Q. About the open design you invented or potentiated like no one else. The dream has always been to be able to get into another body and interact without limits with a world. What tools do we need, especially in verbal interaction, to make that dream possible? Because we continue in the branched dialogue of 40 years ago.
A. Yes. And that hurts me ... See, we need several things. Some we know how to do and others we have no idea. One of the things I want to do in System shock 3. This saga that we started in 1994 and that still interests people, which hallucinates me. Anyway, I want to build ... I better redo the phrase. I want my team and I to build a better simulation than we have seen so far. Minimize scripting [the events that are generated previously and by which the player will pass yes or yes] that puts the power in the hands of the designer and put the effort in the simulation, that gives that power to the player. I think that with this approach we will achieve a much more powerful and guided by the player interactive immersion.
The second thing I think we need is better artificial intelligence beyond combat. We need to be able to interact with humans in a natural way and not be scripted. To a large extent, this is conversation. But I still do not know how to make conversation. There are people working on it, with incredible approaches to how to get it, although I really can not even talk about them.
Q. I know a team from Extremadura, Spaniards, who are working on this with IBM.
A. I met them the other day [laughs]. They are ones. And there are others.
I'm going to put an example of what I want in terms of interaction in games. You and I just met. And we have a glass of water between us. Imagine that I take the glass of water and spill it on you. The first thing you would do would be getting up and trying to dry your pants before they get soaked. You probably would not punch me.
Q. Probably, yes.
A. [Laughs]. But the reaction would change if you were my grandfather and I your grandson of five years. Or if we were the same age and, after throwing the glass of water, I said: "Your wife will leave you to escape with me." Or if the first thing I did in the interview is to get a cigar and start to put smoke on your face. I want a video game in which the characters interact differently towards the player according to how they feel towards him. And in most games you can not spill the glass of water.
And the most difficult of all is that we need a masters, such as role-playing, to be artificial. That is, a system that makes decisions and modifies the game, not only its difficulty, depending on what the player wants. Imagine that day you do not feel like killing anyone; Because the game is adjusted to it. Or the opposite, that you want to load everything you can. I want that master who can modify the rules in real time. When that happens, each game will be completely different for each player.
Q. It's exciting to think about a masters role-playing dialogue. In fact, it's probably the kind of games in which you have more freedom than all of the ones we've created. If the master's degree is good, anything is possible. So, do we need to give up for hyperrealistic 3D graphics for a while and go back to the simple, 2D, to dig deeper into this?
A. I think you're right. In 3D you have to assume a series of assumptions and complexities that can ruin the experimentation we are talking about. The problem is commercial. Someone to finance it. Or you are the most intelligent human being in the world and you are working alone in a garage, it is difficult to imagine how you will achieve it. But, probably, someone is already working on this. I always tell my students the same thing: 'Your job is to go out there and destroy me. Doing things I can not even imagine. ' I've been working on this for 33 years. I have a certain philosophy of how to manage teams and a clear goal: to get the player to tell their own story by playing. I try to get closer to this goal with each game. But I need to find someone to come up with a completely crazy idea and show me the way. But I have reached the point that it has to be another person. Maybe it's you. Maybe it's someone in the audience here in Bilbao who was listening to my lecture. All I know is that I'm anxious to meet him. I love discovering new ideas. The ones that will change everything.
