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The Abrupt Goodbye

Name:	Andy Schatz
Date Posted:	Oct 17, 2007
Rating:	5.0 out of 5
Public:	YES
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Blog post

EDIT: Do me a favor -- if you just want to snicker and play with smut, go to google and type "porn" into the little box. I was expecting some smut, and I was expecting it to filter itself out a bit, but seeing this junk actually in my database bothers me. I'm deleting the nasty stuff out of the database myself.
</edit>

I'm been doing some thought experiments lately on user-generated content. Here's a quick little game I threw together while thinking about conversation trees.

Play The Abrupt Goodbye

You play a character in a conversation. You are given choices of what to say, which are conversational responses written by previous players of the game. You can at any point type in your own response.

Responses are sorted and removed from the database based on their popularity. If certain responses don't get clicked, they move down the list and eventually get removed.

A conversation might go something like this:

Quote:
You are a blind man. You are sitting on a bench in the subway. Someone sits next to you.

Say one of the following:

Where you goin?

The train is on FIIIRRRREEEE!

Mornin.

Get yer own bench.

[Type your own response]

You choose "Where you goin?"

The young woman says, "Uptown, and you?"

Choose:

Oh, I got no place to go.

[Type your own response]

You choose "Oh, I got no place to go."

The young woman says, "Would you like my sandwich?"

Choose:

[Type your own response]

You type: "Lady, I don't eat ham."

The woman gets up and walks away. She is gone.

The End

Granted, this is a fairly mundane conversation. Eventually, however, you could probably get some pretty interesting (and long) conversation chains, depending on the creativity of the player base.

A system like this could be an interesting way to build complex NPCs in an MMO.

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Deozaan (Oct 17, 2007 at 20:32 GMT)

Oh! I get it now! I kept waiting for the woman to say something else. You didn't mention that when a player chooses the woman, she writes the responses from what the man says.

Heh heh. I feel sorry for the next woman who sits down to a blind man and he says "A/S/L?"

EDIT: I've been trying to spread the word! Check out my post on DonationCoder.com.
Edited on Oct 18, 2007 04:49 GMT

James Laker (BurNinG) (Oct 17, 2007 at 21:00 GMT)

I thought, Goodbye, as in leaving. Dont do that man! Your success story is inspiring and what drives people, like me ;)

PS! I'm not typing this again you swallowing forum criter.

Brian Richardson (Oct 17, 2007 at 21:04 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Heh, this is pretty neat! Nice way to harvest some conversations.

Orion Elenzil (Oct 17, 2007 at 22:29 GMT)

it would be cool to put a slashdot-like moderation feature in there,
where visitors get to rate the various responses which are already recorded,
and in addition get to choose the range of response ratings which they themselves want to see.

Andy Schatz (Oct 17, 2007 at 22:35 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

@Orion- Yeah, that could be the next step in directing the user entries. There's a sweet spot between moderation, user feedback, and user-moderation. Every system like this develops its own unique culture, and it's worth thinking about how to promote a positive culture when developing a community.

Joshua Dallman (Oct 17, 2007 at 22:35 GMT)

Played it, cool.

Andy Schatz (Oct 17, 2007 at 23:32 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

An update: A total of 419 entries so far. I deleted the smut. SInce I put that warning in the original post, there's actually some fun, interesting stuff in here. I think if this were integrated into a larger game, it could work pretty well. Interesting!

Tom Spilman (Oct 18, 2007 at 00:30 GMT)

@Andy - Good luck keeping up with the "smut". :)

But this is pretty cool.
Edited on Oct 18, 2007 00:37 GMT

Dan - (Oct 18, 2007 at 02:15 GMT)

That was fun. THanks,

Drew -Gaiiden- Sikora (Oct 18, 2007 at 02:54 GMT)

That's pretty cool, I like the idea Andy. Didn't take me long to find some hot coffee tho (literally), hahaha

Oh and yea I too at first thought something had happened to eject you from the game dev industry. Not nice to scare people like that you know ;)
Edited on Oct 18, 2007 02:55 GMT

Andy Schatz (Oct 18, 2007 at 03:11 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

This is actually becoming a lot cooler that I expected :) I'll have to graph the conversation trees after it's run for a while. There's actually some pretty interesting ideas coming out of it, and some pretty entertaining threads.

Andy Schatz (Oct 18, 2007 at 05:32 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Deozaan- Thanks a ton! That's a great writeup. This is going way better than I expected.

Gareth Fouche (Oct 18, 2007 at 06:59 GMT)

Damn Andy, I also thought you were leaving, as in, leaving the Torque community. Glad you aren't.

Brian Wilson (Oct 18, 2007 at 08:11 GMT)

Great example, it's funny how quickly the conversation turns to "smut".

Chris Calef (Oct 18, 2007 at 18:45 GMT)

Ha ha, me too, Andy! Don't scare us like that!

Andy Schatz (Oct 18, 2007 at 19:38 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

Over 2500 responses in the database so far. I've deleted all the nasty stuff. If you tried this at the beginning, try it again. It's a different beast now. :)

Tom Eastman (Eastbeast314) (Oct 18, 2007 at 19:43 GMT)

This is really cool - added a couple dozen responses. Hopefully you fed the deleted responses into a neural net that can now remove similar ones - so that you can release this on digg. Then you'd get a really serious tree. That would be awesome.

Andy Schatz (Oct 18, 2007 at 19:46 GMT) Resource Rating: 5

I'd probably want to make it a little less "fragile" before posting it wider... currently the threshold for a response to drop off the list is pretty low. If someone wanted to sabotage it they probably could.

Jeff Gran (Oct 18, 2007 at 21:35 GMT)

Pretty cool. Good idea.

Orion Elenzil (Oct 18, 2007 at 22:06 GMT)

<off topic>The Abrupt Goodbye reminds me of a portion of a fake filmography i read recently:
"Cage III - Free Show" - B.S. Latrodectus Mactans Productions/Infernation Animation Concepts, Canada. Cosgrove Watt, P.A. Heaven, Everard Maynell, Pam Heath; partial animation; 35 mm; 65 minutes; black and white; sound. The figure of death (Heath) presides over the front entrance of a carnival sideshow whose spectators watch performers undergo unspeakable degradations so grotesquely compelling that the spectators' eyes become larger and larger until the spectators themselves are transformed into gigantic eyeballs in chairs, while on the other side of the sideshow tent the figure of Life (Heaven) uses a megaphone to invite fairgoers to an exhibition in which, if the fairgoers consent to undergo unspeakable degradations, they can witness ordinary persons gradually turn into gigantic eyeballs. INTERLACE TELENT FEATURE CARTRIDGE #357-65-65</offtopic>

Henry Todd (Oct 21, 2007 at 22:01 GMT)

Derr.. I'm an idiot. Edited to remove question with obvious answer.

Interesting project though, I've added a few lines. It'll be interesting to try this out again when the dialog trees get a bit longer.
Edited on Oct 21, 2007 22:04 GMT

Pesto126 (Oct 21, 2007 at 22:22 GMT)

I must just not get it... like playing zork on a a TRS-80... :)

Brian Wilson (Oct 30, 2007 at 17:39 GMT)

Quote:
I must just not get it... like playing zork on a a TRS-80... :)

Some would consider that a good thing ;p

Patrick (RollerJesus) (Nov 30, 2007 at 14:29 GMT)

I'm just keeping this going. I find it fascinating.

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