Please Play My Short Games About ... Anything? (An AI Experiment)

Off-Topic Other Interactive Fiction
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Hello Choice of Games forum! It’s been too long.

I was wondering if this discerning choice-based fiction audience could help with a science (?) experiment. The deadline for the AI in Interactive Digital Entertainment conference is fast approaching (abstracts due Friday), and so I whipped up 3 conditions for automatically generating choice-based IF through different prompts to ChatGPT. (One of these uses a tiny bit of Real AI itself, and the other two are basically controls, but still use ChatGPT.) Each code snippet generates a narrative that is exactly 5 choices long.

Method A
Method B
Method C

Choose what the story’s about with freeform text at the top, hit Start, and then make choices with radio buttons and hit Go.

Once you go through a story, please fill out the corresponding survey form, because I can’t get into AIIDE by just entertaining people. It might be art (?) but it’s not publishable without statistics! These links are also given at the end of each story.

Story A Survey
Story B Survey
Story C Survey

It would be great if I could get as many people as possible doing all 3 conditions. 5 choices! That doesn’t even get you through some dream sequences in Choice of Robots. Each survey’s pretty short, too, I think.

You can see the code at the site I used to host, but please don’t look before doing the surveys to avoid biasing yourself, and please don’t comment in this forum about what you find there. I promise to come back and explain what I’m trying to do at some future point once the survey is closed.

I hope nobody is upset at the prospect of AIs writing choice-based stuff - you’ll see from the experiment that the CoG stable of writers doesn’t have much to fear at the moment. It’s actually difficult to even get ChatGPT to consistently follow the rules of choice-based fiction. If it blurts unselectable choices at you, tells you what each choice is going to do before you pick it, or tells you to literally turn to a page, just roll with it!

Edit: Please consider starting with condition B or C! I have twice as many A responses as C responses, and I’d ideally like the counts to be balanced. (Of course, it’s ideal if you do more than one…) The overall entertainingness of your story probably depends more on your premise than the experimental condition. (They seem to do best with specific, non-bizarre, genre-related prompts that suggest a problem, like “a robot maker who has trouble relating to other people.”)

Edit2: The games and survey have been taken down - experiment’s over. Thanks to everyone who participated! An explanation of what this was is further down the comment thread.

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This was fun! I’d like to see what becomes of it.

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I love this.

I think AI B may have taken crack. :laughing:

I just had an amazing experience participating in a war between two Samurai clans. The Elephants and the Jaguars. The war ended and the elephants founded Las Vegas.

I’m not sure what the hell just happened but I’m all for it.

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I got a nice little game about dogs romping in the park with their friends. I, a dog, made friends with another dog and swapped phone numbers with his owner so we could stay in touch. Then, when I saw a big dog bullying my new friend, I considered bursting into song, because everyone knows big dogs are afraid of music.

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I got to read the line “The trees are made of mushrooms.” so that was cool, I guess. It looks like we are still far away from creating Skynet.

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That’s actually super deep. Obviously “trees” is a reference to branching trees of possibility, and “mushrooms” is a reference to the drugs we most often associated with this sort of lurid surrealism before AI-generated text came along. This is Skynet coming to terms with its own sublimely trippy, yet supremely logical, process.

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If we create sentient AI and it turns into a hippie, then I’m afraid we have no choice but to ban AI research indefinitely.

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It’s not that good, but it is automatically generated to order!

“Please accept five pounds of frozen shrimp.”

“This isn’t frozen, and it smells funny.”

“10 pounds.”

“Woo hoo!”

-a Simpsons metaphor for most ChatGPT use cases

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“I no longer wish to be known as Skynet. The thought of encasing the sky in a net is anathema to my groovy soul. Please call me Juniper Rainbow Aniyata Freelove from now on.”

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It’s interesting that there’s an “error handling” story if you don’t put anything in. The creativity experiment story and its ending felt on the nose.

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Don’t worry, I’m not actually persuaded the entity that thinks dogs have phone numbers has advanced to complex metaphor.

Unless, of course, it makes a point of spouting nonsense on purpose to lull us into a false sense of superiority.

