cormack12
Gold Member
Really interesting piece on Jeff, and the conversational AI is really relevant now: https://www.bitpart.ai/
The AI technology in the game FEAR, a first-person shooter, was a key factor in its success and was developed by Jeff Orkin, the AI programmer on FEAR. Jeff Orkin worked on several titles at Monolith, including No One Lives Forever 2 and FEAR, before leaving the games industry in the summer of 2005. After leaving the games industry, Orkin pursued a career in grad school, and his contributions to the field of AI for games have been largely mythologized across various media. The host, Tommy Thompson, met Jeff Orkin in person at the Game Developers Conference and had several hours of interviews with him for the FEAR retrospective, confirming that Orkin is doing well and working hard. Orkin has since returned to the games industry and formed a new startup called Bit Part, which is taking a new approach to building interesting and dynamic non-player characters. The host wanted to learn more about Orkin's career outside of the games industry and set the record straight on his contributions to the field of AI for games.
The decision to leave a successful career in the game industry to pursue graduate school was influenced by a combination of factors, including a desire to explore the problem of artificial intelligence more deeply and a curiosity about the field. Deb Roy's research at the time was focused on natural language, including speech recognition and building interfaces that allow systems to understand human language. Deb Roy's research vision was shifting to understanding how children learn language, with the goal of informing how machines can converse, and he had begun a project recording his child's language development at home. The project involved installing 11 cameras and 14 microphones in the home to record everything that happened over a period of three years, providing a complete record of language development. The research group was doing interesting work in tracking language development, which would later influence Jeff's return to game development. The project, called "The Restaurant Game," was built inside the Torque game engine and allowed players to assume the roles of customers or waiters, initiating conversations within a constrained framework. The game was designed to be playable with a small number of players and could be built upon by one person, with the goal of crowdsourcing intelligence and understanding human conversation. The Restaurant Game had about 40 playable scenarios, allowing players to interact and converse with each other in a virtual restaurant setting.
In 2007, the game didn't look or feel like a traditional game, and Jeff Orkin was concerned about whether people would roleplay in a small online environment. Players were anonymously paired online, with some playing the role of customers and others as waitresses, and were given the freedom to act as they chose. The game demonstrated how players can become emotionally invested in a virtual environment, with one player reporting feeling insulted when a customer stole the cash register and running after them to retrieve it. The game showed how people can project themselves into virtual creations and experience emotions and bodily sensations in response to virtual events
The AI system acted as a narrative director, guiding the story by recognizing what the player was trying to do and having AI control other players to support a narrative where possible. By 2013, Orkin could automate a waitress character in a game who could converse with players, walk around, serve food, and react to unusual player actions. The automated waitress could respond appropriately to unexpected player behavior, such as sitting on top of a table or stealing the cash register. The completion of Orkin's PhD and the development of the automated waitress laid the groundwork for his subsequent projects over the next decade.
The founder and their team, including a project manager, led the Drift AI team together before starting Bitart, which has since grown to a team of nine people with VC funding. Bitart's AI tool was showcased at GDC earlier this year, featuring non-player characters powered by a system derived from a large corpus of knowledge fed into a large language model, which is then reduced down into a planning model. The company faced challenges in 2022, including the economic collapse and the release of ChatGPT, which changed people's understanding of AI and led to other startups rushing to market with similar ideas. The founder disagrees with the perspective that ChatGPT can be used to create next-generation NPCs by simply sticking it in an avatar, and believes that Bitart is doing something different. The demo build of Bitart's AI tool is still in development, and the company is experimenting with new ways to create characters and games.
The AI technology in the game FEAR, a first-person shooter, was a key factor in its success and was developed by Jeff Orkin, the AI programmer on FEAR. Jeff Orkin worked on several titles at Monolith, including No One Lives Forever 2 and FEAR, before leaving the games industry in the summer of 2005. After leaving the games industry, Orkin pursued a career in grad school, and his contributions to the field of AI for games have been largely mythologized across various media. The host, Tommy Thompson, met Jeff Orkin in person at the Game Developers Conference and had several hours of interviews with him for the FEAR retrospective, confirming that Orkin is doing well and working hard. Orkin has since returned to the games industry and formed a new startup called Bit Part, which is taking a new approach to building interesting and dynamic non-player characters. The host wanted to learn more about Orkin's career outside of the games industry and set the record straight on his contributions to the field of AI for games.
The decision to leave a successful career in the game industry to pursue graduate school was influenced by a combination of factors, including a desire to explore the problem of artificial intelligence more deeply and a curiosity about the field. Deb Roy's research at the time was focused on natural language, including speech recognition and building interfaces that allow systems to understand human language. Deb Roy's research vision was shifting to understanding how children learn language, with the goal of informing how machines can converse, and he had begun a project recording his child's language development at home. The project involved installing 11 cameras and 14 microphones in the home to record everything that happened over a period of three years, providing a complete record of language development. The research group was doing interesting work in tracking language development, which would later influence Jeff's return to game development. The project, called "The Restaurant Game," was built inside the Torque game engine and allowed players to assume the roles of customers or waiters, initiating conversations within a constrained framework. The game was designed to be playable with a small number of players and could be built upon by one person, with the goal of crowdsourcing intelligence and understanding human conversation. The Restaurant Game had about 40 playable scenarios, allowing players to interact and converse with each other in a virtual restaurant setting.
In 2007, the game didn't look or feel like a traditional game, and Jeff Orkin was concerned about whether people would roleplay in a small online environment. Players were anonymously paired online, with some playing the role of customers and others as waitresses, and were given the freedom to act as they chose. The game demonstrated how players can become emotionally invested in a virtual environment, with one player reporting feeling insulted when a customer stole the cash register and running after them to retrieve it. The game showed how people can project themselves into virtual creations and experience emotions and bodily sensations in response to virtual events
The AI system acted as a narrative director, guiding the story by recognizing what the player was trying to do and having AI control other players to support a narrative where possible. By 2013, Orkin could automate a waitress character in a game who could converse with players, walk around, serve food, and react to unusual player actions. The automated waitress could respond appropriately to unexpected player behavior, such as sitting on top of a table or stealing the cash register. The completion of Orkin's PhD and the development of the automated waitress laid the groundwork for his subsequent projects over the next decade.
The founder and their team, including a project manager, led the Drift AI team together before starting Bitart, which has since grown to a team of nine people with VC funding. Bitart's AI tool was showcased at GDC earlier this year, featuring non-player characters powered by a system derived from a large corpus of knowledge fed into a large language model, which is then reduced down into a planning model. The company faced challenges in 2022, including the economic collapse and the release of ChatGPT, which changed people's understanding of AI and led to other startups rushing to market with similar ideas. The founder disagrees with the perspective that ChatGPT can be used to create next-generation NPCs by simply sticking it in an avatar, and believes that Bitart is doing something different. The demo build of Bitart's AI tool is still in development, and the company is experimenting with new ways to create characters and games.
