| > I still long for the day when we can have procedurally-generated stories and quests that are actually interesting to play through. It's an interesting artistic and technical challenge to investigate, absolutely. I hope people work on it, and I'm sure they already are. However, let me also offer a counterpoint with something much simpler: coffee. It is possible to fully automate the process of making an espresso drink. You can buy cheap versions of these machines that will sit on your kitchen counter; the quality of the drinks so produced is not the highest, but I suspect it's entirely possible to build a machine that would actually make high-quality drinks, perhaps with even more precision than a human can. Yet the opposite trend has prevailed over the last few decades. Not long ago, Americans drank drip coffee (hence the approximation thereof as the Americano). This is an easy process to make in large batches with minimal labor. It is almost fully automatic, without any "automation". And certainly this still exists all over the place. But we now also have coffee shops everywhere -- witness the explosion of Starbucks out of its home in Seattle -- where people, baristas, individually make espresso drinks for customers. This is immensely popular. Why are tons of people now employed in this way, and why hasn't it been automated? Is it really just a matter of cost? I don't think so. I think the knowledge that another person took the trouble to do something for you is in fact part of the product. Consider the practice of drawing designs, like leaves or hearts, in the milk foam. This is entirely unnecessary, from a taste perspective. If you put a lid on it, as is commonly done, you will not even see it. But it carries a message -- that somebody gave enough of a damn to do it. (We could then analyze how this phenomenon gets watered down and eventually destroys itself when it tries to turn itself into a mass-produced fast-food franchise staffed by underpaid/exploited proletarians, but that would take this post in another direction.) My point is, I think something similar happens in video games. The very knowledge that another person was involved is important. You are receiving communication from this person. It does something to synchronize, partially, your mind with theirs. And this is a thing we appreciate. If there's no person on the other end, why should we care? This general phenomenon of paradoxiciality can be a bad thing. It can "feel like" socializing, without producing the actual, real, thick social networks that give us rich lives. There can be an exploitative and even druglike dynamic. It isn't entirely a good class of phenomena. But in small doses I think it's good, useful, important. I think it's a core part of what makes art valuable. And of course, it applies to games. This is why, I believe, we will not fully automate the telling of stories, or the making of lattes. The person doing it is important. |
It's an interesting thesis but I don't for a second believe Starbucks sells billions of coffees because people want the barista experience. Starbucks would absolutely automate their business with fancy machines if they could. The problem is that the drinks are so complicated and customizable that no one has built a machine capable of making them all.
Plus there are plenty of people who order Starbucks drinks through an app and never actually meet the barista who made them. If those drinks were made at some fully automated commissary and delivered by drone they'd be just as happy.
The very knowledge that another person was involved is important. You are receiving communication from this person.
That's important for some people, and some games, but not for everyone. I play roguelikes mainly for the challenge. The procedurally generators in these games can create bizarre and very challenging situations no human could ever come up with.
If there's no person on the other end, why should we care?
Because it's a puzzle for your mind to figure out. It's why people play solitaire games (with a deck of cards), random sudokus, tetris, etc.