Story and Simulations for Serious Games

14

Synthetic Characters

After all of our technology, the pseudo intelligence algorithms, the fast exception matrices, the portent and content monitors and everything else, we still can’t come close to generating a human voice that sounds as good as what a real live actor can give us. (Neal Stephenson in his futuristic novel The Diamond Age)

We have talked about the value of characters in presenting obstacles in story simulation and in guiding the progress of the story. We described the Final Flurry exercise created for the Department of Defense and implemented at the Industrial College of the Armed Forces. In that simulation the students were divided into groups, which represented advisors to the National Security Advisor (NSA). After a day ...