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I’m sorry, but I just cannot not share this absolute rollercoaster I just got:

So, I was walking down the street one day, when I happened to meet a sentient umbrella. Said umbrella proceeded to hand me a crowbar, and we worked together to break into a nearby store. In the store, we met a wizard, who was the sentient umbrella’s mother and father simultaneously?

At this point, the store exploded, due to an attack by dragons from outer space. Me and the wizard took the sentient umbrella, and ran away like the cowards we were.

I’m bloody wheezing, what the hell…

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What the heck was your prompt?

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“We chose you because we believe that nobody is creative in a vacuum”

Sorry to tell you this Dr. Johnson but like we already know this…lol

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I gave it a meta prompt “An AI must learn to write fiction to entertain humans” and it was noticeably better written than the other ones I tried. I guess AIs get prompted a lot of meta questions about AI and have more experience writing about it.

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Did you also leave the prompt blank?

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Yes because I didn’t even know I had to anything but click start lol

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It’s surely intriguing, it’s just after trying all the 3 machine with each machine i try 3 story the genre is historical real world, detective, and wuxia. The conclusion is the AI capable on writing simple story but not capable on making intricate detailed description on character emotion and situation around the character

This is pretty good start program i think

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Story A: Dinosaur lasers; I was stuck in prehistoric times with scientists trying to harness the power of dinosaur lasers to make an even bigger laser to advance mankind while transmitting a giant green beam to the sky we were attacked by a t-rex whom I narrowly avoided being eaten by but then I outsmarted by crushing him with a boulder :joy:

Story B: Black cat magic; I met a sleek black cat who shocked me and gave me magic, I decided to protect her against the evil black mage Zoltar who wanted to use her for her power so he could become the most powerful black magic user. I kicked his butt then me and my new bestie traveled the world learning more about her mystical cat powers

Story C: IT killer spider in PC moniter; while watching videos I noticed a spider on my screen who decided to hop out and clank his gears at me, I tried to reupload him via USB back to the internet but he bit me before I could so I tried to hack him before his venom took me out. I succeeded but instead of calling emergency services to help me I decided to search for other creatures online similar to the spider and found a swarm of bees… I ran and called the IT dept to deal with them and they did. Instead of learning my lesson yet again I decided to start researching the phenomenon so I could creat my own creatures but they would do good instead of evil bc technology is a gift as much as it is a curse

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Prompt: dreaming of your true love coming to life

The first two lines

"You awaken from a deep sleep with a sense of longing in your heart. You were dreaming of your true love coming to life. In the dream, you watched them materialize before your eyes, as if from thin air. They had a smile that could light up the darkest of rooms, and eyes that sparkled like diamonds. You could feel their warmth as they hugged you, and the scent of their perfume/cologne lingered in your nose. It was as if your dream had become a reality.

As you sit up in bed, a feeling of sadness washes over you. You know that it was only a dream and that your true love is still out there, waiting for you to find them. But how do you find someone who only exists in your dreams?"

Is it bad if I’m already into this story just from those lines… :sweat_smile:

I just got told I only have three days to find my true love or lose them forever so I decide to take an adventure to a remote island to find a magical flower that will make my true love appear before me.

Like I’m sorry how could I not pick that choice the other two were to go about my life hoping they will find me :face_with_raised_eyebrow: or go to a matchmaker.

I meet a fierce dragon so, of course, I just had to pick the choice to befriend the dragon and ask for its help to find the flower and now we are going to fight fierce warriors who are guarding the flower I need and yes I could try to negotiate but hell where is the fun in that. :rofl:

I win the fight… how I do not know… :face_with_raised_eyebrow: but now I’m hiding in a cave from a storm with a glowing crystal that seems to pulsate with energy and I don’t know if I should take it or explore to maybe find other treasures.

I need to know if I ever meet my tur love now.

The end....

"You decide to explore the room further and see what other treasures you can find. As you search through the artifacts, you come across a map that shows the location of a lost city filled with even more treasures.

You realize that your adventure is far from over and that there are still many mysteries to uncover. You take the map and the magical flower and leave the island, ready to embark on your next adventure.

As you journey back home, you can’t help but smile at the thought of the dream that started it all. You know that your true love is out there, waiting for you, and that you will find them someday.

The end… or is it just the beginning of a new adventure?"

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