Carnegie Mellon Students Make AI Shine in New ChatGPT-Based Game

This looks like it might (1.) be fun and (2.) teach you what our Colonial-Era ancestors endured.

Carnegie Mellon students make AI shine in new ChatGPT-based game.

A tragedy looms over the town of Howlsbend — and asking the right questions of artificial intelligence may be the only way to discover the witch behind this wickedness.

Chatbot AI(opens in new window) a team of Carnegie Mellon University Entertainment Technology Center (ETC)(opens in new window) students, have created a role-playing video game, Hysteria in Howlsbend, set in a fictional colonial town. The player takes the role of the deputy governor of Massachusetts and must interview three townsfolk to determine which of them is the witch who killed the local reverend.

Even Charles Agriogianis, a game designer on the project, doesn’t know what the townsfolk will say. They are voiced, in part, by AI.

“We can only exert so much control over what it’s doing, so we had to think carefully about narrative in the game and how we defined a successful experience,” said Agriogianis, a student at the ETC — a master’s program that prepares students for careers in entertainment technology and interactive experience development.

Players can chat one-on-one with characters Hope, Elizabeth and Adam to determine who is telling the truth, who knows what and, ultimately, who is the witch. Powered by ChatGPT, the characters will respond to anything. Players could ask “Hope, do you think Adam is the witch?” or “Where did you get your hat?”

Amber Griffith, a narrative designer, game designer and 2D artist on the team, said incorporating AI means no two playthroughs have been the same.

You can read more in an article by Caroline Sheedy published in the Carnegie Mellon web site at: https://tinyurl.com/5xmmn6m7