I also liked the write up about how it's genre defining, though it's a little like cheating by telling us how it's a new genre. :)
I also wanted more -- somehow this felt incomplete, though I'm not sure why.
I'm curious about the AI usage. How will you program the character AIs? Would each have unique aspects or all the same algorithm?
Thanks for giving it a read! And yes, I did have a lot more content to add, but had to cut it down due to bad time management. Primarily stuff about how the basic mechanics could actually be used strategically, but when I wrote it out it wasn’t making design sense yet, and needed some more rigourous thought.
About the genre, the reader is free to come to their own conclusions about whether it’s a new genre or not. I found that there were very few single-player negotiation games, and the best candidate I found (GNOSIA) didn’t make use of new tech like language AI. I just gave the genre a fancy name so that I can try to file a ridiculous patent for it later like how Shadows of Mordor did with the Nemesis system XD.
About the technical aspects of the AI - right now the technology is heading in that direction, but a proper plugin that you can use to make an AI-powered commercial game like this one doesn’t exist yet. ChatGPT’s API has a bunch of limitations and restrictions - for example there’s a character limit on context, and content filters that will prevent your NPCs from talking about anything related to death or violence or politically incorrect things. Plus it’s hella expensive for each prompt.
But in theory with a game AI plugin, you would give each character a standard description, motives, etc as context - then feed in the player reply and formulate an appropriate response. Then give the AI a limited list of actions that its character can do in the game, and ask it to pick the most appropriate one.
