Each video game has a remarkable, reeling, wild world ready for exploration. One filled with vivid personalities urging to be introduced to players. But developers can only reveal so much of this world. Bound by the constraints of time, resources, and simply being human, developers craft a narrative that exposes a fraction of the game’s universe and allows players to interact with only a handful of characters.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) allows game makers to crack Pandora’s box and release an entirely new and immersive experience to players. This week’s podcast dives into the details of games augmented by AI and asks developers: What would your game’s world look like if players could be a part of it?
You can talk to the characters and NPCs. That then changes the relationship that you have with the players. That then changes the game. That changes the story.
Guy Gadney
On this week’s podcast
This week, our hosts, Brian Baglow and Peggy Anne Salz, sit down with Guy Gadney to learn how Charisma AI helps unlock the rich world inside every game. Easily connected to Unreal, Unity, mobile, and metaverses, Charisma’s AI-powered conversation engine “uses the language of storytelling, with built-in features like emotion, memory, scenes and subplots to bring your projects to life.”
With Charisma, NPC interactions aren’t limited by dialogue trees. Players can converse with every character in any manner. “If you say something rude to them, they’re gonna get angry,” says Guy. “If you say something nice to them, they’re gonna like you.” What’s more, backed by the power of machine learning, characters can go so far as to remember a player’s name and their responses to questions which characters can reference further along in gameplay.
This episode will get your gears spinning as Peggy, Brian, and Guy reflect on the ethics of AI, the industry shift toward digital humans, and making your dreams come to life… literally.
About our guest
A long-time R-Type lover and Words With Friends enthusiast, Guy Gadney is a gamer at heart. He has pioneered growth and innovation in the digital media industry for thirty years, working with global organisations like Penguin Books, BBC, and FOX. Over the past three decades, Guy has founded four digital media companies and acted on Australia’s Digital + Ad Collective Board of Directors. Guy is trilingual, speaking English, Spanish, and un petit peu of French. Most excitingly, though, he and his team at Charisma launched their AI-powered adaptation of John Wyndham’s 1952 classic film, The Kraken Wakes, at this year’s London Games Festival. The game is now available for PC on Steam.
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