Robot, Tell Me a Story

People are using a chatbot to create game prompts, leading to questions about whether AI can create virtual worlds compelling enough to engage our emotions

I’m not what you would call a “big gamer,” but I enjoy playing video games with my kids and as a de-stressing activity at the end of the day. I prefer single-player games rich with characters and stories and enjoy expansive open-world games where I can explore and discover the nooks and crannies of a given world.

One of my favorite games of all time is Red Dead Redemption 2. It is a rich, sad, beautiful game set in the waning days of the Old West. We play as the outlaw Arthur Morgan, a gruff and violent man who still holds to his peculiar code of honor, one that places a high loyalty to a gang that operates like a dysfunctional family.

The world we explore as Arthur is expansive and rich in both detail and story. Even after I completed the main plot of the game, I found myself hunting around for details in every corner of this world that I had come to know so well and which I had grown to love for its beauty and for the import that the game narrative has bestowed upon it.

Do you know the feeling where you drive back to an old building or house that was a part of your life many years ago? There is a psychic weight laid on these places. The ghosts of our past haunt the halls, alleys, and sidewalks, unseen by the people who inhabit them now. I get this same haunting when I play a good game. There is a plantation in RDR2 that I avoided later on in the game because it held the memory of the violence done there. This virtual space, this 3D model of a house meant something to me because there was a narrative that infused this place with meaning.

When Red Dead Redemption 2 came out, Peter Suderman wrote about it being one of the biggest blockbusters of all time, making more money in a weekend than even the largest cinematic blockbuster in history. It is this piece that I point to as the final nail in the coffin of the debate over whether or not video games are a valid form of art. Of course they are. Just look at them. Look at how they make us feel.

The thing about Red Dead Redemption 2 that really made me pause is their approach to minimalist storytelling. The writers and game designers manage to pack some really intense stories with the smallest details. To illustrate this, let me tell you the story of Jim Payton.

Jim Payton is a nobody. He lived in a cabin near one of the key towns in the game. The player can apparently deliver a letter to him at some point, though I must have missed this side quest.

Late in the game, we can see a broken wagon teetering on the edge of a cliff. If we climb down the cliff, we find Jim’s body and learn he was on his way to pick up his new wife Mildred and bring her out to his homestead to begin their life together. If we travel back to Jim’s cabin, we find an unopened letter pinned to the door. It is from Mildred, who believes Jim has abandoned her and that he is refusing to write her back as a form of callous cruelty. She lives in a state of limbo, married to an absent man she cannot reach, ignorant of his true fate.

I was sad to discover this entirely ancillary plot. As it took space in my head and emotional weight in my heart, I was amazed at how much impact this storyline had with so little effort. This entire tragic melodrama was pieced together with two letters, a photograph, a broken cart, a body at the bottom of a cliff, and an empty house. Why would such a sparse story be so meaningful?

Mildred Payton (circa 1898, only known photograph)

It impacted me because I cared enough to tug on the narrative threads. I saw a broken cart and wondered, “Huh. What is the story of this cart? How did this get here?” I have to care enough to climb the cliff to discover Jim’s body. I have to care enough to read his letter. I have to care enough to backtrack from the cart to his house, care enough to search around his cabin, care enough to read Mildred’s lament. My own curiosity built the scaffolding upon which this narrative hangs. It took only the barest hint of human interest to engage me in a tragedy that sticks with me even today.

Which brings me to the question of artificial intelligence and storytelling.

Robotic Storytelling

Everyone in my tech circles is abuzz over the capabilities of OpenAI’s ChatGPT bot. OpenAI has been working on increasingly sophisticated language models, the most recent version known as GPT-3.

People have been doing all sorts of interesting things with the ChatGPT, having it write articles, explain code, solve logic problems, and explain historical events.

Some people are even using it to write stories that are arguably better in narrative drive than the version written by humans. In response to the prompt from @netrunnernobody, “Write a better twist ending to the popular television show Game of Thrones that results in the demise of several characters,” the chatbot wrote the following final season narrative arc:

In the final season of Game of Thrones, it is revealed that Cersei Lannister has been secretly plotting with the Night King all along. She has been providing him with resources and information to help him conquer Westeros, in exchange for him sparing her life and allowing her to rule as queen. However, her plan backfires when the Night King turns on her and invades King's Landing. In the ensuing battle, Cersei is killed along with several other major characters, including Daenerys Targaryen, Tyrion Lannister, and Arya Stark. In the end, the Night King emerges victorious and takes control of Westeros, plunging the realm into darkness.

