You poke your head out from behind the wall. From around this corner, you spot a mech peeking its head into doorways in the distance. It’s only a matter of time before it makes it down the hall and catches you. You’re injured, and it’s up to your partner, Jacob, to get you out of this facility.
“All clear on my end!” he yells from down the hallway.
“Come over here, there’s a mech we need to take care of,” you say.
Jacob runs over to you. “How should we proceed, Commander Shephard?”
“On my mark, toss a grenade down the hall,” you tell him. “We should save our long-range ammunition.”
He nods, and takes a grenade out of his vest pocket. He looks at you, waiting for your signal.
“Mark!”
Jacob tosses the grenade down the hallway. It lands at the mech’s feet. Before it can react, the grenade explodes, leaving the mech in pieces.
You look at Jacob and nod. “Excellent work, soldier!”
He smiles at you. “Thanks, Commander.”
“Gimme a sec,” you say as you hit the pause button on the controller, take of the headset, and walk to the bathroom. Mission complete.
Gameplay experiences like the one described above, wherein dialogue plays a strong role, are possible, if not inevitable, in the near future. While the physical motion of poking your head around a wall and nodding to an in-game character are already possible in virtual reality (VR) games, the element of naturally flowing conversation has yet to be implemented. I submit that we are closer than we think to being able to converse with in-game characters with our own voices, and receive personalized responses back from them. How? Through chatbots.
Chatbots, also known as virtual conversational agents, are computer programs capable of making conversation with a user using natural language. This can be in the form of either text or audible speech. You’ve likely heard of Siri, Apple’s chatbot for phones and laptops which takes commands from the user using natural language and responds with its own voice and/or performs a task on a given device based on what the user has said. Chatbots are also used in customer-business communications online, through mediums like Facebook Messenger, where consumers can buy anything from airline tickets to pizza through a chat interface – one which used to be reserved for messaging human friends.
Chatbots are also being used more innovatively for entertainment purposes – both for marketing videogames (also using Facebook Messenger) and as major features as games themselves. Of course, standalone chatbots like Cleverbot exist simply as playthings and proofs of concept, to show that a computer is capable of conversation.
I propose that chatbots can play a key role in enhancing entertainment even further, particularly when coupled with VR. VR provides a physically immersive experience for the user – the precise motion tracking of VR headsets and handheld controllers make the user really feel like they inhabit a given virtual setting. By coupling this physical immersion with the deeper narrative immersion afforded via the action of speech with chatbots, we can create more powerful and engrossing interactive experiences.
To illustrate this point, let’s begin by exploring how storytelling functions in videogames, with a focus on role-playing games. From there, we’ll see how storytelling in non-VR videogames informs storytelling in VR games, as well as how VR works in general. Finally, we’ll focus on how chatbots can improve traditional role-playing games, and also how they can bring role-playing narrative immersion to VR experiences. We’ll also take a brief look at a dialogue system I have been using in order to create a chatbot.
