Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 180)

Trigger Happy
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characters. And just as it is largely the interactions
between people that make a story interesting, so a good
storytelling videogame ought to simulate believable
exchanges between characters.
Character interactions can happen in cut-scenes as
much as the designer likes, but a greater feeling of
being immersed in the videogame world would
naturally result if other characters reacted to the
player’s actions in a real-time, organic sense. Outcast is
one game that is just beginning to scale this
computational mountain. It is a problem of AI, of
artificial intelligence: how do you make the
computergenerated characters behave in a convincingly
lifelike fashion?
Masclef’s solution was found in the AI theories of
Marvin Minsky. Outcast’s “Gaia” computational
engine uses Minsky’s concept of “agents.” These are
little mental homunculi with specialized jobs: one
agent is for hunger, another agent is for curiosity,
another is for fear, and so on. Weave enough of these
agents together and you have a fairly crude model of a
consciousness, but one that leads to surprisingly
complex sets of behavior. In Outcast the effects,
though rudimentary, are enjoyable to see. As Masclef
describes it: “Say you make a big noise. If its agent of