[ebalit]

As a gamedev, what would you use currently instead for NPCs? And what would you say makes this/those solutions better than LLMs?

[forrestthewoods]

Dialogue systems vary by game and are generally custom. But they amount to hard coded if-else branches if you squint. The only one I ever wrote was a simple announcer for a sports-ish shooter.

Your question is weird. Every video game ever made has shipped using not LLMs. Not a single commercial game has ever shipped with an LLM. So I’d say what makes classic NPC systems better is they’ve shipped tens of thousands of commercial successes over 50+ years. And what makes LLMs worse is they haven’t once been proven viable for even a single title. Nor have they produced even a compelling tech demo.

Geez people.