Peter Molyneux Interview

Develop has posted the results of a conversation they had with Lionhead’s Peter Molyneux about their Natal-powered Milo demonstration, creating believable AI, and more.

So, we ask Molyneux: does emotional AI, the most current iteration of which we’ve just been exposed to, take as much inspiration from psychology as it does computer science and academic artificial intelligence?

(Absolutely,) he asserts. (The other people to really get inspiration from are people like directors and actors. We’ve got a full-time director and a full-time scriptwriter working on Milo they’re here all of the time. So we ask them, ‘˜Is the way Milo is acting is his distance from the camera taking emotion away or adding it?’ I mean, ask yourself: why are there good actors and bad actors? Why does Meryl Streep consistently provide good performances while Madonna doesn’t? There’s a definable skill there: it’s poise, it’s body movement, it’s blink rate. All of things communicate emotion.)

But there is a downside to being hung up on the details; on the little things that stand out and Molyneux is not unaware of how this obsession with making a believable world can come at the expense of the game. (People love the idea of emergence, and that is an important game mechanic to exploit. My criticism of us is that, at times, we’ve become too obsessed with it and have forgotten about the core of the game. I think you can probably see that in Fable 1, that we got a bit too obsessed with the simulation and forgot that it was a game that was fundamentally about being a hero.)