This spring, the Bristol Digital Game Lab, in collaboration with Meaning Machine, held playtests for Meaning Machine’s forthcoming “first-person talker” game, Dead Meat. Drawing upon the murder-mystery genre, Dead Meat deploys Game Conscious™ technology to allow players to interrogate the suspect of a mariticide in any way they can imagine, to which the game’s characters will respond in turn.
The player-study forms part of the Game Conscious™ Characters project, a Collaborative Research and Development project funded by MyWorld and led by Meaning Machine in collaboration with the University of Bristol. The study aimed to probe player responses to the infinite responsiveness of Dead Meat’s characters, which allow players to co-author the game.
Significant interest was shown in the study, with over 100 participants signing up. Dr Chris Bevan, who co-ran the study, remarked that in “20-odd years of running audience studies, I’ve not seen a response quite like this.” Such was the appetite of the participants and the expansiveness of approach they exhibited toward the game.
In discussion with Dr Richard Cole, a number of consequential questions emerged during the study. What strategies do players adopt when approaching the game? How does the game alter if the player wishes to unexpectedly shift the setting to space, or, alternatively, to role-play as the Devil? Comparably, what is the emotional response in the player – do they recognize their conversational partner as AI, does this alter their willingness to commit to the subject matter? How does the player’s response alter if they are spoken to aloud by the AI or if the conversation is conducted via text?
Such questions have informed the work of both the Game Lab and Meaning Machine as they move forward. Progress continues toward the publication of Dead Meat as a full game. Simultaneously, work continues on a paper analysing the results of the study, which will be submitted for publication in the autumn.