Keynotes (Jeff Orkin)

Planning for Next Generation Digital Actors in Games

The game industry excels at simulating soldiers on the battlefield, but struggles to produce interactive storytelling and social interaction that is as dynamic as the combat. How can we move away from scripted linear experiences? How can we deliver digital actors who can spontaneously converse and work together while improvising scenes with others? This talk will begin by discussing the pros and cons of applying academic planning systems to automate characters in games, and will go on to describe a new data-driven approach to planning that can scale up to the demands of spontaneous digital actors with repertoires of thousands of possible actions and dialogue lines. This new planning system will be demonstrated by automating characters using data recorded from over 16,000 humans playing as customers and waitresses in The Restaurant Game.