#FACADE VIDEO GAME HOW TO#

If the industry keeps up its growth, PriceВwaterhouse expects it to rival the global recorded-music business by about 2010. If todayвЂ™s video-game industry were a person, it would be at what people used to call вЂњthat awkward age.вЂќ Suddenly, like a teenager with long legs and short pants, it finds itself grossing $31 billion this year in revenues worldwide, according to the business consultancy PriceВwaterhouseCoopers, and nearly $10 billion in the United States alone. вЂњWeвЂ™re interested in revolutionary innovation.вЂќ вЂњThatвЂ™s a sort of incremental innovation that I think neither of us is interested in,вЂќ Mateas replied. When I spent a couple of days getting to know them recently, I asked why theyвЂ™re not trying something more modest, such as making the characters in todayвЂ™s video games more lifelike. They think interactive drama has the potential to be to this century what cinema was to the last. Now they are starting on a larger version, this time a commercial game. They looked upon their game as a research project and figured that building it would take two years. вЂњAs Andrew and I talked,вЂќ Mateas recalls, вЂњwe sort of egged each other on to jump as far out of the mainstream as possible.вЂќ They resolved to create a game that would put a not in front of every convention of todayвЂ™s video-game industry. In 1998, emerging from a hot tub at a conference in Snowbird, Utah, Mateas and Stern decided to collaborate. What better way to teach a computer to act human, after all, than by teaching it to act? It occurred to him that he could advance his dream by building artificial actors. Mateas, for his part, had dreamed since childhood of building artificial humans.

#FACADE VIDEO GAME HOW TO#

вЂњI had some idea how to do it,вЂќ Stern says. Entering this world, you would feel as if you had been thrust into the midst of a soap opera or a reality-TV show. It might engineer dramatic situations, complete with revelations and reversals. It might contain artificial people you could converse with, get to know, and love or hate.

вЂњInteractive drama,вЂќ the concept is called. In certain rarefied circles of AI academia and video-game design, people sometimes theorize about a computer program that would combine the graphical realism of a modern video game with the emotional impact of great art. It didnвЂ™t take long for them to recognize each other as kindred spirits. It was probably inevitable that Stern, presenting his intelligent(ish) virtual pets, would run into Mateas, presenting his intelligent(ish) robot plant. Not long after Petz debuted, Stern began attending some of the same conferences on artificial intelligence that Mateas haunted. He became interested in bigger things, like creating a new art form. It dawned on him that he wanted to work with adult characters in lifelike relationships. As Stern worked on making the virtual creatures emotionally appealing and realistic to play with, he began giving them artificial minds: goals, personalities, memories. First came Dogz, in 1995, then Catz, and eventually Babyz, all adorable animated creatures that lived on your computerвЂ™s hard drive. They were called Petz, and for a while they were a hit in the video-game industry. Meanwhile, Andrew Stern, a programmer and designer at a now-defunct video-game studio, was building artificially intelligent(ish) virtual pets. Not long after building Office Plant #1, however, Mateas set it aside. Naturally, it also whistled, sang, moaned, and complained. Office Plant #1, as the creation was called, grew and shrank and blossomed and hibernated and waved its piano-wire fronds as it вЂњfedвЂќ off e-mail traffic. This was in 1998, when Mateas was a doctoral student with some avant-garde ideas. Michael Mateas is the sort of person who once built an artificially intelligent(ish) robot houseplant that monitored your e-mail and changed shape to reflect the mood of what it read-if that sort of person can be said to be a sort.

Facade video game