This is a pretty good example of what we’ve been seeing from the chatbot. It seems to understand the plot of the show, understand what a “twist” is in that context, and know the main characters and key locations. It’s a bit dry and underdeveloped (it’s not clear how exactly Cersei Lannister could plot with the Night King, who is never seen engaging in any form of conversation), but it’s a decent starting point.

It seems like it would be possible to use an AI to automate some kinds of storytelling inside of a game world like that of Red Dead Redemption 2. If we look back to the story above, we are fairly close to having an AI automate all the individual components of the story, which consists of only a few letters, a photograph, and a few models strategically placed.

I’ve been thinking about this as I replay RDR2, trying to identify quests or random encounters that might be automated with an AI and how that might be integrated into a game like this to enrich the world further. I often will only stop playing open-world games when I’ve reached the end of the narrative content. Realizing there are no more nuggets of drama to discover, no more stories to explore, my interest in exploring the virtual space wanes. Could AI integration into these games make them endlessly discoverable, a never-ending fountain of micro-stories woven into a beautiful environment that is a joy to navigate in an infinite treasure hunt?

Would that be good?

A More Critical Assessment

There are a lot of fun examples of the OpenAI chatbot giving what seems like a great answer to a question or prompt. But the more I play with it, the less impressed I am. What it seems to be good at is writing out bullshit.

Dare Obasanjo 🐀 @Carnage4Life

ChatGPT is an AI that has mastered a unique human skill, bullshitting. It knows what the shape of a good answer looks like but often not the details. But we’re now learning that even technical people are happy with an answer that looks right instead of is right.

The output can sound authoritative and convincing, but close examination exposes a dreary monotony to most of the answers. The same goes for its storytelling. Maybe it is a factor of this still being an early version of the model, but the stories that ChatGPT outputs are very flat. In order to get interesting dramatic nuggets, you have to prompt it into a corner to a point where you might as well be writing the story yourself.

Are these flat stories enough to keep someone exploring a virtual world like I love to explore the world of RDR2? We’re not there yet, but also that I’m not convinced the research is heading in the right direction for compelling art.

There is a fairly gothic theme to Red Dead Redemption. In both the original game and the prequel, there is always the hanging hint of tragedy. The game leans heavily into the themes of the harshness of life in the old west, tragic loss through randomness, and uneven power dynamics.

While an AI may be able to hand human writers a hundred possible scenarios for a quests or ancillary narratives, it isn’t anywhere close to writing a single conversation from these games, not even the most rote conversations from one of the dozens of bounty-hunting missions that the player can complete. Every one of them has Arthur Morgan making some sarcastic quip or holding back a barely contained outburst of impatience and violence.

The ChatGPT bot almost seems like it is afraid of these concepts. It seems worried that sarcasm won’t be understood or that it will get in trouble for suggesting a story arc that isn’t so well worn that it is hideously boring. It seems perfectly satisfied with the blandest of narrative mediocrities.

The real question is if blandness will sell. Is there a lowest common denominator of storytelling that will compel enough people to engage in a game? This isn’t a question of technology, but of culture. This is a question of the audience for a game, what they are willing to accept, and when it becomes so bad that they reject what is being presented to them.

I can’t make any prognostication here because I have repeatedly demonstrated a poor understanding of what the average person thinks, what the average voter values, and what the average gamer will tolerate.

I think there may be a place for AI in content creation, but it must be filtered through a human for it to have meaning and value. An AI could propose a story or event but still needs someone with a soul and a discerning taste to say “no to option 1, yes to option 2.” The AI may end up as a dartboard of story ideas, but I don’t think many meaningful stories are going inside the purview of a bot that consistently hands back the blandest narrative porridge.

Looney Tunes - The Grey Hounded Hare

I was looking for a some short about robot troubles and it seemed appropriate to watch the one where Bugs Bunny mistakes a mechanical rabbit at a dog race for a damsel in distress. The plot is a bit thin, but the writers are clearly having fun making puns about racing dog names and the joke pacing moves along fast enough that we’re never bored. Having Bugs pull his impish shenanigans on a pack of vicious dogs chasing an “innocent” rabbit gives us some solid slapstick gags and is enough to fill up the 7 minutes without the story dragging along.