Natural Language Control and Paradigms of Interactivity

Artificial Intelligence and Interactive Entertainment

Volume

Papers from the 2000 AAAI Spring Symposium

Contents

There is considerable interest in the prospect of controlling computer games in natural language, as this would open the way to new gaming experiences. In this paper, we report results from a small, yet fully-implemented, prototype for natural language control based on a DOOM game emulator. The system, developed on top of a parser integrating syntactic and semantic processing, is able to analyse sublanguage commands into appropriate game actions. One key aspect of natural language control is the proper interpretation of action semantics from the natural language input to the behaviour of the player character in the game. In the long term, the use of natural language input would require compatible AI techniques supporting realtime behaviours. It also has implications, yet to be explored, in terms of artificial actors’ autonomy.