Why We Need A Westworld Game

The HBO television series Westworld explores advanced A.I. in a Wild West theme park, allowing guests to live out their wildest fantasies – whether it’s settling down with a farm girl or robbing a bank and riding off into the sunset. The A.I. is so lifelike you would have a hard time distinguishing who is real or synthetic. – and viewers are left wondering what that distinction truly means. Westworld’s showrunners draw inspiration for their realistic beings from video games with BioShock, Red Dead Redemption, and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim being mentioned as influences. 

What if Westworld went full circle and was adapted into a video game? Advanced A.I. would obviously have to be a showpiece. Could a game deliver an experience worthy of the show’s title? Reiner and I delve deeper.

Jeff: Before we get into this, you’re all caught up on the show, right?

Reiner: Absolutely; it’s my favorite show on TV right now, and the first thing I discuss with coworkers on Monday mornings. 

Jeff: Hey! That’s me! Anyway, one of my favorite things about it is seeing so many elements from video games – NPCs, A.I. routines, quest structures, DLC expansions – brought into the “real” world, or at least something closer to the physical realm. The first few episodes in particular drive home those points, showing characters going about their routines, which we learn are intricately crafted loops. The fun part is how guests – the actual flesh-and-blood humans who pay to visit the park – can manipulate those narratives and shape them as they see fit. Well, “fun” isn’t always the right word for it. Thanks to a new update in the A.I. hosts’ programming, some of these synthetic people are becoming aware of the cycle of brutality that they face as a rotating series of guests come into the park, have their way with its inhabitants, and leave with fun memories of being a hero or an outlaw. Seeing this nightmare play out with actors made me cringe, but at the same time I cackle with glee every time I shoot an NPC in the face during a game’s tutorial section. 

Reiner: I never thought of it that way. We mow down thousands of enemies in any given game, but never think about them as unique characters, per se. They are often the same repeated target that can’t express itself. If they could emote in any way other than opening fire on you, how would you react to them? That’s an interesting question.

Westworld has made me think about A.I. in games a lot over the last seven weeks, and it’s an area of games that should be explored further. When I think of Westworld being adapted as a game, my mind mashes together The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Peter Molyneux’s canceled Milo project, which was trying to bring realistic human emotion to a game character. Elder Scrolls’ characters were programmed to have lives and routines, but mostly couldn’t be interacted with. The Westworld game would have to allow that interaction.

Jeff: One of my favorite things to do in a game is to explore, but that rarely – if ever, really – extends beyond a game’s physical location. Even the most sophisticated A.I. companions don’t offer anything beyond scripted dialogue, and your own in-game interactions are typically limited to punching, pushing, or shooting other characters. Even if Milo was a big plume of smoke, it was a tantalizing idea. What if developers made a breakthrough that allowed for a fully interactive NPC, who could react appropriately to whatever the player threw at it? And then take that a step further: What if a game world was filled with these deeply realized characters, each of whom had their own interests, desires, and motivations? Right now, I don’t feel guilty or weirded out for shooting at a clown car filled with bad guys. But what if I was able to have a convincingly real conversation with these characters before deciding to open fire? Would I pull the trigger? I’m not convinced that I would.

Reiner: One of the most brilliant touches in Westworld is pairing a character who treats the synthetics like toys with someone who is trying to believe them as real. We see just how different these experiences can be. Sandbox gaming allows for a high level of freedom, but mostly with tools that the player can wield. I would like to see an experience that isn’t defined by what you are holding. Most games can’t get over that. Progress is gaining new guns or powers. What if progress was manipulating a character to open a different path? The problem comes from interaction. How do you vocalize intent with a controller? The input device limits what we can do, and I don’t see virtual reality opening that door further. We need to be able to walk through the open world, and explore. The conversation tree would have to be extensive, as would interaction options. Our concept of gaming interaction is too limited.

Jeff: Even though Westworld’s A.I. is leagues beyond what we’re seeing in games, they have shown us a few little slices of how it works. Remember when Maeve was talking to the butchers, and one of them showed her dialogue choices forming in real time on a tablet? Obviously, different character archetypes are going to draw from their own predetermined vocabularies; a prospector is probably going to have his own way of using language that’s different from a bartender or the publisher of the local paper.

Reiner: How would you interact with them? 

Jeff: Personally, I like using your voice. It works well with Siri and on Android devices, and it’s probably the most natural way for most of us to interact with people – artificial as they may be. Of course, I’m not the guy who has to come up with a million permutations of “I don’t understand,” or “Could you please repeat that for me, pardner?” I think even if we approached that early model gunslinger host Bill that Ford keeps around, I’d be happy.

Reiner: Having those parameters would keep the story in check to a degree. The challenge is designing a game that reacts to player chaos and choice. If someone enters a saloon and decides to mow down all of the patrons, how does the world react? The beautiful thing about the show is the narrative is on a loop. No matter what happens, it always resets to square one at some point. The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask explored that idea, and I think it worked well. Just picture that type of story with a mind-boggling number of branching paths.

Jeff: Different people want different things from their entertainment, which is one of the things that Westworld has been exploring. As you mentioned, we saw two of the show’s guests take wildly different paths, with one character ending up on an exciting train shootout and the other… getting beaten up and abandoned? Even with today’s comparatively primitive games, people create their own stories and share them with friends. If a game could anticipate and reward player interactions on a grand scale, it would be hard to put it down. I remember when Ultima Online was still in development, they made a big deal out of how you could be the town baker. You know what? I bet that sucked. But being able to do that if you’re so inclined, and having the game support your weird interpretation of what’s fun, is what we need to see more of moving forward.

Reiner: Games have a long way to go to create fantasies like this. I remember talking to Bungie about Halo’s sniper A.I., and they said they could only move forward, back, and shoot. That was it. I hope we someday have A.I. characters that are fascinating as their worlds. Few things break immersion more than an N.P.C. repeating the exact same dialogue you just heard. Westworld gives us a tantalizing blueprint for advanced A.I. concepts. I hope game developers are as intrigued by its prospects as we are.